Shale Drillers Turn on Each Other as Toxic Water Leaks Hit Biggest US Oil Field

Re:Shale Drillers Turn on Each Other as Toxic Water Leaks Hi... by billfor on Monday July 21, 2025 @11:21AM (#44636255)

Is it really a lot of water? There are significant variations but I thought, as a broad generalization, an average fracking well uses, in its lifetime, about as much water as an average golf course in two weeks.

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Re:Shale Drillers Turn on Each Other as Toxic Water Leaks Hi... by tokyolights2 on Monday July 21, 2025 @11:35AM (#44636430)

FTA

> pumped so much fluid underground in the Permian Basin that it leaked into a prolific oil-producing layer of rock, making it all but impossible to extract crude, according to an April court filing.

> The Permian produces almost as much oil as Iraq and Kuwait combined. But its wells generate up to five barrels of chemical-laden waste fluid for every barrel of crude, creating a growing disposal challenge.

its a lot of water

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Re:Shale Drillers Turn on Each Other as Toxic Water Leaks Hi... by codingdave on Monday July 21, 2025 @11:37AM (#44636463)

That is not a fair comparison... not that I love the high use of golf courses, either, but at least that use is just water. It flows back into the water cycle, and thereby can be re-used infinitely. But fracking water has been poisoned. It removes the infinite re-use and makes it into toxic waste.

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Re:Shale Drillers Turn on Each Other as Toxic Water Leaks Hi... by ryao on Monday July 21, 2025 @01:25PM (#44637827)

The water cycle involves a natural distillation. Distillation removes pollutants, so the water can be reused.

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Re:Shale Drillers Turn on Each Other as Toxic Water Leaks Hi... by jasonephraim on Monday July 21, 2025 @02:30PM (#44638671)

At least in Colorado, they use "injection wells" to inject the fracking liquids deep below aquifers. This water does not (at least, by design) re-enter the water cycle. It is permanently sequestered in deep geologic formations.

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Re:Shale Drillers Turn on Each Other as Toxic Water Leaks Hi... by moomin on Monday July 21, 2025 @11:36AM (#44636442)

I have no idea if your rule of thumb is accurate but you’re not comparing like with like. The problems being described here are to do with the disposal of contaminated wastewater. Whatever you think of golf courses, dealing with the wastewater is a pretty solved problem.

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Re:Shale Drillers Turn on Each Other as Toxic Water Leaks Hi... by chiffre01 on Monday July 21, 2025 @11:45AM (#44636571)

According to the USGS:

Water use per well can be anywhere from about 1.5 million gallons to about 16 million gallons.

I think a Golf course might use a bit more per year, but this is per well and the state of Texas has 279,615 active oil and gas wells. Not sure of all of them are fracking wells or not.

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Re:Shale Drillers Turn on Each Other as Toxic Water Leaks Hi... by freejazz on Monday July 21, 2025 @12:41PM (#44637269)

> about as much water as an average golf course in two weeks.

That's a lot of water, no?

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Re:Shale Drillers Turn on Each Other as Toxic Water Leaks Hi... by maxglute on Monday July 21, 2025 @02:27PM (#44638645)

Chatgpt napkin math, entire lifetime of US shale water uses is ~2% of annual US agriculture irrigation (300k wells, 5 million gallons per well, 1.5 trillion gallons lifetime)

About 1 year worth of US almond production.

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Re:Shale Drillers Turn on Each Other as Toxic Water Leaks Hi... by conception on Monday July 21, 2025 @07:30PM (#44641550)

1.5 trillion gallons removed from our fresh water reserves and out of the water cycle. Doesn’t seem great!

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