Toxic Leaks, Saltwater Blowouts - The Costs Of Abandoned Oil & Gas Wells Now Fall On TX Ranchers, Farmers

Mounds of dirt towered over Bill Wight, who stared helplessly at the piles that had once been pasture for his cattle. After a few moments, he turned his head and surveyed a vast pool of water that had spilled over his land after an abandoned well exploded in early December. The water that sprang from the forgotten hole drilled searching for oil or water contained so much salt that it scrubbed the life off the land. It decimated the soil.

A rancher who spent a decade tending to the sprawls of this West Texas ranch, Wight was suddenly a stranger in his own land. “Nobody really knows what you’re supposed to do about something like this,” Wight said in January. The massive pool of saltwater on Wight’s ranch is the latest man-made disaster resulting from abandoned oil and water wells across the state. The incident here offers a reminder of the ambitious work that Texas faces mapping and securing thousands of wells left behind by oil and gas companies over a century of drilling across the state.

It also highlights an uneven approach to environmental cleanup by the state’s Railroad Commission, critics say. The commission is tasked with regulating the state’s oil and gas sector. It has millions of dollars to plug orphan wells. However, the three-member elected body has fought with groundwater districts and landowners about who is responsible for plugging certain wells.

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Bill Wight walks on his property, ravaged by rupturing salt water from an abandoned well. Credit: Sarah M. Vasquez/The Texas Tribune

Wight was relieved to see the water gone and the trucking activity dying down as he returned to the quiet life of ranching. There will be pumpjacks, trucks and disposal tanks on his land the way they have for as long as he’s been in the ranch. The oil fields would always be a part of West Texas. But he won’t have to deal with them. Not directly, at least, and he doesn’t intend to. He isn’t an activist or a politician. The thought of being any of the two repels him. He’s just a rancher, he said. Sometimes, the 76-year-old wonders whether there would even be a ranch to leave behind for his family. He’s concerned about the rest of the area, knowing water is still underground trying to find its way out, feeling powerless against its force. For now, he just worries about the soil. “I’ll just have to wait years for the grass to grow back,” he said. “I may not live that long.”

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29022024/abandoned-oil-wells-west-texas-railroad-commission/