A Wyoming company might be able to help New Mexico with its need to produce water for agricultural crops, as outlined last year by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
Grisham announced a memorandum of understanding with New Mexico State University in September to research and develop a produced-water solution, according to the Carlsbad Current Argus. Produced water is usually pumped back underground in injection wells after it is brought to the surface during extraction, but oil and gas producers are looking into ways to treat the water so that it can be reused.
Others want to use that water outside of oil and gas, the newspaper reported.
With the help of Wyoming-based Encore Green Environmental, Wilson Farms in Texas is planning to use solar energy to treat the water in that state. Encore Green Environmental CEO Marvin Nash plans to meet with New Mexico officials about doing the same here.
“Why are we just stepping back and pumping it into the ground?” Nash told the Current Argus. “The agriculture connectivity and the reuse of water is the solution.”
The process entails solar panels being used to heat up the produced water to create steam, which would then turn a turbine and create energy. The newspaper reported this process would be affordable for farmers and would allow them to accrue solar credit and also collect disposal fees from the companies that are supplying the wastewater.
Nash says that Encore Green Environmental wanted to take a different approach to the water issue so that it could help struggling farmers.
“We’re an agriculture company," Nash told the newspaper. "Most people that do this are oil and gas. We take a different position in that produced water is not bad. There are constituents in that water that people are concerned about, but we’re smarter than those problems."
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