Every Year, Year After Year

The Permian Basin Shale Oil Phenomena Uses Enough Water For Frac'ing to Drain This Lake Dry. Every Year.

This in Canyon Lake in the Texas Hill Country, halfway between Austin and San Antonio. I watched it being built in the early 1960's. Its 8,230 acres big and at normal water levels it is 134 feet deep. The water is so cold coming out the discharges at the bottom of the lake, down the Guadalupe River, rainbow and brown trout can survive in it.

In 2002 the area received over 30 inches of rain in <30 hours and the earthen spillway around the dam at Canyon Lake cut out, exposing Cretaceous age Glen Rose Reefs and the Upper Trinity limestone. When flood waters receded the ensuing spillway gorge laid forth beautiful secrets that can still be seen today by visiting the new, gorge park.

I've frac'ed wells before, sat Permian Basin frac's, know frac engineers, have buddies working in that stuff and have a good handle on how much fresh to semi-fresh (potable) water is used in the Permian Basin each year to frac over 5,000 wells. It's pretty much all groundwater. From an arid, hot part of Texas that averages 15 inches of rain a year.

Completing over 5,000 HZ wells in the Permian Basin uses close to 126,000,000,000 (billion) gallons of water every year. It's hard to get your head wrapped around that big a number, so try this...

The volume of usable water going IN to the Permian Basin each year for frac'ing purposes equals 386,000 acre feet and would completly DRAIN Canyon Lake (382,000 acre feet) dry as a bone...every year.

Produced water coming OUT of the Permian Basin equals 20.1 MM barrels per day (Enverus, Produced Water Society, Guerrero), or 840,000,000 gallons per day. That produced water would FILL Canyon Lake, to the spill way, every 5 months. And its not the kind of stuff you would want to swim in either.

Thats lots of water going in and lots more water coming out and the Permian tight oil sector is OUT of places to put produced water, best not listen to the lies.

Its a race to the bottom as to which they'll run out of first out there; economic oil, frac source water, or new places to stuff the produced water. And to be clear, this mostly all for the sake of oil and LNG exports to foreign countries.

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I posted this six months ago and I am going with it again because all of Texas is facing severe drought at the moment. If we have above average temperatures and below average rainfall this summer, like they say, like last summer, we are going to be in trouble. All lakes in central and south Texas are running <40% of maximum capacity, including this lake, below, near me. People are flocking into this part of Texas to live by the thousands every day and we are not going to be able to provide water to them.

If you think the situation is any better in arid West Texas and New Mexico, your nuts. If you have fallen for the propaganda about the percentage of produced water from the Permian HZ play being recycled for frac source water, your nuts. The number is no more than 30-35% recycled.

So, they are using groundwater in the Permian to frac with. Some of that was is upwards of 2000 ppm TDS but its still usable to human beings in some form or fashion. The volume of water required for frac'ing is stunning.

97% of all available water for human consumption, livestock use, agriculture and industry, including the oil industry, in West Texas comes from surface water.