By Amanda Leon, founder of OilMoney.io. Houston-raised, came up in the Houston marketing team of Vallourec, and has run Unrth, a brand and growth studio for oil and gas and industrial companies, since 2017, with her boots on client locations in Midland and Odessa. Last reviewed October 20, 2026.
You're in the truck with your thumbs on the phone, typing out where your recycled water comes from for a completions engineer who just asked exactly what the last one did.
Most of the frac water pumped in the Permian in 2025 started out as produced water, the water that comes up with the oil and gas. The numbers and rules behind that answer are public and dated, so write them down once, under your own name, and send the link.
My liberal arts education taught me to think outside the box. If you want to solve a problem in drilling, you don't necessarily want to think only like a drilling engineer, because that problem would have been solved by now. I look at it the way a rocket scientist, a homemaker, or an interior designer would, and bring what works in their world into ours.
Try it on produced water. Explain it so someone outside the oilfield would get it the first time: about seven of every ten barrels pumped down Permian frac jobs in 2025 started out as produced water, and the basin still made far more produced water than the frac jobs could take. Write it at that level once, and the engineer, his water team, and whoever signs can all follow it.
Who Asks the Questions: The Operator's Water Team
The completions engineer isn't the only one asking. Permian Resources' September 2026 posting for a Water Resources Engineer in Midland, reporting to the Water Resource Manager, lists work like this:
- Reconciling run tickets and meter data against water purchase statements
- Tracking costs and budgets
- Working with third-party vendors and regulators
- Forecasting water needs and flowback volumes with operations teams
- Issuing supply forecasts to third parties
- Tracking ROW (right-of-way), permits, and SUAs (surface use agreements)
Most of that list turns into questions for you. Whether your run tickets will match his meter data. How your supply fits his forecast when flowback volumes move. Where your recycled barrels come from, and which rules sit behind them. The engineer asks about the frac side, the water team asks about the money and the paperwork, and the next pad brings the same questions from somebody new.
Some of those answers belong to you alone, like how your ticket process works. Others are public and dated, and those are the ones worth writing down once. For more on that buyer, see selling to oil and gas water management.
The 2025 Numbers: 21 Million Barrels a Day, 70% of Frac Water
UT Austin's Bureau of Economic Geology laid out the Permian water balance on a Water Research Podcast episode page released July 16, 2026, using 2025 values:
- Permian produced water: about 21 million barrels per day in 2025.
- Hydraulic fracturing water demand: 7.9 million barrels per day in 2025.
About 70% of Permian frac water came from produced water in 2025 (UT Bureau of Economic Geology).
Get the direction of that number right, because it is easy to flip. The 70% describes where frac water came from. It says nothing about what share of all produced water went back downhole. The same source makes the gap plain: even if every barrel of frac demand were met with produced water, about 13.2 million barrels per day would remain.
Those few lines are worth posting once, with the source and the date on them. The next time a completions engineer asks, you send a link instead of retyping 21 million barrels a day with your thumbs in the truck. For how to write it so it lands the first time, see how to explain a complex oilfield service so the buyer gets it.
Disposal Limits in the Permian: Pressure, Quakes, and the 2025 RRC Rules
Whatever produced water isn't reused has to go somewhere, so recycling questions come with disposal questions attached.
On the same July 2026 episode page, the Bureau of Economic Geology reports that saltwater disposal has raised pressure in the Delaware Mountain Group by 200 to 400 psi regionally, and by up to 1,000 psi at individual wells. It also reports that Permian earthquake activity peaked in 2022 to 2023, before seismic response areas cut rates, including a nearly two-thirds drop in North Culberson-Reeves since 2023.
The regulator has moved too. On May 16, 2025, the Railroad Commission of Texas issued Permian disposal well guidance, effective June 1, 2025. It doubles the area of review from a quarter mile to a half mile, and it limits surface injection pressure and daily injection volume for new and amended permits.
Give a buyer the rule and the date, and let him connect it to his own wells. None of these sources measures how much those limits changed recycling, so don't tell him they did.
Where Water People Meet
The Produced Water Society's next dates:
- 37th Annual Produced Water Society Conference: February 8 to 11, 2027, at the Houston Marriott in Sugar Land, Texas.
- 11th Annual Permian Basin Conference: August 3 to 5, 2027, at the Bush Convention Center in Midland. The society says it covers disposal capacity, recycling and reuse markets, seismicity, regulatory change, treatment technology, and basin infrastructure investment.
That Midland topic list reads like the questions on this page. If you go, the people you meet may look you up that night, and a profile with your produced water posts on it gives them something to find. Check the society's site before you book, since dates and venues can change.
Write It Down, Then Tell It as a Story
On a water deal, someone in a role like that water resources engineer may weigh in before anyone signs, and your posts can reach him even if he never joins the call. Buyers say they use this kind of material: in the 2025 Edelman and LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report, 56% of target decision-makers said they use thought leadership as part of their vetting process (more in building a personal brand without clashing with your company's).
How you tell it matters as much as what you tell. Three months in with a Permian founder we work with, his technical posts were doing fine and nothing more, so we moved him to stories. He approved a full quarter in the new style and wrote back, "I love the new style. It is much more engaging and informative." I'd tell your 70% post from a pad you supplied, with the number inside the story. Read the full story.
With The Warm Walk-In™, the water answers you text every week go into one story dump a quarter, and we turn them into posts you approve before they go out. For the longer play, read how to build a name in completions sales that outlasts your logo. If your buyers also ask about contract terms, see minimum volume commitment vs acreage dedication.
Where a Pad Visit Beats a Post
When a completions engineer needs a water quality spec for next week's pad, a call and a site visit answer it faster than any post. Make the call and drive out.
Posts are for the questions that repeat: where the frac water comes from, what the 70% does and does not mean, and what the Railroad Commission changed in 2025. Let the posts carry those, so the visit can be about his pad and his water. If getting the first visit is the hard part, start with how to get a meeting with a completions engineer before the trial pad. For more on your role, see frac and completions sales and frac and completions sales in the Permian Basin.
Get Your Bison Walk-Around
Your best water answers deserve a better home than a text thread.
Send us your LinkedIn. We'll send back the Bison Walk-Around: five minutes of plain English on what's costing you callbacks and what we'd build. No call. No invoice. We give first.
Sources and As-Of Dates
- Permian Resources careers: Water Resources Engineer (R-100381), posted September 4, 2026; viewed October 18, 2026. The water resources role and its duties.
- Managing Produced Water in the Texas Permian Basin Will Remain a Long-Term Challenge (UT Bureau of Economic Geology Water Research Podcast), episode page with an article (not a peer-reviewed paper), released July 16, 2026, with 2025 data. Produced water and frac demand volumes, the 70% share of frac water, the 13.2 million barrels left over, disposal pressure, and seismicity.
- RRC Issues Enhanced Guidelines for Permian Basin Disposal Wells, May 16, 2025. Area of review and injection limits, effective June 1, 2025.
- Produced Water Society (official site), viewed October 18, 2026. The 37th annual conference dates and venue.
- Produced Water Society: Midland, Texas 2027 (11th Annual Permian Basin Conference), viewed October 18, 2026. Midland dates, venue, and topics.
- LinkedIn Shares New Report on the Value of Thought Leadership Content (Social Media Today, report chart 1), July 14, 2025. The 56% vetting figure, cross-industry B2B.
- The founder's written feedback to us on the move to stories, held by Unrth. His quote. Details in the full proof story.
The Warm Walk-In™ is an original method created by Amanda Leon and owned by The Valours Creative Innovation LLC.