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PECOS, Texas – Welcome to the Permian Basin, six hours west of Dallas.
Compared to the last oil boom in West Texas in 2014, the Permian Basin sank almost four times as much.
Oil and gas companies have turned this dusty, desert landscape into a heavy industrial area. The small, once sleepy cities are exploding. The pace is so frenetic that I want to know if Texas has the infrastructure and resources to continue in this way?
Thousands of heavy trucks heading towards the oil fields around Orla, TX.
Chance Horner
LEAVE THE PECOS
It's 5:30 in Pecos, Texas, and I meet Jesse Lane. He has been working for two years in the West Texas oilfield as operations manager for Nimble Crane.
"Everything that needs to be moved in the Permian Basin needs to be moved," he tells me.
"What is a lot of things here?" I ask.
"All," he says.
Most of the guys here work 21 days with seven days off. It is customary to set a work week of 100 hours. Workers live in trailer parks or portable motels called "labor camps".
Jesse said I would not believe what was happening if I did not see it myself. So I came. We began our visit by checking a few gas stations in town where heavy trucks are lined up to get gas.
"So it's 5:45 in the morning and look at the line to get gas. In this little town where nothing should happen, "says Jesse.
We are heading west, from Pecos to Orla, deeper into the oil fields. We turn left onto a highway lined with oversize trucks.
"Turn left into traffic. Bad time of day, "Jesse told me as we waited. "Everyone is right with Jesus? It's the wild west, man, "says Jesse.
When the sun comes up, traffic on the two-lane road is completely stopped. We are half a kilometer from Orla, with a population of 56 inhabitants. There is a stop for four people in the city and hundreds of heavy trucks have to go through it.
Jesse Lane has been working in the oil fields of West Texas for two years. He is the operations in a crane business. He contacted Verify, telling us that we had to see the boom on our own.
Chance Horner
"How long will it take us to get to Orla?" I asked.
"About an hour," he says about the traffic jam of half a kilometer.
"What's the situation with the roads?" I ask.
"The roads are horrible. Everything you see here is heavy. Trucks easily weigh 80,000 pounds, "says Jesse. "Too many trucks that roads are not designed for that," he adds.
"Why did you want us to come here?" I tell Jesse.
"I wanted you to see this mess. I wanted you to see the kilometers of traffic back up. It's miserable. But if you have the pulse, you can win $ 100,000. So, of course, we're here, "Jesse told me.
ROADS
John Speed runs this area for the Texas Department of Transportation.
"The area here in Pecos is full of traffic jams," Speed says. "It's a very small community that has exploded. Nobody was expecting oil here. "
The speed says that innovation in the process of fracturing is the reason why there are so many trucks here.
During the last boom, horizontal drilling was done at about half a mile. Today, with advances in technology, crews can drill beyond two miles.
This requires many more resources essential for fracking – water and sand.
"The amount of material to move is very different from what it was a few years ago," says Speed. "These surfaces are deteriorating at a much faster rate than we would like them to deteriorate."
Repairing roads has a cost. The Permian Basin now uses 10 times more state highway funds than before.
"Is the role of the TxDOT to allow this explosion and expansion to continue?" I asked.
"Yes, it's one of them," says Speed. "We try to keep these roads high, so that they can have a reliable source of this material on the ground. well site when they need it. "
ELECTRICITY
Ruined roads are not Jesse's only problems here. It takes a lot of power to produce oil and gas.
"There is not enough electricity here. We have power outages left and right because of the draw. It's much worse in the summer too. You have power outages. Often it's 100 degrees, but you do not have an air conditioner in the place where you stay, "he says.
ERCOT, the agency that runs the Texas power grid, warns of "significant oil and gas development in far-west Texas …". This is one of the reasons, on the hottest days of the summer, that the system will be more solicited.
To find out more, I went to see Geoff Bailey at Oncor, the company that supplies electricity. We are visiting some of the company's infrastructure in West Texas. According to him, in some places, the demand for energy at Oncor has increased by 400%.
Geoff Bailey of the Oncor Group says demand for electricity in parts of the Permian Basin has increased by 400 percent.
Chance Horner
"Were you ready for an increased demand of 400%?" I asked him.
"From 2014 to 2018, over the past four or five years, Oncor has invested $ 1.6 billion in infrastructure of this type in West Texas," Geoff said.
He says that Oncor spends this money because he is convinced that low oil prices will not be as damaging to the Permian Basin as before.
The price of oil balance is the lowest price before starting to lose money. According to an badysis conducted by Rystad Energy in 2014, the average price of balance was $ 96 per barrel. Today, the breakeven point has dropped to $ 45, which means the Permian Basin can survive at lower prices.
"We are putting this infrastructure in place not only to meet the demand of the next few years, but to meet the demand of the next generation," Geoff said.
WATER
About 50 minutes south is the town of Balmorhea, home to the world's largest spring-fed pool. The pool, 85 years old, is bigger than an acre and is full of fish. From here you can see the Davis Mountains.
The same desert spring water that feeds the pool also fills the reservoir of Lake Balmorhea and supports the population and agriculture through a system of cbads.
JD Newsom, Executive Director of the Big Bend Conservation Alliance, travels the region. He is an advocate for the protection and preservation of the way of life in West Texas.
"Balmorhea is something that people know about in Texas because they came here and they love it," I say.
"It's a real treasure of West Texas," says JD.
"Do you feel like a threat to his future?" I ask.
"It's certainly a concern on our part. The faster the water runs out, the greater the risk of these source systems, "he tells me.
Journalist David Schechter swims in Balmorhea National Park, a huge pool fed by a spring in the middle of the desert.
Chance Horner
A study by Duke University revealed that 11 million gallons of water were needed to dig a well in the Permian Basin and that the water demand for drilling here was 770%.
In terms of water, Texas applies the "rule of capture". Basically, this means that you have the right to pump and use the water of your property.
According to Texas A & M University, "The Texas courts have always ruled that an owner has the right to pump all the water that he can draw under his land, regardless of what is happening. effect of adjacent owners on the wells.
"When the water is there, realistically, it's the first place you go to try to find water, is not it?" I ask JD.
"In order for us to manage water better, we will need to have different policies in place," he says.
"Does not that bother you?" I ask, as JD finishes my sentence.
"Progress and development? Of course, he says.
"The pecos and the surrounding areas are booming. Boom cities. Do you want to prevent this industrialization from coming here? "I ask.
"I do not think that's the solution. And that would be a naive way to look at it. It is not a question of if but when. I do not think that advancing and developing and extracting oil and gas should be just a one way conversation. We need to have a discussion about what is important to us, "he adds.
CONCLUSION
So we saw people ready to work for high wages but a poor quality of life. The roads are bad but are better. Electricity is tight, but more is coming. And the drilling becomes more and more efficient.
Can the infrastructure in Texas maintain this growth? Yes.
But I think we need to keep JD's issues in mind … can we find ways to do all that while keeping the best of Texas for the next generation?
If you want to check something, send me an email: [email protected]
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