The booming oil production in Texas is leaving behind thousands of oil wells that are no longer active.
The wells no longer in production are being plugged by their respective operators, but if an inactive well hasn’t had a solvent operator on record for a year, the plugging duty falls on the shoulders of the state’s oil and gas regulator, the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC).
But the RRC is doing a sloppy job in plugging the orphan wells, and some of these continue to leak or blow out, spewing toxic chemicals and gases, ranchers in West Texas and well control specialists say.
The Comission has about 8,500 on a list of inactive or unplugged wells. There could be thousands more undocumented such wells littered across Texas after more than a century of oil drilling and production, according to experts.
Some of the plugged wells have become zombie wells. They have sprang back to some sort of life, leaking salty wastewater containing toxic substances. Other wells blow out, possibly as a result of the recent fracking boom, in which drillers inject the so-called produced water underground in disposal wells, changing the underground layers where oil wells have been drilled over the past century.
Ranchers in West Texas have been seeing a trend in growing numbers of abandoned wells exploding and gushing salty water. Some landowners, as well as experts, are criticizing RRC for a far-from-perfect record on well plugging.
The Texas regulator is doing what it can, but undocumented wells complicate their efforts. In such cases, RRC doesn’t have jurisdiction over wells that have never been documented as oil wells, the Commission told The Texas Tribune early this year.
Well control specialist Hawk Dunlap, who has decades of experience in the world’s top oil-producing countries, has been a vocal critic of RRC’s plugging efforts. Dunlap says the Commission has done a poor job in plugging, leaving “zombie” wells that threaten to start spilling wastewater with toxic substances.
He wants to change that and is running for Commissioner on the three-seat RRC in elections to be held in the autumn.
His campaign and motivation to become a Commissioner are “driven by a dedication to protecting our environment and communities,” his campaign website says.
Dunlap “understands the urgent need for reform, particularly in plugging wells effectively to prevent groundwater contamination, blowouts, and “zombie wells” that can reemerge after failed plugs.”
Dunlap, who has inspected hundreds of plugged wells in Texas since 2022, has found that many of them have not been properly plugged.
“This is the work of the three stooges of the Railroad Commission,” he told Reuters’s reporters in West Texas.
Dunlap told Reuters that his campaign is “about seeing that things are done right and not letting oil companies run over the citizens of Texas just because they produce oil and gas and pay some royalties.”
Apart from state funds, RRC has been granted federal funds under the Infrastructure, Investment, and Jobs Act to assist it in the well-plugging program.
Last month, Texas Railroad Commissioner Jim Wright flagged issues with the federal program in testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources.
The Department of the Interior (DOI) Formula Grant program has methane monitoring requirements, which raise the cost of plugging wells by 10%, Wright said.
“Unfortunately, due to the increased costs and the extensive delays and reviews required by the DOI, the number of orphan wells plugged with federal funds through the first five months of the Formula Grant is 60% lower than what was plugged during the first five months under the Initial Grant,” the Commissioner said.
Increased injection of produced water in underground disposal wells may have also exacerbated the problem and awoken zombie wells in West Texas.
RRC opened a probe last month after a series of earthquakes hit the Permian basin.
“It is this perfect storm in the Permian with all this produced water, earthquakes and orphan wells,” Adam Peltz, director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s Energy Program, told Reuters.