The Permian Basin area is the home of the biggest producing oilfield in the U.S. now making half of the nation’s oil, over 6 million barrels per day, and is now second only to the prolific Marcellus Shale in gas production. One issue that is a cause for concern is wastewater disposal and produced water management in general. The multiple Permian Basin reservoir zones produce about 5 times more water than oil, about 8.7 billion barrels, or 365 billion gallons (about 1 billion gallons per day) in 2024. Only about 20-30% of this water is recycled for future hydraulic fracturing jobs, with the rest being injected into disposal wells. In other places, like the Appalachian Basin, the produced water is reused at a much higher rate. The reason is that the Appalachian wells don’t produce as much water. That includes the oil-rich areas of the Utica as well.
There are two main issues happening currently with wastewater disposal wells. One is that deeper disposal wells can hydraulically connect to basement faults, causing them to slip and producing small earthquakes, i.e., induced seismicity. The remedy for this is to either shut the wells down or reduce the injection pressure and volumes being injected. When this happens, more wastewater is injected into shallower disposal wells. A growing problem with injection into shallower disposal wells is surface leaks of produced water through old wells. That is the second problem.
The wastewater is saturated with minerals and salt and is difficult to desalinate with typical membrane-based reverse osmosis technology. New desalination technologies are being explored but there are drawbacks. Thermal desalination is effective but the high energy inputs to heat it and then cool it make it prohibitively expensive for operators. Another alternative being explored is partial desalination followed by agricultural use on certain non-food crops. However, this is environmentally questionable, regulations do not yet approve it, and there is significant resistance. While water disposal costs continue to increase, they are still far less than desalination costs.
Mark Patton of World Oil recently reported on Permian water disposal issues after attending the 35th annual Produced Water Society Conference. He noted a new group in the society – the Water Positive Think Tank. The idea of water positivity is to reduce water consumption and replace any water consumed. This involves reusing more water, both for fracs and partially treated uses. He refers tom a presentation by Robert Hulz entitled Driving Sustainable Water Management Through Water Positive Initiative and Blue Premiums Reduction Strategies in the Permian Basin. The difference in cost to reuse is compared to the cost of disposal. Reuse options include industrial reuse for things like cooling and agricultural reuse. Another is reuse in waterflooding, or enhanced oil recovery. Patton also considers the trend of data centers to be built in the region to take advantage of cheap natural gas. Those facilities need water. They also produce CO2, which is also used in enhanced oil recovery. Patton notes:
“The goal with Blue Premium is to reduce it to the point that it has little effect on the price of oil. There are other things to consider here like tax credits, grants and water markets, where people have a water deficit and will pay a premium for water. All of these things can reduce the Blue Premium.”
He also mentions the idea of water offsets, which in theory would work just like carbon offsets. Companies could buy the produced water, presumably either raw or partially treated, as water offsets, to offset their water consumption in order to become water positive. He notes that many Fortune 500 companies are considering water positivity as a desirable sustainability metric.
Induced
Seismicity
The Permian basin has a history of induced seismicity but the rates of it increased drastically since drilling and wastewater disposal have increased dramatically. In 2017 the Texas Seismological Network began to be deployed. A 2021 paper in the American Geophysical Union journal JGR Solid Earth studied induced seismicity near the city of Pecos, Texas before the seismological network was in place. They noted:
“…the
vast majority of seismicity near Pecos, Texas, since 2000 is likely induced by
an increase of water disposal at wells injecting at depths greater than 1.5 km.”
A December 2024 paper in the AAPG
Bulletin characterizes the induced seismicity issue in the Permian Basin. The abstract is given below, noting that there is some but much less induced seismicity in shallower disposal zones and that mitigation by reducing injection rates and presumably traffic light systems have mitigated the problem to a certain degree as in other basins:
ABSTRACT
“Unconventional hydrocarbon development in the Permian Basin has required disposal of approximately 45 billion bbl of coproduced wastewater since 2009. This injection has altered subsurface stress and caused the widespread development of earthquakes on preexisting faults. Earthquakes have also been triggered by hydraulic fracturing in some areas. The induced earthquakes have caused general concern and regulatory actions that challenge the sustainability of current wastewater disposal practices. Much has been learned about the nature of the induced seismicity in the Permian Basin from academic research and industry collaboration. Many questions persist.
Induced seismicity in the Permian Basin occurs in seven
regions and two general stratigraphic levels and is driven by four processes.
The greatest concern comes from wastewater injection between the productive
shale intervals and basement causing rupture on basement-rooted faults with
local magnitudes as high as ML5.4. Induced seismicity on the most sensitive
faults has occurred as distant as 40 km from deep injection. Wastewater
injection above the productive shales, hydraulic fracturing, and differential depletion
of shale reservoirs have contributed to the seismicity but are associated with
smaller maximum magnitudes (≤ML3.5) to date.
Responding
to the seismicity, petroleum regulators in Texas and New Mexico and operators
of injection wells collaborated to reduce the rate of injection into deep
strata beginning in late 2021, leading to a reduction in the rate of cataloged
earthquakes and indicating that retroactive mitigation works in reducing the
seismic hazard. Research into the causes and mechanisms of induced seismicity
in the Permian Basin has served to underpin mitigation approaches.”
While we know that induced seismicity can be managed, the amount of produced water in some areas like Oklahoma and the Permian of West Texas produces so much water that management of that water can create other problems as well. One is surface leaks.
Wastewater Migration, Pressurization, and the Potential for
Groundwater Contamination
While I have
reported before on a study of wastewater migration in Ohio that showed modest
migration to less than 2000 ft over several years, that study has proven to not
accurately reflect wastewater migration even in Ohio where it was later found
to have migrated as much as 3 or 4 miles through the fractured Devonian Shale
to nearby gas wells. According to a study by SMU reported by the Texas Tribune
in 2022 wastewater from a disposal well 12 miles away caused a blowout in well
that was previously plugged. As in the Ohio case, the water traveled through a
network of geological faults and fractures.
The SMU study on
the Central Basin Platform which separates the Midland and Delaware Basins and
where the producing geological formations are shallower noted:
“The results reveal an over-pressurized wastewater aquifer
producing a surface uplift of 20 cm/yr, likely due to wastewater being injected
tens of kilometers away. Focusing on a January 2022 blowout resulting in 3 cm
subsidence in 2 weeks, our geophysical model suggests aquifer
over-pressurization as the cause. With an excess pressure of over 3 MPa in the
aquifer, several more such blowouts are possible in the near future. This
research highlights the urgent need to better understand the impact of subsurface
fluid injection and calls for prompt action to mitigate the environmental
effects of oil and gas production.”
Aquifer over-pressurization due to wastewater injection was
also documented in Ohio. The difference is that in Ohio there are 228
wastewater injection wells but in Texas, there are as of 2022 according to the
Railroad Commission 13,585 of them. According to EPA geoscientist Dominic
DiGuilio as reported by the Texas Tribune:
“{Groundwater contamination} could happen two ways, DiGiulio
said. If the wastewater enters the inside of an old oil well through corroded
holes in the casing, it can travel up the steel pipe to the surface, spilling
and seeping into the ground. If the wastewater moves up the outside of an old
oil well, through the cement that surrounds the steel pipe, it could already be
flowing into the aquifer.”
“That would be bad news for West Texas, which depends almost
entirely on groundwater for drinking and crop irrigation.”
“Once groundwater contamination happens, it’s too expensive
to remediate,” DiGiulio said. “So when it occurs, that’s basically it. You’ve
ruined that resource.”
Surface Leaks and a Massive Sink Hole Due to Wastewater
Disposal
The SMU study
linked wastewater disposal to old well blowouts. The old wells, even some that
were previously plugged, can have casing leaks and other weak points due to
common things like corrosion. According to the paper, injection at nine
disposal wells began in 2018 at a rate of about 362,000 gallons per day and
doubled to 720,000 gallons per day in late 2019. In late 2020 it doubled again
to 1.5 million gallons. The higher rates led to increased pressure which led to
further migration. Those injection wells were injecting into zones between 3300
ft and 4300 ft in depth into the San Andres and Glorieta Formations. The San
Andres produces oil further north on the Northwest Shelf area. However, the
study also indicated that the pressurized zone was between 1600 and 2300 ft in
depth, suggesting that the water had migrated up the section by as much as 2000
feet. While it is rare for deep subsurface water to migrate up-section the
plausibility of it would depend on the geology. The deepest freshwater groundwater
aquifer in the area is 800-1000 ft so the possibility of contaminating a
groundwater aquifer is a serious concern.
Surface leaks are not an isolated problem
and have been occurring more frequently in recent years due to higher volumes
of injected wastewater. Many ranchers have noted old wells spraying saltwater
with salt accumulating on the ground near the wells after evaporation. Haley
Zaremba of Oilprice.com reported:
“The Railroad Commission, the state’s oil and gas drilling
and plugging regulator, requested an additional $100 million from the
Legislature in late 2024 in an attempt to keep up with the ballooning issue.
“The number and cost of emergency wells has significantly increased over the
last five years,” Railroad Commission deputy executive director Danny Sorrells
wrote to legislators last year. The surprised funding request would increase
the current budget for well plugging by 72%, underscoring the scale and urgency
of what the Houston Chronicle refers to as “the problem simmering beneath the
surface in West Texas.”
A sinkhole around
an old oil well, the Radford Grocery #17, which was drilled in the 1950s, later
converted to a brine disposal well, then plugged in 1977, is growing at an
alarming rate on the Kelton Ranch in West Texas. Now crude oil is coming up
into the bottom of the sinkhole and floating on the water surface. The sinkhole
is roughly 200 feet in diameter and 40 feet deep. The sinkhole has been
growing, even in the last few months. They think that a subsurface formation
washed out leading to the sinkhole. Old well blowouts have occurred in several
counties far apart in the Permian Basin.
According to an article about the sinkhole
in the Daily Mail:
“'It can be fixed. But it's not going to be cheap,' Hawk
Dunlap, who ran for Railroad Commissioner last year as a Libertarian, told The
Texas Tribune.
“In order to fix the issue, another well would have to be
drilled and would cost at least $5 million to do so, he said.
“Despite that, Kelton said he and his family have no idea
what can be done to solve the issue, which has also created a horrible crude
oil smell in the area.”
“He also fears that other factors could come into play if
something isn't done about the growing hole on the property.”
“'Five-Mile Creek runs from near the edge of the draw to the
Pecos River and if we have hard rain there is oil standing on the water that I
assume would wash down the draw,' he explained.”
“The enraged ranch owner said oil wasn't initially present
in the gaping hole, but it quickly appeared, causing more concern.”
References:
Water
and oil do mix. Mark Patton. World Oil. February 2025. Column—Water
Management (Patton)
Abandoned
50-year-old oil well wreaks havoc on remote town. Emma Richter. Daily Mail.
March 18, 2025. Abandoned
50-year-old oil well wreaks havoc on remote town
Diverse
Roster of Projects Keeps Oil And Gas Output On The Rise In The Permian. Danny
Boyd. American Oil & Gas Reporter. February 2025. Diverse
Roster of Projects Keeps Oil And Gas Output On The Rise In The Permian | Cover
Story | Magazine
The
Proliferation of Induced Seismicity in the Permian Basin, Texas. Robert J.
Skoumal and Daniel T. Trugman. JGR Solid Earth. American Geophysical Union. May
20, 2021. The
Proliferation of Induced Seismicity in the Permian Basin, Texas - Skoumal -
2021 - Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth - Wiley Online Library
Knowns,
questions, and implications of induced seismicity in the Permian Basin. Peter
Hennings; Katie M. Smye. AAPG Bulletin (2024) 108 (12): 2201–2214. December
2024. Knowns,
questions, and implications of induced seismicity in the Permian Basin | AAPG
Bulletin | GeoScienceWorld
Ranchers
reported abandoned oil wells spewing wastewater. A new study blames fracking.
Dylan Baddour, Inside
Climate News, and Carlos Nogueras Ramos, The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune. August
7, 2025. Study
links well blowouts to fracking wastewater injection | The Texas Tribune
Investigation
of Oil Well Blowouts Triggered by Wastewater Injection in the Permian Basin,
USA. Vamshi Karanam, Zhong Lu, Jin-Woo Kim. Geophysical research Letters. July
22, 2024. Investigation
of Oil Well Blowouts Triggered by Wastewater Injection in the Permian Basin,
USA - Karanam - 2024 - Geophysical Research Letters - Wiley Online Library
Abandoned
Oil Wells Pose Growing Risks in Permian Basin. Haley Zaremba. OilPrice.com. March
19, 2025. Abandoned
Oil Wells Pose Growing Risks in Permian Basin | OilPrice.com
An
abandoned West Texas oil well has created a 200-foot-wide sinkhole. Martha
Pskowski, Inside Climate News. Texas Tribune. March 18, 2025. An
oil well sinkhole is growing in Texas’ Permian Basin | The Texas Tribune
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