A Houston pipeline company has plans to build a West Texas pipeline carrying wastewater from Lubbock to customers in Texas and New Mexico.
Palisade Pipeline estimates industry freshwater demand in portions of the Permian Basin reached over 33.6 million gallons a day last year.
The Houston-based company sees opportunity in that challenge — ways to provide water to industrial customers, while preserving the groundwater for the people and livestock whose lives depend on it. Palisade’s solution is to build a pipeline system that would deliver wastewater purchased from the city of Lubbock to customers in West Texas and New Mexico according to the Midland Reporter-Telegram.
Presenting at this February’s Permian Basin Water in Energy Conference, Reagan Kneese, executive vice president, operations, said company officials met with a number of supporters.
“They told us, ‘You need to meet with Jal, you need to meet with this agriculture group, this industrial user,” he said in a phone interview. “We realized we weren’t thinking big enough. We were able to diversify our user base” beyond the oil and gas producers expected to be the chief customer base.
Phillip Laughlin, Palisade president, said the company is finalizing commercial agreements as it prepares to begin construction of the pipeline system, which will take the water from Lubbock’s wastewater reservoir and move it west to end users.
“We know where the main trunk lines will go. Our focus is on identifying where the flow will go,” he told the Reporter-Telegram. “We’re identifying which barrels will go here, how many barrels will go there, finalizing that mile to the customer.”
He said the company plans to order the pipeline system materials in early 2021. Construction is expected to take about six months, and water should begin to flow through the system late next year or early 2022, he said.
Source: Midland Reporter-Telegram
