In West Texas, water is scarce to frack, expensive to recycle, cheap to dispose of wells, and triggers M5 earthquakes.

Permian oil pumping jacks in Eddy County, New Mexico.

AFP via Getty Images

The Permian Basin of western Texas and New Mexico is mostly desert. The desert is called Chihuahuan but it is not a raw desert like the Sahara, but rather a desert due to the rainfall being about 10 inches per year. Scattered deciduous shrubs such as creosote and mesquite and a few large trees, such as the cottonwood found along the streams carrying the water. Water is scarce in the Permian period. But not the oil!

The Permian Basin is the premier basin in the United States for oil and gas production. It produces more than 5.5 million barrels per day (1 million barrels of oil per day), which is a large part of the total US production which is close to 12 million barrels per day. Success there has enabled Texas to remain the top US producer of crude oil, and last year pushed New Mexico into second place.

Water is scarce for fracking.

Hydraulic fracturing is key to success in the Permian Basin as shale technology begins with a horizontal well 1-2 miles long, pumping about 40 separate frac treatments along the length of the well. Total water used is 20 million gallons, which would fill a football field to 40 feet above the grassy area. For use in fracking, fresh water must come from cities, aquifers, or by recycling produced water.

Since a widespread drought struck the southwestern United States some 30 years ago, fresh water is no longer cheap. And if fracking water competes with groundwater pumped by farm owners, this creates a problem.

Expensive to recycle.

Water is produced in a well with oil and gas. It is too salty to use but can be cleaned. How much water is produced? Typical 1 to 5 barrels per barrel of oil. The Permian Basin produces 5 million bbl/d which translates to 5-25 million bbl/d (1 million barrels of water per day). This huge amount of water produced must be somehow disposed of or recycled.

Marcellus shale, queen of shale, has very few disposal wells by ordinance of the state government. The produced water is recycled or can be trucked to Ohio where it is poured into disposal wells.

Recycling of water produced in the Permian period has increased in the past few years. This includes cleaning on site and recycling the dirty water for use in the next fracking job. Or send dirty water for commercial cleaning, as in a desalination plant.

More than 100 small-scale recycling facilities have been in use since 2015, and a few large-scale water recycling plants are planned to be commissioned by 2022.

Although more expensive, cleaning/recycling methods are gaining traction as oil and gas companies feel pressure to fix a problem that caused two M5 (magnitude 5) earthquakes that occurred separately at the end of 2022. That’s not good for the picture. Industry, even if earthquakes cause limited property damage.

Water is cheap to dispose of wells.

In 2022, the combined Midland and Delaware sub-basins in the Permian will produce 7 billion barrels, which is equivalent to 19 million barrels per day. Much of this was injected by disposal wells into deep geological layers. This massive volume of water was much more than what Oklahoma produced in 2015, when that state recorded 890 earthquakes with a magnitude of M>3.

Looking at Culberson County, where most of the recent earthquakes occurred (see Figure 1), injected volumes in 2020 were about 0.7 mb/d.

Fig. 1. Culberson and Gardendale Seismic Response Regions Recorded for M5 Earthquakes of November 16… [+] and December 16, 2022.

USGS

The dumping of water causes M5 earthquakes.

In the Permian Basin, seismicity increased in proportion to the volumes of water injected into disposal wells. The connection is strong, as it was in Oklahoma.

Warnings that the Permian Basin could follow the path of the Oklahoma earthquake, triggering the 5.9 million quake, Oklahoma’s largest on record, surfaced even after regulators recognized the problem and reduced injections into disposal wells. These delays have decreased in the range of 6-12 months.

So what happened in the Permian period? The Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) acted quickly after a 5.4-millionth earthquake struck Culberson County on November 16, 2022 (Fig. 1).

Injection volumes in the Culberson area had to be reduced by about 70% from early 2022 – and that was to be completed by mid-2023. This area has 78 active wells for disposal. 19 of these deep wells are operated by Chevron and Coterra. The new injection limits should be 745,000 bpd in the ten Chevron wells, and 615,000 bpd in the nine Cotera wells.

The clincher from the RRC was how the RRC would react if another M5 earthquake occurred in the area. In the event of another M4.5 or larger earthquake in the Culberson area, deep disposal wells close to the source of the earthquake will be closed for two years. This means finding alternatives to disposing of the produced water: either transferring the water to disposal wells in other areas or cleaning/recycling the produced water on site.

However, this would only be a light slap of the hand, hardly touching the huge profits being made from the Permian Basin.

Another M5 earthquake occurred just a month later.

Another major earthquake, M5.3, occurred just a month later, on December 16, 2022. This appears to follow the Oklahoma pattern, but with an important difference. The second M5 earthquake occurred in a completely different area – about 15 miles west of Midland, Texas (Fig. 1).

The quake was massive — and was felt by people from Amarillo and Abilene in Texas to as far west as Carlsbad, New Mexico, according to the USGS.

To understand this, the RCC identified enhanced seismic activity in certain areas called seismic response zones (Seismic Response Zones). According to RJ DeSilva, Division Director of Communications, Texas Railroad Commission, the goal is to “handle and reduce earthquakes and protect residents and the environment in various parts of West Texas. Each SRA is tailored to the respective regions.”

Northern Culberson-Reeves was where the first M5 earthquake occurred on November 16, 2022.

The second M5 earthquake occurred near Midland on December 16, 2022, in a separate SRA called Gardendale SRA. All deep injection wells in the Gardendale SRA area have been suspended, DeSilva said.

The simplest explanation for the M5 earthquake is that they superimposed in two separate fault systems in the granite basement. DeSilva says these basement faults extend into the sedimentary section where the deep disposal wells are located. This is how the pressure of the water from the drainage wells falls into the basement faults which are under extreme pressure and are liable to shift and cause earthquakes.

Control of drainage wells in special reserve storage areas.

In general, the RRC in 2019 adopted guidelines for the operation of disposal wells in seismically active areas, which include size and pressure limits and consideration of local geological conditions. The RRC currently follows these guidelines.

Gardendale SRA: Deep disposal wells generally mean below the top of the Hay Formation which is below the Wolfcamp Formation which has the deepest oil producing periods. All deep disposal wells at Gardendale SRA have been suspended.

Northern Culberson-Reeves SRA: Deeper disposal wells generally mean below the base of the Wolfcamp formation, again the deeper producing formation. According to DeSilva, two deep wells in SRA were already suspended in March 2022 following a magnitude 4.5 earthquake.

Also, following the November 16, 2022 earthquake, the general guidance was notably expanded to include the following: “In the event of a future 4.5 million+ km event within the 9 km (approximately 5 miles) boundary set on December 9, 2022, wells deep within the 9 km boundary will be closed.” for 24 months from the date of the event. Therefore, not all wells within the SRA will be suspended, but only wells within a radius of 9 km.

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