Breakwater Energy Partners finished construction of its 80-acre produced-water-recycling facility, the Big Spring Recycling System (BSRS), in the Texas Permian Basin between Howard and Martin counties with a throughput capacity of more than 250,000 B/D of recycled produced water..
The BSRS is the largest produced water recycling facility in the Permian Basin serving commercial operators, according to the company, with frac water blends of up to 100% recycled water and access to disposal capacity of more than 100,000 B/D.
The facility integrates hundreds of thousands of barrels of produced water into a central point which provides the option to recycle, store, or dispose of water. It has already recycled nearly 5 million bbl of produced water in Q3 with 1.5 million bbl of commercially permitted treated-water-storage capacity, generating almost 10 million data points within its proprietary cloud-based water balancing and data management system.
Commercially viable solutions for handling produced water in the Permian has been a challenge for producers well before the economic downturn of 2020. Breakwater’s facility comes as the water midstream sector is poised to handle the recovering oil production in the Permian.
Breakwater CEO Jason Jennaro added that their collaborative recycling benefits customers from an environmental, social, and corporate governance perspective, and economic perspective, keeping operators from paying for the same water twice: once for completions and a second time for disposal.
"What makes this facility different is not just its size and scale, but rather its business model. Breakwater has adopted a 'recycle first' water midstream model at a time when most of the industry's water is still discarded into saltwater disposals," said Jennaro. "Breakwater has invested heavily in its last mile delivery capability, which affords us the flexibility to transfer high quantities of recycled water directly to customer's wellsites.”