In the heart of the West Texas oil patch, a new fracking frenzy is putting a strain on groundwater

As long as big money is involved, these horrible fracking events will continue.



The Texas Observer?Verified account @TexasObserver
12h12 hours ago

In 2010, an estimated 100 million gallons of water were used for fracking in Howard County alone. By 2015, that number had already increased tenfold.

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In the heart of the West Texas oil patch, a new fracking frenzy is putting a strain on groundwater.
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by Christopher Collins @collins_reports

December 11, 2017

Charles Phillips was in his pasture one day last year when he heard the sound. At 85, Phillips doesn’t hear as well as he used to, but he had no problem picking up the unmistakable squeal of a drill boring through rock. That’s odd, he thought. Why would my neighbor be drilling a water well?

He followed the sound west across one of his pastures, where a couple of black Angus cows and quarter horses were grazing, to the neighboring fence line. There, his suspicions were confirmed.

Phillips counted a dozen new water wells being drilled. The ruckus continued for a week and a half until the work crew — five men and three trucks — moved on to drill a dozen wells at another spot about a third of a mile to the southwest.

Like many folks in the parched oil patch north of Big Spring, Phillips had taken notice of the football field-sized pits of water popping up at the edges of cotton fields, as well as the fat, serpentine water lines crisscrossing the county roadways. All signs pointed to the possibility that someone was developing his neighborhood as a water source for the fracking bonanza that has overtaken parts of the Permian Basin. And if business was good, he figured, it would be bad for him, his wife, Loyce, and their neighbors.

“It all happened before we knew what was going on. It was said and done before anybody could do anything about it,” Charles told me when I met him and Loyce at their brown-brick, ’70s-style home one morning this September. Their 19-acre property is one of about 130 homes on ranchettes just north of Big Spring. About 40 miles northeast of Midland, the neighborhood happens to sit where two vast underground caches meet. In the center of Howard County, the Ogallala Aquifer, which underlies parts of eight states, approaches its southernmost limit and the Permian Basin, one of the richest oil fields in the world, finds its northern fringe.

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In 2010, an estimated 100 million gallons of water were used for fracking in Howard County alone. By 2015, that number had already increased tenfold to nearly 1 billion gallons, according to the Texas Water Development Board.

This flurry of frack-related water pumping isn’t limited to Howard County. Last year, 30 billion gallons of water were used for fracking in the Permian Basin. Energy research firm IHS Markit predicts that number will rise to 100 billion gallons by 2020. That’s enough water to fill the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium 128 times. The rush on groundwater is playing out in small towns all across the Permian Basin, where crude abounds but water is scarce. Near Van Horn, in far West Texas, a land baron is planning to pump 5.4 million gallons of water daily for oil production, raising the ire of nearby farmers and environmentalists who worry the pumping will drain the spring-fed Balmorhea State Park. Near Marfa, a water company is preparing to pipe 8 million gallons of water a day for 20 years to oil rigs, which would consume 2 to 3 percent of groundwater resources in the desert-like area.........................................