Permian under pressure: America’s Biggest Oil Field Is Turning Into a Pressure Cooker - WSJ It's behind a paywall--but you usually get one look for free. If you can't open the link the article discusses the rising pressures at the Texas injection sites. It gives quotes where folks are citing the rising # of problems and the increasing costs. Interestingly, it ends with the observation that something different must be done. Yup. But if we knew what to do differently...we would be. Here is an excerpt: Shale drillers have turned the biggest oil field in the U.S. into a pressure cooker that is literally bursting at the seams. 

Producers in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico extract roughly half of the U.S.’s crude. They also produce copious amounts of toxic, salty water, which they pump back into the ground. Now, some of the reservoirs that collect the fluids are overflowing—and the producers keep injecting more.

It is creating a huge mess.

A buildup in pressure across the region is propelling wastewater up ancient wellbores, birthing geysers that can cost millions of dollars to clean up. Companies are wrestling with drilling hazards that make it more costly to operate and complaining that the marinade is creeping into their oil-and-gas reservoirs. Communities friendly to oil and gas are growing worried about injection.

“It’s one of the many things that keep me up at night,” said Greg Perrin, general manager of the groundwater-conservation district in Reeves County, Texas, where companies are injecting some of the largest volumes of wastewater. 

Swaths of the Permian appear to be on the verge of geological malfunction. Pressure in the injection reservoirs in a prime portion of the basin runs as high as 0.7 pound per square inch per foot, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from researchers at the University of Texas at Austin’s Bureau of Economic Geology.

When pressure exceeds 0.5 pound per square inch per foot, the liquid—if it finds a pathway—can flow to the surface and pose a risk to underground sources of drinking water, Texas regulators have said in industry presentations.

The fracas above ground is raising questions about how the Permian can sustain red-hot production without causing widespread environmental damage that could leave taxpayers on the hook—and complicate the region’s economic plans. The basin is trying to lure data centers with cheap land and energy and has plans to become a hub for burying carbon dioxide captured at industrial plants and sucked out of the air.

“You need to have a stable, locked-down geology that’s going to behave as it’s supposed to,” said Adam Peltz, a director at the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit advocacy group. “Otherwise, you’re going to cause a huge, expensive mess that Texans will pay for for generations.”