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| Thu, 13th Oct 2022 17:04:00 |
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Abandoned Texas oil wells are blowing out. The state won’t fix them. |
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Without state or federal funds, farmers, ranchers, and local governments are struggling to fix the environmental damage left from decades of drilling.
Schuyler Wight is a fourth generation rancher who has raised longhorn cattle outside Midland, Texas, for decades. Wight is no geologist, but over the years, he’s had to familiarize himself with what lies underground. Scattered across his sprawling 20,000-acre ranch are more than 100 abandoned oil and gas wells left behind by wildcatters who drilled in random locations for decades looking for oil. Many were unsuccessful, but the drilling opened up layers of porous rock, revealing water, and minerals.
Rather than cap the holes, the wildcatters and their oil companies–now long gone–transferred ownership of unproductive wells to the previous owners of Wight’s ranch to be used as water wells, known as P-13 wells.
Decades later, some of the wells on Wight’s land are leaking contaminated water, hydrogen sulfide and radioactive materials. Occasionally, Wight’s cattle drink water that has bubbled up to the surface and die, representing thousands of dollars in losses for his ranch.
Typically, the Texas Railroad Commission would take responsibility for cleaning up oil and gas wells abandoned by now–defunct drilling companies. But the commission won’t spend a dime on wells like Wight’s. That’s because the commission argues his wells aren’t oil or gas wells because they never successfully produced fossil fuel.
Without state or federal funds to clean up the mess, farmers, ranchers, and small local governments are struggling to fix the major environmental damage left from decades of drilling. Wight has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars–and counting–to clean up just a few of the wells on his property.
“That’s a lot of money when you’ve got to pay it back with cattle,” Wight said.
Across the state, according to the commission’s records, there are nearly 2,000 documented P-13 wells. Not all of them have started to leak as on Wight’s ranch, but it’s impossible to know the full scale of the problem. “The RRC does not maintain a cost estimate to plug abandoned water wells as it is the responsibility of the landowner to complete those pluggings,” the agency’s spokesperson Andrew Keese said in an email.
In Pecos County, the Middle Pecos Groundwater Conservation District has repeatedly asked the Railroad Commission to add 40 wells to the agency’s statewide list of 8,000 abandoned wells marked for cleanup. The small local agency doesn’t have the funds, staff or resources it needs to plug the abandoned wells that are now polluting groundwater in the region, said Ty Edwards, the district’s manager. Many of the wells are on remote properties, owned by absentee landowners, environmental advocates say. The most infamous of these wells, Sloan Blair #1, has been spewing so much briny water that it’s formed a body of water nicknamed Lake Boehmer in the middle of the West Texas desert.
The Railroad Commission contends that only two of the 40 wells that the groundwater conservation district identified were oil and gas wells under the agency’s jurisdiction, and it plugged those wells.
According to an analysis commissioned by the groundwater district, the well was originally drilled into the San Andres formation as an oil test well and then was abandoned. Now, underground pressure is causing the salty water to spew to the surface, bringing with it contaminants such as benzene and xylene, both carcinogens. The analysis found both compounds were at unsafe levels. The well is also leaking hydrogen sulfide gas at potentially lethal levels for humans, and heat-trapping gasses including methane and carbon dioxide. To survey the site, researchers have to wear hazmat suits.
“The problem is that when they drilled into this formation, there are several [layers] with no well integrity–you’re picking up different constituents that are causing the water quality to go very, very bad,” Edwards said. “The water quality in the area is drastically degrading over time,” becoming undrinkable and unusable. “It’s known that you can’t get any good water in the area–most people get on the county water line that comes from 20 or 30 miles away. It’s making some areas uninhabitable.”
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