This could go into multiple threads...
There’s a new boom in the Permian Basin — wastewater
In the Permian Basin, now the most prolific oil field in the world, hundreds of miles of plastic pipelines snake along dirt roads, drilling pads and the edges of farm fields. But they are not carrying oil. Instead, they’re transporting an equally precious commodity in this arid region straddling the New Mexico-Texas border: water.
...
Without water, there would be no oil and gas boom. Fracking, the most common drilling method in the basin, pumps massive amounts of freshwater — along with sand and chemicals — into shale formations as deep as 10,000 feet, or nearly two miles underground. The fluid cracks open the rock, releasing the oil trapped inside. When the oil gushes to the surface, some of the water and chemicals come up too, along with briny water that occurs naturally in the rock layers — the vestige of an ancient sea.
For every barrel of oil produced in the Permian, about four barrels of this “produced water” come out of the earth along with it. In 2018 alone, New Mexico’s share of the Permian Basin generated 42 billion gallons of oil and gas wastewater, according to the New Mexico Environment Department.
...
Supporters envision a day when treatment technologies are advanced enough to make produced water safe for irrigation — maybe even safe enough to drink from the tap.
But others contend that produced water is too contaminated to ever be anything but waste.
“Even if we could treat produced water to drinking-water standards, why would we?” asked Rebecca Sobel, senior climate and energy campaigner for WildEarth Guardians, a Santa Fe-based environmental group. “Why would the poorest state in the nation invest tremendous amounts of resources into finding a mechanism to turn one of the most toxic substances out there into potable water?”
...
In five years, the Permian is forecast to generate 32 million barrels of produced water per day, up from four million a day currently. By 2030, that number could rise to 38 million barrels daily, analysts say. And it will be increasingly difficult to dispose of the wastewater. Industry analysts say the basin will eventually run out of suitable places to drill disposal wells — another incentive for oil and gas operators to recycle.
At the same time, the constant flow of freshwater needed for fracking is ever harder to come by in this parched region, which lies in the Chihuahuan Desert and receives only about 13 inches of precipitation a year.
...
More than 95% of oil and gas leases issued on federal lands in New Mexico since 2017 were in areas of “extremely high” water stress, a 2019 report by the Center for American Progress found.
https://www.hcn.org/articles/water-theres-a-new-boom-in-the-permian-basin-wastewater