Produced Water, Reimagined: Beneficial Reuse & Mineral Recovery
By | April 14th, 2026
April 14th, 2026
The Challenges of Produced Water
One of the most pressing concerns in the oil and gas industry is what to do with the enormous volumes of produced water, the industry’s largest waste stream.[1] The chart below shows the volumes of produced water from Permian’s Midland and Delaware basins and its end use or destination. Rystad Energy reports that in 2024, 8.7 billion barrels were produced, with 1.6 billion barrels recycled for frac use and 800 million barrels re-injected for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Most of the water, however—6.3 billion barrels—was offloaded in saltwater disposal wells.[2] Those 6.3 billion barrels are enough to twice fill Texas’ Canyon Lake, with almost 18 billion gallons to spare.[3]
Offloading produced water in saltwater disposal (SWD) wells is problematic. Permian’s per-well disposal capacity is rapidly diminishing, and the permitting and reporting for the wells is growing increasingly stringent, which drives up costs for operators.[4]
Another problem with disposal is that SWD injection can cause pressure to build up and spread through the formation and disrupt the development of nearby oil and gas wells. This issue has actually forced a number of operators to install additional casing strings to manage the elevated pressures—yet another factor that raises costs.[5]
One solution is to transport the produced water out of the basin and/or dispose of it in shallower zones. While this might provide some temporary relief, it’s not really sustainable in the long term.
Another solution is recycling produced water for reuse in hydraulic fracturing, which an increasing number of operators are in fact doing. According to Rystad, the top ten Permian oil producers in 2024 sourced an average 60% of their frac-water needs from recycled produced water, almost double the 36% in 2021.[6] That’s a welcome trend, but it’s still not enough.
Even if every operator turned to sourcing 100% of their frac water from recycled produced water, it would not be enough to soak up all the volumes currently bound for disposal. The production of produced water will always outpace completion activity because for any given job the volumes coming out of the formation are always several times the volumes going into the well to fracture the formation. Moreover, when market forces or other circumstances trigger a major decline in completion activity, the surplus of produced water actually grows because it’s not being recycled.
This is not to say we should forgo recycling for frac use, only that we need to expand our toolkit to better manage the volumes of produced water.
The Long-Term Solution
We believe that an excellent way to deal with the overabundance of produced water is through desalination, removing the salts and other constituents to render the water suitable for beneficial reuse in agriculture, irrigation, industry, and ultimately human and livestock consumption. The desalination of produced water in the Permian Basin would not only provide water to an arid, water-scarce region, the process could also enable the extraction of critical minerals.
Desalination is a well-established and fast-growing global industry primarily directed at desalinating seawater for municipal use, driven by freshwater scarcity and population growth. The Middle East and North Africa are the largest markets due to the long-standing scarcity of freshwater in those regions, but desalination is also critical infrastructure in Australia, China, India, Mexico, and the United States.[7] The two main methods of desalination are thermal processes and membrane processes. The latter is the most popular and includes the nanofiltration and reverse osmosis one finds in most homebased filtration systems.[8]
The Challenges of Desalination
While the desalination of seawater is widespread, applying the process to brackish produced water is new and more challenging due to the water’s composition. Table 1 provides a breakdown of some of the constituents found in seawater and Permian water, with two points worth noting. First is the significantly higher total dissolved solids in Permian water—averaging about 120,000 parts per million—compared to seawater averaging 40,000 PPM.
TABLE 1: Sample of Constituents in Seawater and Permian Produced Water.
| CONSTITUENT | IN SEAWATER(PPM)* IN | IN PRODUCED WATER(PPM)** |
|---|---|---|
| Total Dissolved Solids | 34,000–45,000 | 5,000–250,000 |
| Total Suspended Solids | 3–20 | 60–800 |
| Ammonia | Trace | 300–800 |
| Barium | 0.005–0.023† | 0.1–262 |
| Boron | 4–5 | 17–76 |
| Calcium | 440–500 | 60–8,000 |
| Iron (Fe II) | < 0.1 | 0.5–7 |
| Magnesium | 1,140–1,670 | 10–1,900 |
| Strontium | 7–8† | 29–1,400 |
| Sulfate | 2,600–3,000 | 100–1,300 |
| Radionuclides‡ | 0.04–0.16 pCi/L | 1–1,000 pCi/L |
| Total Organic Carbon | 0.2–2, 8–10 (algae blooms) | 2–250 |
| Various Organics | Polysaccharides, Humic Substances, LMW Acids, Neutrals‡‡ | Volatile Organic Compounds, Semi-VOCs, Organic Acids, Polyaromatic Hydrocarbons |
Second are the types of constituents in the water, most notably:
- Heavy Metals, some of which are toxic (while others are key nutrients);
- Radionuclides consisting of the naturally occurring isotopes radium226 and radium-228, which we do not want passing into the human environment because they’re radioactive; and
- Organic Carbons, some of which are harmful to the environment and significantly impact the life and performance of the membrane technology used for desalination.
This compositional complexity is why we cannot simply replicate a coastal seawater desalination facility in the Permian, and why we don’t currently see a host of desalination plants across West Texas and Eastern New Mexico. It’s also why we need a multifaceted technology to desalinate produced water. The solution must also be economical so that it can compete with the cost of SWD disposal, transporting produced water out of the basin, or other solutions like evaporation.
The Cost-Efficient Solution
The most financially viable approach is to combine into a single solution the two primary means of desalination, membrane and thermal processes. As Figure 2 illustrates, the cost of membrane systems is lower when total dissolved solids are low, but trends steeply upward as total dissolved solids increase. By contrast, thermal systems typically have less variable total costs as a function of salinity and are advantageous for treatment of a high level of total dissolved solids. A dual system leverages both processes to maximize efficiency and economics across the entire range of total dissolved solids and is ultimately more cost-effective than thermal-only distillation processes.
Mineral Extraction
To enhance cost efficiency, we can add mineral extraction to the solution. Produced water often contains valuable minerals, such as bromine, cesium, cobalt, gallium, iodine, lithium, magnesium, manganese, nickel, platinum, rubidium, and strontium.[10] Extracted and marketed, these valuable minerals can offset the cost of desalination and thus enhance project economics.
Another reason to extract minerals is to help bolster the security of mineral supply in the United States, which is severely inadequate. The country currently relies on imports for more than half of its critical mineral needs. Of these, the US imports 100% of its cesium, gallium, manganese, rubidium, and strontium. And lithium demand, as we know, will continue to rise significantly given its use in batteries and large-scale energy storage technologies.[11]
The TETRA Solution
In December of 2024, TETRA announced the introduction of the new TETRA Oasis Total Desalination Solution (TDS), a patented end-to-end technology that transforms produced water into two valuable resources—desalinated water for beneficial reuse and critical minerals that can offset operating costs. The engineering of the solution is based on our decades of chemistry expertise in treating produced water for frac reuse and applying that know-how to ensure cost-effective longevity of the desalination membranes and thus a commercially viable solution. We also applied our expertise in extracting minerals as well as formulating water-based brines and recycling those brines for reuse.
TETRA Oasis is an adaptive solution designed to handle produced water of widely varying composition, volume, and end-use specifications. The solution entails pre-treatment, desalination, and post-treatment, with mineral extraction being an extra capability for added value. Coupled with an automated control system, the technology operates intelligently to maximize efficiency and yield desalination of exceptional quality.
Our three-stage system begins with pre-treatment, a crucial step that entails removing various organics, suspended solids, and scale formers. This promotes the longevity of membranes and prepares the water for better desalination.
Second is the desalination process, which is optimized by selecting the most appropriate technology or combination of technologies to achieve peak efficiency. TETRA Oasis can use membrane-based osmotically assisted reverse osmosis (OARO) or thermal-based vacuum membrane distillation (VMD), or a combination of the two, to provide a precise desalination method tailored to the feed water and the customer’s specs.
Third is post-treatment, of which various types can be applied to the desalinated water to remove undesired residual constituents, add minerals, adjust pH, and other techniques depending on the end-use application, including industrial uses and surface-discharge applications that require successful whole effluent toxicity (WET) tests.
TETRA Field Study
In a Permian Basin field trial, TETRA Oasis was used to desalinate produced water with a turbidity of 15 NTU, total dissolved solids of 136,000 parts per million, total organic carbon of 49.7 PPM, and total metals of 2,105 PPM (excluding calcium, magnesium, and sodium). The water also contained 500 PPM of ammonia nitrogen and 55.8 PPM of boron as well as 6.6 picocuries per liter (pCi/L) of the radionuclides radium-228 and radium228.
TETRA Oasis successfully yielded desalinated water with a turbidity less than 0.5 NTU, total dissolved solids of 19 PPM, total organic carbon of 2.47 PPM, and total metals of 0.03 PPM. All the salts and metals were reduced to negligible traces and the ammonia nitrogen to 0.11 PPM, the boron to 0.66 PPM, and the two radium isotopes to 0.82 pCi/L. The level of total dissolved solids (19 PPM) was significantly lower than typical municipal water in the United States containing 300–500 PPM.
TABLE 2: A Sample of the Constituents in Permian Produced Water vs. Water Desalinated Using TETRA Oasis in a 2024 Field Trial.
| CONTENT | RAW PRODUCED WATER | TETRA DESALINATED WATER |
|---|---|---|
| Turbidity | 15 NTU | < 0.5 NTU |
| Total Dissolved Solids | 136,000 PPM | 19.0 PPM |
| Total Organic Carbon | 49.7 PPM | 2.47 PPM |
| Total Metals* | 2,105 PPM | 0.03 PPM |
| Ammonia Nitrogen | 500 PPM | 0.11 PPM |
| Boron | 55.8 PPM | 0.66 PPM |
| Ra-226 & Ra-228 | 6.6 pCi/L | 0.82 pCi/L |
*Excluding calcium, magnesium, and sodium.
The water desalinated by TETRA Oasis also scored 100% in acute and chronic WET testing on two freshwater organisms. The test was developed following the 1972 Clean Water Act and determines the effects of discharged effluent on aquatic organisms. It’s also required for permitting by the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), which is followed in New Mexico and Texas.
Ultimately, the field trial and testing showed that desalinated water from TETRA Oasis would be suitable for beneficial reuse, depending on the application, thus demonstrating the technology is an effective tool in helping to manage the over-abundance of produced water.
Freshwater Scarcity & Produced Water
One-hundred years ago, water scarcity triggered the infamous California water wars between Los Angeles and surrounding farmers, a conflict that forms the crucial backdrop of the 1974 film Chinatown. More recently, in January 2025, severe drought and empty reservoirs enabled wildfires to sweep across LA suburbs, scorching 58,000 acres and killing 29 people.[12] The situation in Texas isn’t as deadly, but it’s not good either. Persistent drought has diminished water supplies vital to agriculture in the Rio Grande Valley, forcing the state’s last sugar mill to close down in February 2024.[13] In West Texas, the population has outgrown infrastructure and thousands of people lack access to clean-running water.
Water scarcity has long been a defining characteristic of the western half of the United States. In 1879, director of the US Geological Survey John Wesley Powell identified the 100TH meridian as the climatic dividing line between the watery East and the arid West. The longitudal line runs from pole to pole and cuts through the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, forming the eastern border of the Texas Panhandle. In 1931, historian Walter Prescott Webb shifted the climatic boundary eastward to the 98TH meridian, a move supported by contemporary research that finds aridity is inching eastward.[14]
The creeping spread of aridity and water shortages across the West, coupled with population growth, will continue to increase the strain on freshwater sources, making an old problem new again. Like the American pioneers of yesteryear, we are again confronting the age-old challenge that defined frontier civilization—water scarcity. This time, however, a perfect solution is at hand: we now have the technology to transform the produced-water waste stream into valuable resources: desalinated water for beneficial reuse and critical minerals used in scores of applications.
The more immediate challenge is the Gordian knot around water and mineral rights in New Mexico and Texas. We need elected officials and regulators in these states to expedite policies and provide technology companies and operators with clarity and straightforward permitting, so we can unlock the vast potential of the subterranean Permian Sea and slake the thirst of the American Frontier.
Endnotes
[1] A. Gangwar, et al., 2024, “Current Advances in Produced Water Treatment Technologies: A Perspective of Techno-Economic Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment,” Environment, Development and Sustainability, Vol. 27, pp. 15077–15111, 16 February.
[2] Rystad Energy, 2025, “Water Management Services Report – 1Q 2025.”
[3] Canyon Lake, situated between Austin and San Antonio, has a capacity of 378,852 acre-feet, which roughly equals 123.4 billion gallons. 6.2 billion barrels equal 264.6 billion gallons. Double the lake’s capacity (123.4 billion x 2) and that comes to 246.8 billion gallons, then subtract it from the volume offloaded in SWD wells (264.6 billion gallons), and that leaves 17.8 billion gallons to spare.
[4] Railroad Commission of Texas (TRRC), 2023, “Notice to Operators: Disposal Well Monitoring and Reporting Requirements in the Permian Basin,” 19 December.
[5] R. Bruant, 2023, “The Growing Pressures of Produced Water Disposal,” Journal of Petroleum Technology, 14 November.
[6] Rystad Energy, 2025, and 2022, “Water Management Report – 1Q 2022.”
[7] J. Williams, 2022, “Desalination in the 21st Century: A Critical Review of Trends and Debates,” Water Alternatives, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 193–217.
[8] J. Kucera, 2014, Desalination: Water from Water (Scrivener Publishing).
[9] M. Wilf, et al., 2011, The Guidebook to Membrane Desalination Technology: Reverse Osmosis, Nanofiltration, and Hybrid Systems Process, Design, Applications, and Economics (Balaban Publishers); W. Jiang, et al., 2022, “Characterization of Produced Water and Surrounding Surface Water in the Permian Basin, the United States,” Journal of Hazardous Materials, Vol. 430, No. 128409; M. Bernat, et al., 1972, “Barium and Strontium Concentrations in Pacific and Mediterranean Sea Water by Direct Isotope Dilution Mass Spectrometry,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 75–80.
[10] W. Jiang, et al., 2022.
[11] G.W. Lederer and E.A. McCollough, 2018, “Meeting the Mineral Needs of the United States,” Eos, 18 July.
[12] Cal Fire, 2025, “2025 Incident Archive,” State of California (online).
[13] M. Borden, 2025, “In West Odessa, Locals Are Searching for Ways to Expand Access to Running Water,” Texas Standard, 19 March (online); J. Tomascik, 2024, “Texas’ Only Sugar Mill to Close Permanently,” Texas Farm Bureau, 22 February (online).
[14] J.W. Powell, 1879, Lands of the Arid Region of the United States, 2nd Edition (US Government Printing Office); J.W. Powell, 1890, “Institutions for the Arid Lands,” The Century Magazine, May, pp. 111-116; W.P. Webb, 1931, The Great Plains (Ginn); H. Leifert, 2018, “Dividing Line: The Past, Present and Future of the 100th Meridian,” Earth Magazine, 9 January.
