Amid continued drought-like conditions across much of Texas, the state’s oil and gas industry is turning out to be an unlikely leader in the area of water conservation, wrote Christi Craddick, a commissioner at the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC), in a June 26 article. The praise comes just over a year after a study by California-based CERES indicating that nearly 47 percent of wells were in water basins that were under stress from droughts. The fact that the oil and gas industry is helping to solve the water crisis might at first seem counter-intuitive, given the industry’s reliance of water for hydraulic fracturing in shale formations in a number of states across the country. However, those within the industry realize there is much to be gained from using as little water as possible in fracking operations. The amount of water used in oil and gas and mining operations […]