Other topics included oil and natural gas production, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion and geothermal energy
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Today elected officials and energy industry leaders from across the state met at the Emerald Beach Hotel for their annual “State of Energy” luncheon.
Panelists discussed everything from oil and natural gas production to innovations in water conservation and renewable energy sources like nuclear and geothermal. There was also lots of talk about the responsibility local industry has to help alleviate the coastal bend’s water crisis.
Texas General Land Office Commissioner Dawn Buckingham was at today’s event and explained how desalination and reusing water when drilling for fossil fuels could become key ways to reduce our water shortage.
“Well I want to first say that I’m very supportive of the desalinization plant,” Buckingham said. “I understand the concerns over the costs but you have to think about what the cost of the water in the future is going to be and infrastructure is just expensive and water is a real issue here. Of course, desalinization is part of what we’re doing with the produced water. It’s a component of it, so they go hand in hand.”
Port of Corpus Christi CEO Kent Britton was also part of today’s panel and said that produced water could reduce the stress on other water sources throughout the state, leading to more water trickling down to us here in the Coastal Bend.
“Produced water is mostly being produced across the oil fields of Texas: the Eagle Ford shale and its in the Permian (Basin), so its not really close to us,” Britton said. “I think its a solution for West Texas and it is very scalable. For every barrel of oil that comes out of the ground there’s roughly four barrels of produced water so you could take the demand off other sources of water and just work that further down the state.”
Other topics discussed included increasing shale production and innovations in renewables, potentially bringing thousands of jobs to the state.
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