In arid New Mexico, rural towns have treated petroleum wastewater as a drought solution, by Reuters

By Valerie Volcovici

JAL, New Mexico (Reuters) – Flying over the desert landscape of southeastern New Mexico in a four-seater helicopter, Stephen Aldridge could count about a dozen man-made lagoons filled with toxic sewage glistening between drilling rigs and pumpjacks .

Although it’s a growing problem of hazardous waste from the region’s booming drilling industry, the mayor of the small town of Jal — located near the Texas border in the heart of American oil country — saw the huge scene as an opportunity: a source of water. in the second-largest oil-producing state, which is suffering from worsening drought.

“Our future will depend on the future of that produced water,” he said.

Aldridge is part of a growing group of New Mexico politicians who want the state to craft regulations that would allow the millions of gallons of so-called produced water that gush daily alongside the prolific oil and gas in the Permian Basin to be treated and used instead of thrown away, and which encourages companies to figure out how to do this cheaply, safely and at scale.

In 2022, New Mexico’s oil and gas industry produced enough toxic fracking wastewater to cover 266,000 acres (107,650 hectares) of land one foot (31 cm) deep. While drillers in the state reuse more than 85 percent of their produced water in new oil and gas operations, the rest is pumped underground.

However, with the filling of injection wells, New Mexico began to restrict storage deep underground, which triggered earthquakes. The state is now expected to export more than 3 million barrels of water per day by the end of 2024 — an odd dynamic in a water-scarce state.

About 10 wastewater treatment firms in New Mexico are taking on the challenge in a state-backed pilot program that has so far spurred projects to grow crops like hemp and cotton and irrigate forage grasses for pastures.

Although completed pilots have shown that the technology works, it is currently too expensive for widespread adoption.

The companies and their supporters also face an uphill political battle. The debate over how that water should be used is one of the most divisive political questions facing New Mexico, with opponents primarily concerned about unintended human health consequences and subsidizing the oil industry’s waste problem.

New Mexico’s Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, introduced legislation late last year that would have created a strategic water reserve from treated produced water. The bill was rejected by state lawmakers, but will be brought up again in the next legislative session in January.

Neighboring Texas is also facing growing problems around wastewater disposal, including an epidemic of orphan wells exploding as underground pressure rises, raising concerns about a potential crackdown there as well. The Permian Basin, spanning Texas and New Mexico, is the largest oil field in the US.

“It’s approaching this tipping point,” said Rob Bruant of energy consultancy B3.

Other states, such as Colorado and California, already use small amounts of treated produced water for agriculture. But the situation in New Mexico is unique because the volumes are overwhelming and the water itself needs much more intensive treatment because it is unusually brackish – three times saltier than the Pacific.

CRYSTAL ACCESSORIES

Aldridge stands out in dusty New Mexico with shoulder-length white hair and a bushy beard, often wearing bright West African tunics.

His helicopter tour in late July was part of a site visit to one of the state’s wastewater treatment pilot projects, run by a company called Aris Water Solutions.

At the Aris project’s mobile field office, Aldridge admired exposed fish tanks filled with clear water that had gone through Aris’ treatment technology and housed about two dozen fish.

Before it is treated, however, the water is dangerous. Workers at the site are required to wear flame-retardant clothing and wear portable monitors to detect the deadly gases.

The untreated water is trucked in by local drillers and held in two large storage tanks before being put through a membrane filter to remove solids and then distilled.

The process yields clear water and leaves behind a highly toxic, rust-colored sludge that is reinjected underground to a registered saltwater disposal site.

The water, Aris says, is free of pollutants or radionuclides and suitable for industrial and agricultural uses. Starting next year, Aris will begin growing non-food crops such as cotton as part of a $10 million grant it won this year from the US Department of Energy.

“We are looking at the concept of desalination of produced water and creating a new water resource for the Permian region, in a similar way to how the water industry has been able to demonstrate that municipal wastewater can be safely treated and used in many purposes to which society might become comfortable. with,” said Lisa Henthorne, chief scientist at Aris.

The main issue for Aris and others is cost. A barrel of treated water from Aris costs over $2 per barrel, many times more than industrial or agricultural water users typically pay. Aris says its goal is to bring costs down to $1 — still a big bill for users.

Massachusetts-based Zwitter, which recently completed a separate water treatment pilot project in New Mexico, said treated water can never be cheap, but could become viable if it becomes 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 disposal cost savings and could be $2 to $3/BW (per barrel of water) in the future,” he said in the final report on his project.

Disposal currently costs cents per barrel, but that could increase as injection sites fill up and more and more waste has to be hauled or transported.

Aris has strategic agreements with Permian oil companies, incl Chevron (NYSE: ), ConocoPhillips (NYSE: ) and ExxonMobil (NYSE: ) to develop and pilot technologies for treating produced water for potential reuse.

Exxon subsidiary XTO has also partnered with Infinity Water Solutions, another water treatment firm running a pilot project in the Permian.

“I can tell you that the H2O molecule has no value until you run out of it,” added Michael Dyson, CEO of Infinity.

Afraid to make a mistake

Avner Vengosh, a professor of environmental quality at Duke University, said unknown safety risks are also a key concern.

Under federal law, U.S. producers are not required to disclose all the chemicals they inject into oil wells during drilling, raising concerns that water treatment and testing is missing some dangerous components.

“There are a lot of technologies that can treat water, but the question is how can we assess all the possible contaminants in produced water? I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I’m saying it has to be done right,” he said.

Infinity’s Dyson agreed that the industry needs to tread carefully.

“We know we’re only going to get one real chance to get this right, and if anything, I think most of us are terrified of getting it wrong,” he said.

The state’s environment department is updating its Produced Water Act of 2019 to strengthen water reuse rules and expand research and development for use outside of the oil and gas sector.

During a week of hearings on the effort in early August, the divisions were stark, with environmental groups and some scientists questioning how safe the final product might be.

Daniel Tso, a former Navajo Nation council member, told Reuters the Navajo had been stung before in New Mexico, when decades of uranium mining on their lands over the past century led to widespread radioactive contamination.

“Now the industry is trying to make it a public issue, and the public needs to really examine the effects,” he said of produced water.

James Kenney, New Mexico’s environment secretary, told Reuters that technological advances over the past five years give him confidence that treated produced water can be safe, but acknowledged New Mexico’s poor situation.

“We need to recognize 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 said.

For Aldridge, however, the more he learns about wastewater treatment technology, the more willing he is to fight for the state to open up more uses for the water.

“Am I 100 percent convinced? No, but I’m taking a step to convince myself and I have to take those steps with them,” he said.

His own rural town of Jal, he said, could become home to the “industries of the future” such as data centers or green hydrogen projects, businesses that need ample water supplies.

Or it could dry up, just like the drilling industry when the Permian runs out of oil and gas.

“I cannot accept the idea that small rural communities like Jal can disappear.”