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California Farms Are Using Drilling Wastewater to Grow Crops

posted by janrinok on Sunday July 12 2015, @12:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the every-bit-helps dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

California's epic drought is pushing Big Oil to solve a problem it's struggled with for decades: what to do with the billions of gallons of wastewater that gush out of wells every year.

Golden State drillers have pumped much of that liquid back underground into disposal wells. Now, amid a four-year dry spell, more companies are looking to recycle their water or sell it to parched farms as the industry tries to get ahead of environmental lawsuits and new regulations.

The trend could have implications for oil patches across the country. With fracking boosting the industry's thirst for water, companies have run into conflicts from Texas to Colorado to Pennsylvania. California could be an incubator for conservation efforts that have so far failed to gain traction elsewhere in the U.S.

If you were thinking California's drought might accelerate desalinization technology, you're wrong. It's actually helping the oil and natural gas industries make more money.

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  • (Score: 1) by TheMessageNotTheMessenger on Sunday July 12 2015, @04:09PM

    by TheMessageNotTheMessenger (5664) on Sunday July 12 2015, @04:09PM (#208162)

    You can sell the salt. Harvesting salt from salt water is a thing. It usually involves using the sun to evaporate the water, the salt stays behind.

    "Mediterranean Seasalt" is a thing I can get in my supermarket. Instead of a powder, this is sold in the form of large crystals in a grinder. It's really no different than any other salt, so it's a bit of a marketing thing.

    Wouldn't surprise me if some of that "Mediterranean Seasalt" is actually regular mined salt. It sounds nicer like this. But it's just ye olde NaCl.

    --
    Hello! :D

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @01:07AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @01:07AM (#208281)

    So, you reckon selling the remaining salt - all of it - wouldn't cause any problems? It wouldn't, for example, depress the prices of salt, causing businesses to close? Employment would fall, too. You see no problem with that?

    Because you think you've found a solution (ha!) to the problem doesn't mean you're not creating others.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @03:45AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @03:45AM (#208329)

      It wouldn't, for example, depress the prices of salt, causing businesses to close? Employment would fall, too. You see no problem with that?

      That's called "the market". Why would the market doing what it always does ever be a problem?