Jennaro: Texas Railroad Commission takes necessary stand on oilfield earthquakes

On the cloudy afternoon of Dec. 15, I was in Houston speaking to a colleague on the phone in Midland when a 3.6 magnitude quake shook the oil-rich town. She nearly fell out of her chair, quickly ending the conversation by saying, “I need to check on my children.” It was one of 15,000 earthquakes to hit West Texas’ Permian Basin in the last five years.

Jennaro
Jennaro

The Permian Basin has been a prolific economic engine for Texas and is a vital energy resource for the United States. The basin is the center of the U.S. shale revolution, employs half of all U.S. drilling rigs, produces almost 5 million barrels of oil per day and boasts the largest oil-shale reserve base on the planet. Its resource is deep and geographically vast, with one of the thickest hydrocarbon structures in the world spanning 300 miles from Big Lake, Texas to Carlsbad, New Mexico.

But the Permian Basin has a problem: a 15 million barrel per day problem. Approximately three barrels of brackish water are produced for every barrel of oil, and this wastewater needs to go somewhere. Much of this water is disposed of into thousands of deep injection wells known as saltwater disposals. Many of these injection wells were drilled on or close to ancient but historically inactive fault lines. Scientists have warned for years that deep water injection can pressurize these faults and induce quakes. With 5,200 West Texas quakes in 2021, double what was observed in 2020, this is no longer a theoretical discussion. Earthquakes are now impacting West Texas cities spanning from Pecos to Big Spring on a weekly basis. The Texas Railroad Commission (“RRC”), the principal regulatory body for Texas oil and gas, has responded in a pragmatic and data-driven way by severely limiting wastewater disposal in parts of six counties, impacting how millions of barrels of oil are produced daily.

The RRC is a storied Texas institution established in 1891 to first regulate railroads and then the nascent oil industry. For 130 years the RRC has had the central role in safeguarding the state’s place as the unofficial capitol of American energy, and in protecting its environment and its communities. Earthquake data employed by the RRC is gathered by the TexNet Seismic Monitoring Program. In 2015 the Texas legislature under Gov. Abbott passed a law that established TexNet to scientifically determine the causes of increased seismic activity via continual seismic data collection and analysis

Over the last two years the RRC regulated and encouraged the development of multi-customer produced water recycling and storage facilities. These facilities repurpose produced water for use in the completion process and thus reduce dependence on deep well injection into basement formations where fault lines exist. The RRC also developed stringent commercial recycling permitting standards know as Division 6-H11 (“Div.6-H11”). These rules are essential because they protect west Texas’ aquifers, waterways, and ecosystems from produced water contamination. Produced water typically contains oil, residual chemicals from the fracking process, and suspended solids, and when stored improperly it can create toxic hydrogen sulfide gas.

Over the final months of 2021 the RRC responded more forcefully with first-of-kind Seismic Response Actions that severely limit deep well produced wastewater injection into seismically active areas, particularly around the population centers of Midland-Odessa. These actions encouraged wastewater to be recycled safely or at a minimum redirected away from population centers and seismic clusters.

In the early 2010s operators used freshwater from local aquifers to frack single well developments. Upon completion, the wastewater byproduct was trucked to local disposal wells for injection. In the early days of shale there were few earthquakes so induced seismicity was understandably not a consideration. By the late 2010s, multi-well development techniques materially improved efficiency but they also increased the demand for freshwater for fracking and deep well injectors for the disposal of wastewater.

While additional water infrastructure was built to handle increased industry demands, the water reservoirs supporting the Permian Basin started to signal distress: freshwater aquifers began to decline and injection formations started tremoring. The RRC was quick to act. Today’s water supply chain relies less on freshwater aquifers and more on consuming recycled produced water. Produced water now moves almost exclusively via pipeline, not by truck, to recycling facilities or to disposals further away from population centers or concentrated areas of seismicity.

Make no mistake about it, deep well saltwater disposals are here to stay. With over 2,000 active disposals in Texas, they are an essential tool in managing produced wastewater. However, with data-driven regulation and thoughtful oversight, the RRC has encouraged operators to be better stewards of the Permian Basin by either recycling the produced water when it is possible or moving it to disposals outside of population centers or seismic clusters when it is not.

Jason Jennaro is CEO of Breakwater Energy Partners.

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Jason Jennaro Texas RRC takes necessary stand on oilfield earthquakes