24 Million Barrels a Day. TCEQ Still Has No Final Produced-Water Discharge Permit.

Texas oil and gas wells make about 24 million barrels of produced water a day, more than a billion gallons. On August 11, TCEQ Executive Director Kelly Keel told the Senate Committee on Natural Resources the agency is reviewing six new applications to discharge that water to surface streams and seven land-application files under Senate Bill 1145. Railroad Commission Chairman Jim Wright said TCEQ has been reviewing under its own EPA-approved rules for nearly three years and that no final permit has been issued.

Watch the hearing (our Senate remux, 5 hours 47 minutes): youtube.com/watch?v=uGQukNY22pc.

Keel also answered a data-center question. TCEQ does not specifically permit data centers and does not keep a central record of them. The water story in the room was the queue, not a new data-center statute.

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What TCEQ put on the record

Keel walked the committee through two programs. Discharge of produced water to surface water is a TPDES permit. Texas took that federal delegation in 2021. She said TCEQ has reissued two produced-water discharge permits that the Railroad Commission and EPA had already issued, and is reviewing six new applications.

Land application is newer. Senate Bill 1145 (89th Legislature) moved TLAP authority from the Railroad Commission to TCEQ. Keel said five existing operations can keep running while their files are processed, and two new applicants who were never under the Railroad Commission have filed. That is seven TLAP applications. Those permits are site-specific. They get an administrative review, a technical review, and two public notices. Contested-case hearings are on the table.

She also said TCEQ is writing the SB 1145 rules while it reads the applications. The first rulemaking drew upwards of 450 comments. A second rulemaking will update the memorandum of understanding with the Railroad Commission.

Hold Keel's "two reissued" next to Wright's "no final permit." They can both be true if Wright means no new TCEQ-originated final discharge permit. The article does not pick a winner. Both sentences are on the tape.

Chairman Wright's three-year line

Wright came back on the produced-water panel after his agency update. He told the committee injection is getting tighter: seismicity, formation pressure, the risk of surface breakouts. Railroad Commission limits on disposal are there to protect people and aquifers. Producers then need somewhere else to put the water.

His finish line: "TCEQ began reviewing applications under its own EPA approved rules nearly three years ago yet to date no final permit has been issued." (00:55:32)

He put oil and gas state revenue at about $27 billion a year. He said current disposal practice is raising production cost and changing whether new wells work at today's prices. He asked for permits that are "safe, reliable, and economical," not a grant program.

On the morning agency panel he had already given the production backdrop: more than 135 million barrels of oil a month, more than 1 trillion cubic feet of gas, flaring under 1 percent, an orphan-well inventory of 12,240, and 1,594 wells plugged by the commission this fiscal year.

The volume

Trace Finley, president of the Texas Independent Produced Water Association, cited the Railroad Commission for the 24 million barrels. He said that is more than a billion gallons a day, enough to fill Lake Travis every year, and roughly double what Lakes Buchanan and Travis together supply to the cities and industries on those lakes. (01:05:29)

Shane Walker, director of the Texas Produced Water Consortium at Texas Tech, narrowed it to the Permian. About 15 to 16 million barrels a day are being injected there now. Treatment of 1 million barrels a day would start to move that number. He put the plant cost at at least $2 billion. The consortium wants third-party sampling on the Pecos if discharges start, and it is still running multi-year crop trials. (02:01:19)

Michael Lozano of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association described a water-to-oil ratio of about 5 to 1 in parts of the basin. Texas oil, on his figures, is about 5.23 million barrels a day. New Mexico is about 2.3 million. The large stream is the water.

Data centers showed up twice

Vice Chair Judith Zaffirini asked Keel how TCEQ is involved in permitting data centers. Keel's answer is the one operators should keep. The agency does not issue a data-center permit. It does not keep a data-center list. It authorizes what happens on the site: power generation (fuel and emissions), wastewater, and construction stormwater. (00:40:46)

Later on the produced-water panel, industry witnesses argued that treated water used for industrial load, including power generation for data centers, should not have to meet the same specs as a discharge to a river or a land-application permit. The point they were making is displacement. Use the treated stream so the project does not pull fresh or groundwater.

That is an argument, not a permit. Nobody on the dais said TCEQ had approved produced water for a named data-center campus.

In the wildfire block, Senator Bryan Hughes asked whether lithium-battery and data-center projects should bring the specialized gear rural departments do not own. A fire-service witness said they should at least pay for the equipment and the training. That is a first-response question. It is not a water permit.

What Commission Shift asked for

Julie Range, policy manager at Commission Shift, told the committee TCEQ's proposed rules do not set protective surface-water standards for many hazardous compounds in produced water and do not set concrete treatment limits. She called the consortium's 2026 pilot report encouraging and not proof the technology runs at commercial scale without a miss. She asked the legislature to pull trade-secret cover off frac chemicals so TCEQ knows what to test for. She also said House Bill 49's liability limit makes a tighter public rule, not a looser one, the safer path.

HB 49, as noticed, is about treatment and beneficial use of fluid oil and gas waste, "including a limitation on liability for that treatment or use." This article does not restyle that limit. Read the enrolled bill before you brief a client on who is off the hook.

Sources

1. Texas Senate Committee on Natural Resources, interim hearing, August 11, 2026. Our remux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGQukNY22pc
2. Hearing notice: https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/schedules/html/C5802026081109001.HTM
3. Witness list: https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/witlistmtg/html/C5802026081109001.HTM
4. Senate archive: https://senate.texas.gov/videoplayer.php?vid=22698

TCEQ figures are Keel's, on the record. The 24 million barrels/day figure is Finley citing the Railroad Commission. Wright's "no final permit" is his sentence, next to Keel's two reissued files.

Not legal advice. Confirm enrolled SB 1145 and HB 49 text before you brief a client on permit authority or liability.