AZL General Discussion, page-22942

Reuters reports that pumping all that brine back into the ground is causing problems in places like New Mexico and Texas. Like, earthquakes. AZL should hope Saskatchewan officials don’t notice. For a price, the water can be recycled for agricultural use. The Canadian prairies seem to have enough for that already, though.

“In 2022, the oil and gas industry in New Mexico produced enough toxic fracking wastewater to cover 266,000 acres (107,650 hectares) of land a foot (31 cm) deep. While the state’s drillers reuse over 85% of their produced water in new oil and gas operations, the rest is pumped underground.

With injection wells filling up, however, New Mexico has begun restricting deep-underground disposal, which has triggered earthquakes. The state is now expected to export over 3 million barrels of that water per day by the end of 2024 - a strange dynamic in a water-scarce state.

Neighboring Texas is also dealing with growing problems around wastewater disposal, including an epidemic of exploding orphan wells as subsurface pressure rises, raising worries about a potential crackdown there too.”

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/arid-new-mexico-rural-towns-eye-treated-oil-wastewater-solution-drought-2024-09-11/