This isn’t in direct reference to TPL but I thought was worth sharing. Sourcewater is a startup aimed at connecting buyers and sellers of water and water disposal services. The company’s website is worth a look to get a better perspective on the West Texas water bonanza.
I have no connection to this company. Sharing for context only.
I enjoyed this long form sales pitch from the company. Some excerpts:
Just in the past few years, the average frac has gone from needing about 4 million gallons of water (100,000 barrels) to needing 20 million gallons (500,000 barrels) or more – sometimes much more. And most operators now frac a bunch of wells at the same time for efficiency (called “pad drilling” or “zipper fracs”) so the amount of water they need in the span of just a few days could be millions of barrels, maybe even close to 100 million gallons – in just a few days.
In fact, water is in such high demand that oil and gas operators are buying water anywhere they can get it. For example, Pioneer Natural Resources, one of the top Permian operators, recently made a deal with the local cities of Odessa and Midland to buy and reuse their sewage water for fracking. Many operators are starting to recycle the water that comes out of the ground with the oil and gas they produce, taking that “produced water” and injecting it into the next frac to save on both freshwater needs and disposal costs.
Mineral rights are not usually owned by the person who owns the land. But under Texas law and in some other oil and gas states, surface landowners always own the water. That means a lot of people who were always locked out of oil booms of the past because they didn’t own their mineral rights can finally get in on the action. Any landowner near an active oil or gas formation with water under their land is sitting on a gold mine. Not black gold. Clear gold. Liquid gold.
Sourcewater already has thousands of active users registered on its marketplace with more than 1 billion barrels of water listed for sale and over 100,000 water sources just in Texas. Energy companies and service companies search for water on Sourcewater.com every single day, looking for the water they need for their next frac site. Ready to become a water millionaire? Create a free water listing on Sourcewatertoday.
The Texas Pacific Land Trust Investor 
Thanks….appreciate the information like this you continue to share. Speaks to the growing problem of where to get water for frac activities. And an interesting approach to try and create a marketplace of buyers and sellers of water, with a tollroad revenue model.
Its nice to see TPL decided to do something about the water opportunity and not just cash royalty checks. Given the hype of the sales pitch here suggests there is a bigger need for water than I considered.
Related story below, with reference to a company that seems to be consolidating the water service business. Not public yet, but one on my radar as a pure play in this sector. They have filed a draft registration back in June.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-14/forget-oil-water-is-the-new-ticket-for-pipeline-growth-in-texas
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