The growing need to manage water through the full life cycle will force big changes to the produced water industry, Aris Water Solutions CEO Amanda Brock said Feb. 13 at the Produced Water Society conference in Sugar Land.

“What will the produced water company of the future look like? It'll be bigger. There will be consolidation,” she said.

Permian operators are using 21 MMbbl/d of water now, she said, and the water-to-oil ratio is only going up.

“As we see the industry becoming more efficient and going to simul fracs or trimal fracs, the sheer amount of water needed is a logistics challenge,” she said. “So there's this realization that you're going to have to do it differently.”

Companies are preparing for the growth by putting in infrastructure and finding new disposal and recycling solutions. Full-cycle produced water management is the next step—and its complexities will require larger companies.

"It's expensive to treat produced water. It's expensive to put in the infrastructure that is needed. It is complex. You are dealing with regulatory agencies, you are dealing with landowners, you're dealing with operators,” she said. “It is not for the faint-hearted.”

The need for water will keep growing even as rig counts fall, she added. Operators are starting to drill with ever-longer laterals. Making sure there’s enough water to run a frac without stopping is “a big logistics nightmare”—and that’s not even considering disposal.

“We're going to have a disposal shortfall,” she said. “The amount of water being handled boggles traditional water people's minds. You can't defer this or you are going to impact production. So you've got to develop alternatives.”

Big corporations like Chevron and Occidental are responding to the need for infrastructure, Brock said, and others are finding ways to take minerals from the water, deriving value while recycling the water for future use. There’s more work to do.

“As we figure out how to do it, we need end users for the water that are prepared to pay for this new water source that came from what people always just characterized a waste,” she said. “It is not a waste. It is our future. It is our opportunity and it behooves all of us to focus on it and to realize the value inherent in produced water.”

Aris, which went public in 2021, had a breakout year in 2024 with shares almost tripling.

“Finally, this industry got some recognition of what we are doing, how we are doing it, and that we indeed can do what we say we are doing and it's sustainable,” she said.

Comments