As speakers at the Produced Water Society’s two-day Permian Basin conference this week discussed the need to expand the beneficial use of treated produced water outside of the oil play, one exhibitor showed how he was going to get there.
It took several years from the time Encore Green Environmental and Midkiff farmer Cody Wilson agreed to test the produced water treated on Wilson’s farm. But at the conference they presented the water technology to use, the NOMAD EXCEL.
“We found the equipment and I found other farmers willing to put their surface interests in the mix,” who want clean water and will start negotiating rates and liability waivers, Wilson said. . “As soon as we plug that in, I feel like there’s 100,000 acres ready.”
By next month, he said the technology would be put into use to recycle produced water and apply the clean water to his non-edible crops.
Jaime Roman with Encore Green said he was happy to have the project in the news again. Finding the technology robust enough to handle water treatment consistently was a start to sparking interest, he said.
“(With) interest in land applications increasing and problems with conventional disposal,” Roman said – as Wilson referred to “seismicity” to define these problems – developing land applications for produced water” is something we have to do, and it’s not as expensive as people think.”
Wilson said expanding the use of treated produced water to the agricultural industry can help producers reduce costs by eliminating the need for new saltwater disposal wells.
“If oil and gas companies partnered with landowners, it would reduce costs,” he said. “We have rights of way and infrastructure.”
He said he was delighted that the technology would soon be put to work.
“This is where it goes from theory to reality,” he said.
Without the technology, he added, “I don’t see our type of agriculture lasting in this part of the world.”
