water management

The Texas Railroad Commission is revisiting the state’s primary oil and gas waste regulations, which were last updated in 1984, to better align them with modern industry practices and rising demands for stronger environmental protections.

The acquisition will add water infrastructure in both the Midland Basin of west Texas and the Williston in North Dakota.

At SPE’s Permian Basin Energy Conference, operators shared behind-the-scenes details on innovations such as drilling horseshoe wells and trimulfrac completions along with in-basin challenges such as handling produced water.

A comprehensive, digitized water-management application has been designed to streamline and enhance the monitoring and management of water resources used in hydraulic fracturing.

The Permian’s produced-water challenge presents an opportunity for innovation to pave the way toward a more sustainable future for the industry.

Nature-based solutions, such as constructed wetlands, have gained increasing interest over the past decade as a sustainable option for wastewater treatment in the domestic, industrial, and oil and gas sectors, with a growing number of examples now existing throughout the UAE, Oman, and other oil-producing regions.

Permian Basin oil wells produce a lot of water. Much of it is injected into disposal zones above and below the basin’s primary oil- and gas-producing zone. When water is injected into these disposal zones, the pressure increases, mainly because no fluid is concurrently removed. Is this increase in pressure a concern? The data would suggest yes.

A town in the oil industry’s shadow grapples with health fears as the state fails to limit companies’ use of fresh water.

The produced water conundrum in the Permian Basin will be solved by a mix of recycling, disposal, and future breakthroughs in technology currently being studied.

In a 5–4 split, the US Supreme Court temporarily revived a Trump-era rule intended to fast-track big energy projects by limiting the states' power to curtail them under the Clean Water Act.