What is the new produced water treatment plant near Orla, Texas?
Short answer: Texas Pacific Water Resources opened a plant near Orla in Reeves County that can treat 10,000 barrels a day of produced water by freezing the salt out.
What happened?
In August 2026 Texas Pacific Water Resources, part of Texas Pacific Land, opened a produced water treatment plant near Orla, Texas. It can handle 10,000 barrels a day, about 420,000 gallons. The investment was about $50 million.
How does it work?
The plant uses fractional freeze desalination. In simple terms, it freezes the water so clean ice separates from the salt. Water coming in can carry up to 140,000 parts per million of dissolved solids, and the treated water comes out at around 250 parts per million.
How much water gets cleaned?
The target is about 5,000 barrels a day of treated water. The rest goes back to saltwater disposal. The company wants to scale up to more than 100,000 barrels a day across the northern Delaware Basin.
Why does it matter to operators?
The Permian makes about 1 billion gallons of wastewater a day, and disposal space is tight. Treatment is growing, but it does not fix the oil that rides out of your tanks on a vacuum truck.
What can you control at the tank?
Oil floating on top of the water in your tanks still leaves on a vacuum truck, and that costs you money every haul. The Freedom Tool skims that oil off inside the tank, captures richer vapors, and cuts down on vacuum truck trips. It has no moving parts. Contact us to see if it fits your site.
Source: Midland Reporter Telegram, Odessa American, Permian Basin Oil and Gas Magazine and HPPR, August 2026.