Producers in the Permian Basin of western Texas and New Mexico extract about half of U.S. crude oil. They also produce abundant amounts of toxic, salty water, which they pump back into the groundNow, some of the fluid storage reservoirs are brimming—and Manufacturers keep injecting more.
This is causing a huge mess.
Increasing pressure across the region is causing waste water to reach ancient wells, creating geysers that could cost millions of dollars to clean up. Companies are grappling with the dangers of drilling that have made it more expensive to operate and complaining that marinades are seeping into their oil and gas reserves. Oil and gas friendly communities are concerned about injection.
“It’s one of the many things that keeps me up at night,” said Greg Perrin, general manager of the groundwater-conservation district in Reeves County, Texas, where companies are dumping the largest amounts of wastewater.
Swaths of the Permian appear to be on the brink of geological failure. Pressures in injection reservoirs in a major part of the basin are up to 0.7 pounds per square inch per foot, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin’s Bureau of Economic Geology.
Texas regulators have said in industry presentations that when pressure exceeds 0.5 pounds per square inch per foot, the liquid — if it finds a way — could flow to the surface and pose a threat to underground sources of drinking water.
The tussle above ground is raising questions about how the Permian can sustain red-hot production without massive environmental damage that could leave taxpayers in trouble – and complicate the region’s economic plans. Basin is trying to woo data centers The plan is to become a hub with cheap land and energy and to bury carbon dioxide captured in industrial plants. sucked out of the air,
“You need a stable, locked-down geology that behaves as it should,” said Adam Peltz, director of the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit advocacy group. “Otherwise, you’re going to create a huge, expensive mess that will cost Texans for generations.”The industry is working on clear its functionBut solutions to treating and extracting meaningful amounts of water away from oil fields are still years away.
Oil-and-gas officials said solving the wastewater problem is a priority for the industry.
“The size of the Permian is such that it may not be a limiting factor to the success of the entire basin,” said Scott Neal, director of development and portfolio for Chevron’s shale and tight business.
unintended consequences
In the Delaware portion of the Permian, its most prolific field, drillers extract an average of 5 to 6 barrels of water for every barrel of oil.
For years, they pumped putrefactive fluids deep into the ground and triggered hundreds of earthquakesSome had intensity greater than 5. They caused little damage in the sparsely populated Permian, but were felt as far away as Dallas, El Paso, and San Antonio, where a historic building was damaged.
In 2021, the Railroad Commission of Texas, the agency that oversees the oil and gas industry in the state, began cracking down on deep disposal. Companies turned to shallow reservoirs, which now absorb about three-quarters of the billions of barrels of water they pump into the Permian each year. This change largely smoothed out the shock but has created unintended consequences.
The pressure is increasing, and the salt water is spreading far and wide. It’s migrating to some of the messiest wells in the Permian, forcing companies and regulators to play a long and costly game.
In 2022, a 100-foot burst of salt water erupted from an abandoned well near the unincorporated community of Tubbs Corners in Crane County, Texas. Chevron, which owned the well, shut it down. But about two years later, a different well in the same area began gushing out water, a sign that bottling up the geyser possibly pressurized the subsurface and triggered new eruptions, scientists said.
It took the Railroad Commission about 53 days and about $2.5 million to stop that leak. Eventually, the agency quietly shut down injection wells that it said were likely causing the pressure surge.
The ordeal may not end. Scientists said the area’s land mass has seen a slight rise in recent months, a sign that pressure is increasing again.
deal with crisis
Regulators in Texas face a difficult balancing act. Oil-and-gas production contributes greatly to the state’s economy, but reducing it risks turning supporting communities against the industry. Their task is complicated because New Mexico restricts disposal, so most of the Permian’s wastewater is pumped into Texas.
An open-records request filed by The Wall Street Journal revealed that researchers at the Bureau of Economic Geology painted a critical picture of frenzied injection in a preliminary, informal project proposal shared with the Railroad Commission last year. He said operators were dumping the waste water with little regard for how it would travel underground or what effect it would have on reservoir pressure.
“This behavior inevitably leads to waste, regulatory action that impairs operations and investments, and a reduction in the intrinsic value of the injected resource,” he said.
Industry experts said the commission has taken a more proactive approach to tackling the issue. Crews regularly rely on satellite data to track pressure build-up. Earlier this year, it said it would put a limit on the amount of injections.
The Railroad Commission at times appears worried about what effect the growing crisis might have on itself and the industry it controls. The Journal’s open-records requests revealed that it told the Texas Legislature last year that assembling a team to investigate the issue would help increase public trust. It received $1.3 million to hire the team. It also received an additional $100 million to plug leaking oil and gas wells.
Increasingly, Permian landowners find themselves dealing with abandoned wells that come back to life. In May, a well on Laura Briggs’ Pecos County property began spraying salt water like a fire hydrant. He said it took the Railroad Commission about four months to fix it at a cost of about $350,000.
“You’re dealing with broken, rotten pieces of stuff,” he said.
Some ranchers worry that the waste water could contaminate groundwater sources and jeopardize their operations.
“If it gets loose in an area where we’re pulling water from, let’s say, stocking water, it could put you out of business overnight,” said Brad Gholson, a livestock dealer and owner of Reeves County Feed & Supply in Pecos.
Perrin, of the groundwater-conservation district, said he feels the Railroad Commission does not have enough power on the ground to handle the situation. His district is launching a campaign to collect samples from water wells and assess whether the quality has changed as a result of the injections – he expects the effort will cost up to $200,000.
A spokesperson for the commission said its injection program is designed to protect freshwater.
uncertain future
The troubled Permian pipeline is forcing producers to drill through high-pressure zones, strengthen their wells with extra strings of casing and use protective coatings against corrosive salt water. This means that companies have to spend more to extract oil and gas.
“Little by little, it adds cost, it adds complexity, it adds mechanical challenges,” said Chevron’s Neal. He said that the increase in pressure has not caused any significant hindrance in its operation.
In addition to these headaches, some drillers report that water is moving into their oil and gas reservoirs. Permian operator Pecos Valley filed a lawsuit earlier this year against water-handling company NGL, saying water it pumped overflowed and flooded four oil and gas wells. NGL has denied the allegations.
Oil and gas fields in South Texas, North Dakota, and Appalachia also produce salt water but in much smaller quantities than in the Permian. As the basin matures, the wells become wetter.
The industry is testing technologies to rapidly evaporate the liquid and remove the salt from it so it can be reused outside the oil patch. Companies are planning to release clean water into rivers. Texas lawmakers have passed legislation to help advance these solutions.
But researchers said these options would not reduce the near-term need for injections. Katie Smee, a researcher with the Bureau of Economic Geology, said there are areas of the Permian where wastewater can be safely injected and the industry should do more to delineate these areas.
“If we say no to deep injection because of earthquakes, and we say no to shallow injection because of surface flows, and we’re not taking into account the science of areas where injection is safely proceeding,” she said, “then what?”
Write to Benoit Morane here benoit.morenne@wsj.com and on Andrew Mollica andrew.mollica@wsj.com
