In the dry, dusty plains of West Texas, home to America’s most prolific oil play, the problem isn’t too little water, it’s too much of it.
Just ask Will Hickey, the 31-year-old chief executive officer of Colgate Energy.
Standing on a 26-foot high rig platform in Texas’s Reeves County, Hickey watches as contractors maneuver drilling pipe almost 10,000 feet underground in search of oil. Just a half-mile away, another rig is equally hard at work. But this one, operated by WaterBridge Resources LLC, isn’t seeking oil. It’s making a hole to dispose of the vast amount of water generated from local wells.
”If we don’t have a water solution we can’t produce the well, it’s as simple as that,” Hickey said in an interview. “It used to be that each operator handled water themselves. But the sheer volume of what’s now being produced has created an opportunity for specialized water companies to step in.” (by David Wethe and Kevin Crowley of Bloomberg News, with assistance from Alex Nussbaum, Dallas Morning News)
Listen to Jeff Johnson explain why water is the NEW oil.