TETRA Technologies, Inc. (TETRA) announced on December 16, 2024, the commercial launch of TETRA Oasis TDS, an end-to-end water treatment and desalination technology for beneficial re-use and mineral extraction applications for oil and gas well produced water.
TETRA also recently completed a commercial pilot project for the desalination of Delaware Basin produced water for a major North America oil and gas operator.
The desalinated water was tested against published Texas Railroad Commission (TRRC) standards for beneficial re-use water at both TETRA's laboratory and an independent third-party laboratory.
Subsequently, the treated water was sent to a third party for Whole Effluent Toxicity (WET) testing where it successfully passed all test parameters. WET testing is a method used to measure the combined toxic effects of all pollutants on aquatic organisms and involves exposing aquatic organisms to treated wastewater samples and observing how the organisms respond.
The tests can be acute or chronic and measure different aspects of the organisms' health. WET testing is a vital component to implementing water quality standards under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System ("NPDES") permits program.
"For several years we have been working to leverage our deep brine chemistry expertise, our US onshore water treatment resources, and our customer network and relationships to address the sizeable industry challenge surrounding treatment of oil and gas produced water for beneficial re-use purposes,” said Brady Murphy, TETRA's president and CEO, in a press release. “By combining our existing expertise in produced water recycling for frac re-use to pre-treat the feed water for two unique membrane technologies, we have developed a high-quality, cost-effective solution.”
“Our first field pilot program successfully treated produced water where we achieved 92% recovery rate of desalinated water with total dissolved solids levels ranging from 40 parts per million ("ppm") to 200 ppm, which are better than the average municipal drinking water standards,” Murphy said in a press release. “In our latest pilot test of more challenging Delaware Basin produced water, we are very pleased to announce that our TETRA Oasis TDS resulted in high-quality desalinated water that not only met or exceeded all customer KPIs but passed all third-party WET testing. Given the importance of WET testing standards for the regulatory agencies, we believe this is an important step for future beneficial re-use project permitting. This is a rapidly evolving market, and the need for cost effective technology to address produced water volumes continues to grow.”
“TETRA see significant opportunity in the space and continue to engage high quality customers to address their water challenges and disposal restrictions due to seismicity events with seven NDA's in place and ongoing negotiations with others to discuss the proprietary details of our TETRA Oasis TDS," Murphy said in a press release.
Despite U.S. land oil and gas well frac and completion activity declining throughout 2024, produced water volumes continue to increase.
Rystad Energy estimates Permian Basin produced water volumes of 8.3 billion barrels in 2024, up 5% from 2023. In Rystad Energy's fourth quarter 2024 Water Management report, they estimate that a 20% reduction in Permian Basin disposal well capacity due to regulatory restrictions would result in up to 4 million barrels of produced water per day as the available market for beneficial re-use. A recent Houston Chronicle article referenced a study that the handling and treating of produced water is a $4 billion annual market opportunity in the Permian Basin, making this one of the fastest growing market opportunities in the oil and gas industry.
