MIDLAND COUNTY, TX (KWES) - It's desperately needed and protected in our area.
"If we don't have water, oil and gas shuts down," said Jonna Smoot, Advisory Board Member, Permian Basin Water in Energy Conference, VP Marketing, West Texas National Bank.
It's not a fear of not having water but hundreds of professionals are in Midland to figure out how to save it.
"There's not a lot of water here and unfortunately there are a couple cities but the most important industry is energy production requires a lot of water," said Dr. Bill Price, Dean, College of Business, UTPB.
At Day 2 of the Permian Basin Water and Energy Conference, the topic was re-purposing and recycling water.
"We have industry leaders saying, 'here's what's going on with water, here's how we can best practice it, here's how we'll couple together to use competition to drive us all to be better and to use our resource a little more carefully,'" said Smoot.
Companies have discussed what works for them in an area where water can be hard to come by.
"It can be recycled through an electronic method. They actually run currents through it and that will actually make solids settle out of it. It can be recycled through filters, there's huge plants that will actually filter the water and finally settling ponds," said Price.
They say great minds think alike, having everyone under one roof benefits the industry, especially with a topic like this.
"This is collaboration. This is networking. This is education and this is a community coming together again to drive our most precious asset forward and protect it," said Smoot.
A very precious asset that experts say millions of barrels a day get used.
