By Valerie Volcovici
JAL, New Mexico (Reuters) – Flying over the desert panorama of southeastern New Mexico in a four-seat helicopter, Stephen Aldridge might rely round a dozen man-made lagoons brimming with poisonous wastewater glistening between drill rigs and pumpjacks.
Whereas it’s a rising hazardous waste drawback from the area’s booming drilling business, the mayor of the tiny city of Jal – nestled close to the border with Texas within the coronary heart of U.S. oil nation – considered the sweeping scene as a chance: a supply of water within the second-biggest oil producing state affected by worsening drought.
“Our future is going to depend on the future of that produced water,” he stated.
Aldridge is amongst a rising group of New Mexico politicians who need the state to develop laws permitting for the hundreds of thousands of gallons of so-called produced water gushing up day by day alongside the Permian basin’s prolific oil and gasoline to be handled and used, as an alternative of discarded, and who’re encouraging corporations to determine the best way to make it occur cheaply, safely and at scale.
In 2022, the oil and gasoline business in New Mexico produced sufficient poisonous fracking wastewater to cowl 266,000 acres (107,650 hectares) of land a foot (31 cm) deep. Whereas the state’s drillers reuse over 85% of their produced water in new oil and gasoline operations, the remainder is pumped underground.
With injection wells filling up, nevertheless, New Mexico has begun limiting deep-underground disposal, which has triggered earthquakes. The state is now anticipated to export over 3 million barrels of that water per day by the tip of 2024 – a wierd dynamic in a water-scarce state.
Round 10 wastewater remedy companies in New Mexico are taking over the problem beneath a state-supported pilot program that has thus far spurred initiatives to develop crops like hemp and cotton and irrigate rangeland forage grasses.
Whereas accomplished pilots have proven the know-how works, it’s at the moment too costly for widespread adoption.
The businesses and their backers additionally face a troublesome political battle. The controversy over how this water must be used is without doubt one of the most divisive political questions going through New Mexico, with opponents primarily frightened in regards to the unintended human well being penalties and subsidizing the oil business’s waste concern.
New Mexico’s Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham launched laws late final yr that might have created a strategic water reserve out of handled produced water. The invoice was defeated by state lawmakers however will probably be introduced up once more within the subsequent legislative session in January.
Neighboring Texas can be coping with rising issues round wastewater disposal, together with an epidemic of exploding orphan wells as subsurface strain rises, elevating worries a couple of potential crackdown there too. The Permian basin, which straddles Texas and New Mexico, is the highest U.S. oilfield.
“It’s getting close to this point of criticality,” stated Rob Bruant with vitality consultancy B3.
Different states comparable to Colorado and California already use handled produced water in small quantities for agriculture. However New Mexico’s scenario is exclusive as a result of the volumes are overwhelming and the water itself wants far more intensive remedy as a result of it’s unusually briny – 3 times saltier than the Pacific.
CRYSTAL CLEAR FISH TANKS
Aldridge stands out in dusty New Mexico, with shoulder-length white hair and a bushy beard, typically sporting shiny West African tunics.
His chopper tour in late-July was a part of a website go to to one of many state’s wastewater remedy pilot venture run by an organization referred to as Aris Water Options.
On the cell trailer subject workplace of the Aris venture, Aldridge admired fish tanks on show full of crystal clear water run via Aris’s remedy know-how, and residential to round two dozen minnows.
Earlier than it’s handled, although, the water is harmful. Workers on website are required to put on flame retardant clothes and carry moveable displays to detect lethal gases.
The untreated water is trucked in by native drillers and held in two massive storage tanks earlier than getting piped via a membrane filter to take away solids, after which distilled.
The method yields clear water, and leaves behind a extremely poisonous rust-colored mud that’s reinjected underground at a registered saltwater disposal website.
The water, Aris says, is freed from pollution or radionuclides, and match for industrial and agricultural makes use of. Beginning subsequent yr, Aris will start rising non-food crops like cotton as a part of a $10 million grant it received this yr from the U.S. Division of Power.
“We look at the concept of desalinating produced water and creating a new water resource for the Permian region in a similar way to how the water industry was able to demonstrate that municipal wastewater could be safely treated and used for many purposes that society could become comfortable with,” stated Lisa Henthorne, chief scientist at Aris.
The primary drawback for Aris and others is value. A barrel of Aris’ handled water prices over $2 a barrel, many instances increased than what industrial or agricultural water customers usually pay. Aris says its purpose is to convey prices right down to $1 – nonetheless representing a giant invoice for customers.
Massachusetts-based Zwitter, which not too long ago finalized a separate water remedy pilot venture in New Mexico, stated handled water could by no means be low-cost, however might turn into viable if it turns into cheaper than disposal.
“It is unlikely that agriculture or other water users will be able to pay more than cents per barrel. Therefore, the value of desalination will be driven by saving disposal costs and could be from $2 to $3/BW (per barrel of water) in the future,” it stated within the remaining report on its venture.
Disposal at the moment prices cents per barrel, however that might rise as injection websites replenish and waste must be trucked or piped ever additional.
Aris has strategic agreements with Permian oil majors together with Chevron (NYSE:), ConocoPhillips (NYSE:) and Exxon Mobil (NYSE:) to develop and pilot applied sciences for treating produced water for potential reuse.
Exxon subsidiary XTO has additionally partnered with Infinity Water Options, one other water remedy agency working a pilot venture within the Permian.
“I can tell you, the H2O molecule has no value until you run out of it,” Infinity CEO Michael Dyson added.
TERRIFIED OF GETTING IT WRONG
Avner Vengosh, a professor of environmental high quality at Duke College, stated unknown security dangers are additionally a key concern.
Beneath federal legislation, U.S. producers should not required to reveal all of the chemical substances they introduce to grease wells whereas drilling, elevating worries that water remedies and testing are lacking some harmful elements.
“There are a lot of technologies that can treat the water but the question is how can we evaluate all possible contaminants in produced water? I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I am saying it needs to be done correctly,” he stated.
Infinity’s Dyson agreed the business must tread fastidiously.
“We know we’re only going to get one real chance of getting this right, and if anything, I think most of us are terrified of getting it wrong,” he stated.
The state’s atmosphere division is updating its 2019 Produced Water Act with the intention of firming up water reuse guidelines and increasing analysis and growth to be used outdoors the oil and gasoline sector.
Throughout every week of hearings on the hassle in early August, divisions have been enormous, with environmental teams and a few scientists questioning how secure the end-product might be.
Daniel Tso, a former Navajo Nation Council member, instructed Reuters the Navajo had been stung earlier than in New Mexico when many years of uranium mining on their land within the final century led to widespread radioactive air pollution.
“Now the industry is trying to make this a public problem and the public has to really scrutinize the effects,” he stated of produced water.
James Kenney, New Mexico’s atmosphere secretary, instructed Reuters that the advances in know-how during the last 5 years give him confidence that handled produced water might be secure, however acknowledged New Mexico’s poor file.
“We have to acknowledge our history of things like uranium mining, the promise of wealth and the failure to protect health. So communities are right to be skeptical,” he stated.
For Aldridge, although, the extra he learns about wastewater remedy know-how, the extra keen he’s to struggle for the state to open up extra makes use of for the water.
“Am I 100% convinced? No, but they’re taking a step to convince me and I need to take those steps with them,” he stated.
His personal rural city of Jal, he stated, might turn into house to “industries of the future” like knowledge facilities or inexperienced hydrogen initiatives, companies that want ample provides of water.
Or it might dry up, just like the drilling business will when the Permian empties of oil and gasoline.
“I simply cannot abide by the concept that small rural communities like Jal can simply vanish.”