Hey Mike.

There are ideas from my college days that have stuck in my head and get triggered every now and then. At the time, questioning what was the use of low quality steam or even hot water downstream of a steam turbine in a power plant pushed efficiency of resource use paradigms.

So you hit on a potential win-win scenario in the arid west with either flared or free natural gas mated with high TDS ground water for purification which is needed for survival out there. Now, this isn't a prospectus, rather it is simply the type of thinking about the long term benefits vs the short term profits that you poked at in an earlier comment on this thread. Where are the dreamers and risk takers, not the blanket play "wildcatters", so they are called?

By the way, the geniuses in CO govt wouldn't let low TDS water, below NSDW standards, be used for livestock water in the semi-arid eastern plains of that state. At the very same time, they passed laws prohibiting the collection of rainwater from rooftops. Oh, did I mention that they consume lots of groundwater up there from depleting aquifers and shallow, limited perched aquifers out east beyond the 4 big aquifers? You just can't fix stupid or crooked or bureaucracies that make the possible impossible.

Keep up the good fight as is Ms. Guerrero to tell folks that there is way more to Drill Baby Drill than cheap gasoline and votes.

Thank you, Robert. Very good stuff. The "extenuating" circumstances of more, more, more hardly makes it to first base in peoples minds these days. I seem to recally Texas Surface Water Quality Standards allowing up to 2000 ppm TDS for live stock.

Mike,

It depends what elements make up the TDS. For example, some early CBM produced water is SW CO was about 1800 ppm sodium bicarbonate or baking soda but it got condemned anyway, even though we're talking about brackish ground water here. High sulfates can be functionally lethal to young animals. My deep bench Ogallala water is high in sulfates so I pack in water for my chicks until they are near laying age. You get the drift here. It takes work, courage and political moxy to make gold from straw.

This thread is long and compelling, much like the one a few years ago involving that neat Swede regarding power issues in N Europe. Honestly the time is right for some of this discussion because our window(s) of opportunity are closing and truth is a relative term nowadays.

Perhaps, as you poke the outsiders and even us with a stick enough you will be incrementally successful in sharing the truths of cheaper gasoline coming with high costs and it damn sure is more immediate and measurable costs than manmade climate change, whether real or imagined.

Thanks CC.

There's about 50 years of thought there with almost daily fine tuning in the school of life.

Even before I got into the industry 44 years ago, I realized that Joe Six Pack knew nothing about the massive amounts of energy that he consumed and his "leaders" in gov't knew even less, so it seemed. The energy shocks of the '70s are long since forgotten with apparently no lessons learned.

I am convinced, that as a species and although we have the handheld access to vast amounts of knowledge, we are getting dumber. Quite literally, thanks to YouTube, TikTok and the like, we are jacks of all trades and masters of none.

It is said that hard times make strong men so let's plow ahead in this stupidity and when the oil is gone us old hands can play dominos or chess by candlelight. The bonds that we will make then will be stronger than the bonds being broken now.

Hard times do make strong men. I was pretty small during the oil shocks, however I remember them. I recall everyone buying small vehicles for awhile after that. Praise be to the yellow Datsun. Then the cars grew again. Cue the 08 shocks and you couldn't give a suburban away, back to small again. Currently average newer car is just as heavy as the 70s. 4 door f150 as commuters common as sin. I suspect they will be worthless again soon, and the slow cycle continues. I think it will pay off to be prepared for the next swing. I think an awful lot of very soft youngsters are about to get toughened up. This whole site( much appreciated Mike) is a very small group of people reading the writing on the wall, and ignoring the popular mantras. I'm guessing there aren't many young soft people around here. Cheers

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/regional-oil-activity-slips-electrification-gains-says-dallas-fed-2024-09-25/

The hard truth is that in order to complete this big oil field there's going to have to be regulation that reduces the environmental risk to a level compatible with human co-existence. That means recycling the produced water, monitoring subterranean pressures and seismic activity proximal to clusters of SWD wells, and complying with Statewide Rule 32 regarding venting and flaring. That's going to raise the breakeven price of oil to about $75/barrel. In the process it's going to allow the glut of NG to work through the system, cut back on road crashes, get back to a sane business model. I imagine this is too Pollyannaish to garner more than a glance by the TRRC, so barring such a 3rd grade answer to the puzzle, I expect to see exactly what Ms. Guerrero presented: a Richter 6+ earthquake along the manmade incipient rift between Midland and Snyder, transecting pipelines, exhuming ancient graveyards of pre-historic wells, probably killing some people, and in the long run costing the state one hell of a lot more than the alternative would have cost. It's not often that you get to watch slow-motion trainwrecks.

The subject of valuable groundwater from an otherwise arid desert used to produce oil, for exports to foreign countries, has NEVER been properly addressed. Nor has the same water coming out causing earthquakes ever been properly addressed. It is a secret that the sector, or its pundits, wish to ignore. Americans stupidly do not care because they do not live out there. People that live out there ALL make money from rendering their home essentially uninhabitable. They need the money and when the party is over, they will move out of the Wasteland to somewhere else, so they think.

I have never in my 73 years seen the level of fucking ignorance that exists today in my country. All anyone cares about is money and all in the false belief that money will solve all their problems. I believe there are people in West Texas smart enough to know what is coming, they simply do not care. They believe the money they make from this shale thing will take them to the promised land.

In two decades are less there will be nothing left of West Texas that is even remotely inhabitable.

Good morning Mike.

Your question couldn't be more vexing and the true answer more existential but I'll give it my 2 cents worth after a lifetime of wondering myself.

Dad said so, so many times that people just don't make sense. Of course, that sets up a posture of superiority and judgement of others but it does not preclude that he or I make sense either. As long as I can remember, folks have done the inexplicable as if they live in a vacuum but they/we do not live in a vacuum. Thus, the senseless burden the sensible in myriad ways.

You remember that JFK said in his inauguration speech "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country". This was a statement; a challenge to Americans to have an external perspective and it is a Christian perspective. It took no time at all for that statement to hit the ashbin of history. Within a few years the Great Society was established by his former vice president and the paradigm shifted to something like demand what your country could do for you; in every way, shape or form. I wonder if folks ever paid attention to that crazy juxtaposition and its ramifications. We went from an impassioned plea to (freely) support our society to a welcoming call to embrace ourselves and our needs first. Tagging along with that is the inherent belief that it is someone else's responsibility to do ...... everything.

So how do we succumb to such thinking, building it into our operating system? Maybe 15+ years ago Glenn Beck interviewed a rabbi who broke down the word amusement. That explanation was burned into my brain and has affected my thinking and view of general ignorance and apathy in profound ways. The "a" in amusement speaks to against or anti. The "muse" speaks to our thinking, reflection, creativity; all the good stuff that God put into man that He did not put into any other living thing. Amusement was and is an intellectual poison.

In the late 19th century and entering the early 20th century, things like professional sports, for example, and mass communication via radio came into being. Along the way, pro sports morphed into school sports, radio expanded into dramas and comedy shows and on and on and on. People went from raising kids, working, worshipping and being immmersed in their community to being distracted by and drawn towards the outside world much of which was pretend life. Time once spent around the dinner table talking about life, parenting, work, saving, helping....was slowly being consummed by funtional nonsense. Over time people didn't have to think so much as they were being informed subtlely and overtly.

I believe it was the UNCF commercials in the day that said that "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" and unfortunately that maxim exceeds the needs of minority communities; it applies to all of us. Now, at a time when more people are waking up to a world beyond their noses and the future that we're living, the onslaught of news and information is overwhelming and amusement is our drug of choice to make it all go away. Amusement has become our goal, so it seems. Think about families where everything is about the kids, the kids and the kids. While appearing loving, such reinforces the belief that life is about them, their wants and wishes and their being entertained; amused. This has gone on in earnest likely since the end of WWII and the fruit is not good. The perspective of external living is almost non existent short of investment or involvement in very focused and divisive issues viewed as if in vacuums themselves.

Mike, this is but a bit of an answer but I believe that the fundamentals are sound. One thing that I can proffer, while sadly, is that with whatever hell on earth is coming, the fundamentals will be the key to survival, families will (necessarily) reset, faith will flourish as the god of government will look more like satan, and the real flavor of life, while mixed with some bile, will return. In case one forgets; satan sold Eve a bill of goods over an appealing piece of fruit all the while with existentially horrifying intentions. Whomever or whatever has been tempting us via amusement with metaphorical and literal fruit for 150 years with the same outcomes.

A vison that I cling to is from "1984" when the rag wearing peasant woman is singing a beautiful song amidst her dystopian surroundings. We, as individuals and, more importantly, as a community and as a society have got to find the song, for what it represents will heal us. In all reality, after our memorized God glorifying hymns, our national anthems were our songs, our glue and represented our collective purpose. How about America The Beautiful to sum up so much of your and our concerns regarding energy, West Texas and responsibility as citizens; just to note the tip of the iceberg.

Have a better day Mike as you muse.

Thank you.

Mike,

It dawned on me the other day that likely your question was rhetorical.