Texas: from shale boom to water revolution

The Salttech systems can be manufactured to process as many gallons of water per day as is needed, according to STW Resources Holding Corp, which has the exclusive license for this technology not only in the US, but also in Canada, Mexico and Central America.

For the oil industry, this is a breakthrough technology that could save it untold sums of money by reclaiming the massive volumes of precious water used in drilling and fracking and also processing produced water that accompanies oil and gas production.

For municipalities and local governments - particularly in Texas during this time of unprecedented drought - it means future water security by accessing new sources that were previously unusable just below the Earth's surface.

For the ecosystem, it means creative conservation.

"With the shortage of fresh water worldwide, our technology can help in many areas to relieve the shortages. We can also assist in any ocean desalination reverse operations to exclude the need to dispose of the concentrated brine reject into local waterways and oceans thus preventing any possible detrimental effects to the highly sensitive balance of the ecosystem. This Salttech DyVaR is a major technological breakthrough since we can now economically process high chloride water into potable water and not have any detrimental effects on our environment," Stanley Weiner, CEO of STW Resources, said in a January 2015 press release.

We've all heard of desalination technology before, but the sticking point - as it always is with new technology - is cost. Desalination has never been economical on a commercial scale before. Until now, the price of desalinated water projects has hovered around $8 a barrel, but the Dutch version comes in at around $1.50-$2.00 per barrel, or approximately $1,100-$1,350 per acre-foot of water.

Additionally, whereas your typical desalination plant returns only about 35% of the water, Saltech technology can return 97%, and this is a key factor in the economics and environmentally positive attributes of the technology.

Mentone was just the small beginning. Another Permian Basin project is planning much bigger things.

In the Capitan Reef Aquifer, in the city of Fort Stockton, Texas, STW is now drilling its first production well and planning to drill several additional wells into this and other brackish aquifers about 2,000-4,500 feet under the surface. The goal is to start selling water in the second quarter of this year.

This is nothing like the fracking revolution and the shale boom. This is a revolution of much greater proportions - and again, it's playing out in Texas.