Permian Basin
The Permian Basin also known as the most prolific oil and gas field is located in West Texas and Southeast New Mexico; is over 250 miles wide and 300 miles long and has been critical to the ongoing oil, gas, and petrochemical boom in the U.S. Both areas, together, would emit 46.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide; which is close to an entire year of global emission, equivalent to 59 billion tons. It is also considered a great example of environmental racism and injustice and is expected to become the world's largest source of climate pollution by 2030.
As reported by Texas Tribune in 2018, the Permian Basin's "unprecedented drilling boom" has turned West Texas into the world's "extraction colony," creating significant air pollution in the region while "threatening the planet."[1] The area's production of oil and gas has already quadrupled in the past decade and is projected to produce by the year 2050 nearly 40 billion metric tons of C02.
According to the Permian climate bomb; 80 percent of the emissions which account for over 30.6 billion tons of CO2, would come from burning the liquids and gas produced from new wells that were not in production at the end of 2020. The Permian accounts for 40% of the U.S. oil supply with around 5.4 million barrels of oil being produced per day and all came to be as a result of the Obama administration lifting a decades-long ban on exporting crude oil. Most of these are located in the cities of Odessa and Midland which have produced large quantities of methane and VOCs over the years, which contributed to the current climate changes and poor air quality in the area.
During an episode of the Sierra Club's podcast "Breaking the Cycle" [2], Miguel Escoto with Earthworks and The Sunrise Movement El Paso hub; described the main focus of the Permian is to extract oil as opposed to gas, which fluctuates in prices.
”When fracking to extract oil from the ground, operators will come across excess gas. So they have various options as to how to manage those. Option 1: They can ship it to the market so it can be used for pipelines to refine it. Option 2: They can flare the excess gas and Option 3: They vent it. All of these leading to a bunch of emission getting dumped into the atmosphere ”
Environmentalist Sharon Wilson also working with Earthworks; took an infrared video just weeks ago of invisible greenhouse gases billowing out of a vent stack reportedly equipped with the latest environmental equipment.
"The industry isn't trying to stop, they are just moving as fast as they can and trying to make money. When the price of gas goes down, more gas goes into the air"
Formation Historial background
The Permian Basin was named after the Permian Period, which lasted from 299 million to 251 million years ago.[3] However, many researchers estimate this basin was formed by tectonic activity that occurred over 1 billion years ago during the Precambrian Era. During this time, the area of the Permian Basin was covered by shallow water.
Towards the end of the Permian Period, this water started to evaporate and left dry land. The resulting land that formed was very rich in many salts and minerals, such as potassium, sulfur, and limestone.[4] The Permian Basin is not uniform, with deeper zones of sedimentary rock forming the Midland and Delaware Basins and the shallower Central Basin Platform forming a bridge between whose prehistoric reefs were ideal for trapping large oil deposits.[5]
Exports
In 2020, over 20% of U.S. crude oil production was exported, with the vast majority of those exports coming from the Permian. It's expected the Permian oil producers could become the driving force behind the second wave of LNG supply; which was the exact words of the chief executives at Gastech during a conference in Houston. [6]
The Next Decade Chairman and CEO Matt Schatzman said:
”The Permian Basin is going to change the global LNG landscape. Every incremental hydrocarbon produced from this day forward - whether its oil, liquids or gas, needs to be exported”
Management and Regions
The vast majority of the Basin is controlled and managed by 5 companies, among these:
1. Occidental Petroleum: controls around 2.5 million acres of land throughout the Permian Basin.
2. Chevron: controls around 2 million acres.
3. ExxonMobil: controls around 1.7 million acres, including 50 rings.
4. Apache: controls around 1.7 million acres.
5. Concho Reserves: controls around 600,000 acres.
Covering 86,000 miles and 52 counties across southeastern New Mexico and western Texas, the Permian Basin is made up of three subsidiary basins: the Delaware, Midland, and Central Basin Platforms. [7]
The Delaware Basin
Its located on the western section of the Permian and covers a 6.4M acre area, stretching from Eddy county, NM to Pecos count, TX, and covers an area of 13,000 miles. The Delaware is the deepest of the sub-basins with the thickest deposit of rock. Historically, production focused on vertical development and targeted the Wolfcamp and the Abo/Yeso formations in the Northwest Shelf. The introduction of horizontal drilling, however, has revitalized interest in the Wolfcamp and introduced the Bone Springs as the money-making formations.
The Northern end of the basin lies in New Mexico, giving it exposure to federal land which typically carries a lower royalty rate compared to the private leases in Texas and some regions of New Mexico.
The main Delaware Operators include; Occidental, EOG, Concho, Devon, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Cimarex, Diamondback, and Shell.
The Midland Basin
The Midland is located in the eastern part of the Permian and stretches north to south from the southern Lamb and Hale counties to northern Crockett county. It has been the hotspot for vertical drilling since the 1940s, though activity took off in the 1970s. Previously, the Spraberry was the targeted formation but with technological advances, fracking in the area has become more effective in the Wolfcamp.
The main Midland Operators include: Pioneer, Diamondback, Concho, Endeavor, Ovintiv, Chevron, SM Energy,ExxonMobil and Apache.
The Central Basin Platform
The Central Basin sits in the heart of the Permian, between the Delaware and Midland. Primarily vertical wells have been drilled in the CBP related to some of the oldest Permian Basin finds. It is considered a low-risk and high-reward area to drill with low well costs and consistent returns. Operators are now looking to bring more horizontal drilling and other fracking technologies to the area.
Roughly almost half of the barrels (45%) produced to date in the Permian have come from the Central Platform and its top operators include; Riley Exploration, Steward II, Walsh, Ring Energy, and Monadnock Resources.
World's worse polluter
A survey sponsored by the United Nations during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Egypt; denominated the Permian Basin as the World's top polluter. This result was followed by a tracking consortium Climate TRACE which also categorized it as No. 1. Jon Goldstein from the Enviromental Defense Funds said:
"This is the U.S., we should be leading in trying to create the cleanest energy we can. We shouldn't be leading on having the most highly polluting oil and gas basin in work".
The Enviromental Defense Fund has done extensive testing and monitoring of methane pollution in the Permian and has consistently found alarming levels of methane being flared. The Climate TRACE reported around 200 million tons of greenhouse emissions last year and compared it to Russia's oil field Urengoyskoye , the second biggest polluter on Earth. [8]
Sharon Wilson with Earthworks, who is also a certified thermographic and senior field advocate at Earthworks stated:
"It's impossible to ignore the role the Texas Permian Basin has in fueling the climate crisis; until President Biden stops all oil and gas expansion in backyards all over the country, we won't prevent catastrophic climate change or meet our global climate commitment"
Researchers at Earthworks regularly document oil and gas companies in Texas having free rein thanks to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to constantly allow the industry to pollute communities on a huge scale. Using the special cameras that make the invisible methane spewing from oil and gas equipment visible; Sharon Wilson has found and shown evidence that methane is vented widely across the Permian Basin, with little to no consequences.[9]
Sources
- ↑ https://www.texastribune.org/2018/10/11/west-texas-becomes-worlds-extraction-colony-oil-gas-exports-surge/
- ↑ https://www.sierraclub.org/breaking-cycle-podcast/s1e6-abandoned-well-epidemic
- ↑ https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/permian/permian.php
- ↑ https://study.com/academy/lesson/permian-basin-management-history.html?src=ppc_bing_nonbrand&rcntxt=aws&crt=&kwd=SEO-PPC-ALL&kwid=dat-2329040505669481:loc-190&agid=1235851302596746&mt=b&device=c&network=o&_campaign=SeoPPC&msclkid=3c09eb2401a519e7b0a08f2c2c97a84c
- ↑ https://www.enverus.com/permian-basin/
- ↑ https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/podcasts/oil/020923-oil-gas-production-earnings-investment-inflation-americas-profits-upstream
- ↑ https://www.enverus.com/permian-basin/
- ↑ https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/south-texas-el-paso/news/2022/11/16/texas--permian-basin-identified-as-the-world-s-top-polluter#:~:text=into%20the%20environment.-,Climate%20TRACE%20reports%20the%20Permian%20Basin%20churned%20out%20more%20than,and%20gas%20field%20in%20Russia.
- ↑ https://earthworks.org/releases/texas-permian-basin-now-ranks-no-1-for-worst-oil-and-gas-polluter-in-the-world/