One could make a strong argument that New Mexico is peppered with more than 50,000 active water wells that happen to produce oil and gas. Those wells draw more than three barrels of water for each barrel of oil, but it’s not anything you’d want to drink or water your chiles with. That wastewater — also called produced water — is highly saline, chemical-laden and often radioactive.
And as the state’s oil and gas production again rises to some of its highest levels ever, wastewater amounts rise as well. In 2025, New Mexico’s oil and gas producers drew more than 800 million barrels of oil and 2.7 billion barrels of wastewater out of the ground.
That’s a multifaceted problem. The water is poisonous, few people want it, and its disposal creates expensive knock-on effects. Last year, a Dallas Federal Reserve Bank report said that 75% of more than 100 oil executives surveyed expected that by 2031, wastewater disposal problems will throttle oil and gas production in the Permian Basin, the most productive oil and gas field in the country. And all of that water leads to some spectacular accidents.
