Operators pump a sea of “produced water” underground for disposal. Intensifying tremors raise fears that the deep toxic waste pits could intermingle with water used for farming and drinking.
At Lake Boehmer, Hawk Dunlap holds a hydrogen sulfide gas monitor, which begins to beep when gas levels grow dangerously high.Although this landscape is dry, a veritable sea lies beneath, contained by hundreds of feet of sediments and caverns. The water is too salty to drink without treatment, but Shifflett said it gives a unique sweetness to the pecans and peppers he has grown alongside hay, wheat and sunflowers on his 2,000 acres.
The Texas Oil and Gas Association declined to comment for this report. Several injection well developers did not respond to queries. Giesbrecht, 43, came to farm Reeves County from Georgia in 2009, lured by cheap land. Soon after, the fracking boom arrived here. Within 10 years, it would make the Permian Basin the second-largest oil producer in the world. A steady torrent of people, companies and heavy machines roared into agricultural communities to drill wells, take the oil and pump the waste back underground.
He said disposal companies injected 121,000 acre-feet of water, or 39.4 billion gallons, beneath Reeves County in 2021, the last year with available data. That’s a column of water with a 1-acre base nearly 23 miles tall, shoved underground. An acre-foot equals about 326,000 gallons, or enough to cover an acre of land in 1 foot of water.
“Injection wells are cemented and monitored with pressure gauges to ensure that they are isolating freshwater,” de Silva said. “Any wells that are known to be leaking must cease operations and repair the well.”, which requires applicants for injection well permits to “demonstrate that fluids will be confined.”
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