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

[hatrack]

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.

EDIT


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/

[getagrip_already]

1. Well, didnt he sign the leases in the first place?

Either he, or whoever owned the land before him signed the leases allowing oil companies to drill.

They received money for those leases.

The terms were clear.

Now comes the find out phase.

I have no sympathy for those that had financial sex with Satan and now have herpes.

[CrispyQ]

3. There was greed on both sides but only one side really profited.

These kinds of incidents aren't isolated & when this kind of stuff happens all over, it impacts the whole community, the entire area, not just one rancher. Maybe the landowner was greedy but so was the multibillion dollar corporation that can afford to properly clean up their mess that they profited from. I'm sick of socialized risk & privatized profit.

[hatrack]

4. Per the article, there isn't even a record of the well or who owns/owned it.

It may have been there before he bought the land, or before his family moved there.

That's the issue - nobody knows - and the TRC didn't give a shit until the Permian went batshit with fracking.

Now that this is becoming more common, they have to grudgingly act like they're acting.

[getagrip_already]

5. Bs - sorry, everyone knew these wells were there

This was common knowledge. Nobody cared. In fact, they were 100% behind big oil and their right to drill on private land.

They kept electing oil friendly politicians, land commisioners, and county agents.

This was not only community supported, it was community advocated.

It's not just big evil oil. The people were complicit.

Yea Texas.

[CrispyQ]

2. No one is "just a rancher" anymore. Or just a barista, or just a doctor or just an HR Director.

We're all activists now, or at least we should be.

Stories like this demonstrate how we don't have a true capitalistic system (that is supposedly the best system in the world), but rather we have socialized risk & privatized profits & the little guy is the one who gets quashed.

Jim Hightower has dozens of accounts of huge corporations getting multiple cities to bid against each other for their new manufacturing or processing facilities. They promise tons of jobs for all sorts of infrastructure freebies like free land, free traffic lights, lower taxes, the list goes on, but in a few years, the "tons of jobs" often doesn't pan out. Some companies rev up the local economy for a short period, attracting new people to the area, only to pull out a few years later leaving a big empty non-rentable space & an unemployed workforce. But the media never highlights those stories. Or the one above. Too much Musk & AI focus to report things that really impact people.

Corporations are not people & money isn't speech.

https://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-personhood/

https://reclaimdemocracy.org/who-are-citizens-united/