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Texas Railroad commissioner Christi Craddick, Wayne Christian and Jim Wright during an agency hearing in Austin on Nov. 30, 2021. Credit: Dimitri Staszewski for The Texas Tribune
From the article:
Both oil and gas industry leaders and environmental advocates in Texas applauded the commission’s request.
“We have long supported increases in funding for the Commission in this and other areas,” said Ben Sheppard, president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association. “We would support the Legislature going above and beyond the Commission’s request for plugging and remediation funding. The industry generates billions of dollars every year, and it seems appropriate that more of these dollars could be utilized for this important purpose.”
Julie Range, a policy manager for Commission Shift, an oil and gas watchdog group, commended the agency’s request.
“We hope the investigation team will prompt the Railroad Commission to scrutinize their approval process and deny more injection wells that pressurize underground aquifers and cause many of these wells to reach emergency status,” she said.
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