Heated: Wastewater - The oil industry’s achilles heel

The Permian Basin which sits under West Texas and southeastern New Mexico and produces about half of all American oil, is a vast flat landscape of endless pumpjacks and burning flares that has been compared to Mordor. It is currently on track to become the single biggest source of climate pollution on Earth. But oil producers in the Permian are running into a serious problem: They are running out of space to dispose of their toxic, often radioactive wastewater, often called “produced water,” which comes out of the ground at about four times the rate of every barrel of oil - nearly a billion gallons of this wastewater every day. In addition to being as much as 10 times saltier than the ocean, this wastewater often contains organic carcinogens like benzene; naturally-occurring poisons like arsenic and cadmium; radioactive isotopes like radium; as well as new human-made poisons like PFAS, or forever chemicals. Companies are lobbying to dump the waste water into Texas rivers. More INFO.