Benoît Morenne and Andrew Mollica Satellite of The Wall Street Journal report data reveals the impact of oil and gas drilling on the Permian Basin’s landscape. They write:
In a desolate stretch of desert spanning West Texas and New Mexico, drillers are pumping more crude than Kuwait. The oil production is so frenzied that huge swaths of land are literally sinking and heaving.
The land has subsided by as much as 11 inches since 2015 in a prime portion of the Permian Basin, as drillers extract huge amounts of oil and water, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of satellite data. In other areas where drillers dispose of wastewater in underground wells, the land has lifted by as much as 5 inches over the same period. […]
Advocacy groups have asked the federal government to review how the state is regulating water injection in the region. The Environmental Protection Agency has said it would review the groups’ petition.
With shrinking options to discard wastewater, crude producers have to get creative. Some are looking for lower-risk formations to inject water into and ways to treat water so it can be reused for agriculture. Whether these efforts will pass regulatory muster or how much they will cost remains unclear.
“There’s just no silver bullet,” Comiskey said.
Read more here.
US Shale Sheltering Oil Price Surges
Myles McCormick and Jamie Smyth of the Financial Times report how Middle East turmoil no longer poses such a threat to the world’s thirstiest petrol consumers.