KARNES COUNTY – Polk Operating, LLC, (“Polk”) an oilfield waste management company headquartered in North Texas, broke ground on its permitted Polk Karnes R3 Facility in Karnes County, Texas on Wednesday, Feb. 13. This commercial stationary recycling facility in the heart of the Eagle Ford Shale Play will remediate oil-based drilling fluid and cuttings into a road base for commercial use, with no waste material. This will be Polk’s second oilfield waste recycling location, as the company currently operates a similar facility in Jefferson County, Oklahoma.

Polk said that its state of the art 200-acre site will also include a full-service saltwater disposal facility that received its permit in January from the Railroad Commission of Texas. Once completed, the Polk Karnes R3 Facility will provide remediation and beneficial reuse of oil-based cuttings, saltwater handling and injection, as well as the recycling of produced and frac flow back water prior to injection utilizing Polk’s patent-pending Hydro-Cat™ technology. The facility will be in an optimal position to service and reduce the carbon footprint of more than 140 rigs in Karnes and surrounding counties, reducing the need to haul oil-based drill cuttings roughly 100 miles south or east for disposal.

“What differentiates Polk is its ability to cost-effectively dispose of and recycle oil-based drilling fluid and cuttings,” said Polk Managing Member Mickey Polk. “It is our intent, with the county’s approval, to gift the recycled road base to the county for the improvement of the county’s 400 plus miles of caliche and dirt roads,” he added.

The company has a successful track record of recycling drill cuttings into a road base utilizing a proprietary method that Polk has developed and refined in Oklahoma since 2010. The Polk Karnes R3 Facility is expected to be open in the second quarter of this year.