Republican lawmakers’ favorite oil and gas field has a water problem. The Permian Basin, one of the highest-producing oil fields in the country, has become the ultimate destination for GOP lawmakers looking for a place to bash President Joe Biden's climate and clean energy agenda. But the swath of Texas and New Mexico is confronting a quandary about how to handle the industry’s chemical-laced wastewater — at the same time that the region faces a drought-induced water shortage, writes Shelby Webb. The states and oil companies want to repurpose the briny byproduct — known as “produced” water — for uses such as irrigating crops or replenishing dry riverbeds. But the plan is putting environmental and health experts on high alert. “You have to know with certainty what [contaminants] are in the produced water and know with certainty that you can treat those out to a level of safety,” Tannis Fox with the Western Environmental Law Center told Shelby. “We’re a long way off from there.” Every day, oil companies in the Permian churn out enough wastewater to fill more than 54 Olympic swimming pools, brimming with naturally radioactive minerals, oil, fracking lubricants and potentially hundreds of other chemicals. Operators once stored the toxic water in open air waste pits and injected it back into the ground. But after injections were linked to an uptick in earthquakes, companies lost a major storage method. And treating the wastewater is not simple. The chemicals and minerals vary from state to state and even well to well — and siphoning them out requires knowing which toxins to look for. While companies report most of the chemicals they use in fracking, the amounts and some specifics can be kept hidden as a trade secret, according to Texas oil and gas watchdog Commission Shift. The Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, is already rewriting rules for how wastewater can be used, which could include irrigating farms or filling dry riverbeds. New Mexico also unveiled draft rules for wastewater reuse this year. The proposal would prohibit discharging the liquid into waterways or using it for agriculture, but greenlight pilot projects for industrial uses, such as in data centers or for large-scale air conditioning cooling towers. That too has led to public pushback. Environmentalists and others worry accidental spills could leech down into the ground and contaminate what groundwater is left.
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