Fracking wastewater, injected underground for permanent disposal, traveled 12 miles through geological faults before bursting to the surface through a previously plugged West Texas oil well in 2022, according to a new study from Southern Methodist University.
It’s the first study to draw specific links between wastewater injection and recent blowouts in the Permian Basin, the nation’s top producing oil field, where old oil wells have lately begun to spray salty water.
It raises concerns about the possibility of widespread groundwater contamination in West Texas and increases the urgency for oil producers to find alternative outlets for the millions of gallons of toxic wastewater that come from Permian Basin oil wells every day.
“We established a significant link between wastewater injection and oil well blowouts in the Permian Basin,” wrote the authors of the study, funded in part by NASA and published last month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The finding suggests “a potential for more blowouts in the near future,” it said.
For years, the Texas agency that regulates the oil and gas extraction industry has refrained from putting forth an explanation for the blowout phenomenon, even as a chorus of local landowners alleged that wastewater injections were driving the flows of gassy brine onto the surface of their properties since about 2022.
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