Laredo, TX — According to its latest Orphaned Wells report, the Railroad Commission now has 10,029 orphaned wells on its books– the highest number since August 2006.
Orphaned wells are oil and gas wells that have no active operator on file, leaving the state to clean up their inactive and unused wells. As these wells age, they pose significant risks to human health and the environment such as water contamination with benzene, which can cause cancer; leaks of harmful fluid on land, which can harm wildlife, agriculture, and livestock; and emissions of gases like methane, which trap heat in the atmosphere and contribute to global warming.
Our laws have allowed operators to defer plugging their inactive wells indefinitely. The Railroad Commission typically plugs an average of 1,300 orphaned wells each year, which has not kept pace with the annual number of wells that are added to the list.
As more wells are added to the orphaned well backlog, risks to groundwater and soil increase because the wells aren’t being plugged in a timely manner.
Virginia Palacios, Commission Shift executive director, said “I’m still hearing from affected people out in the field that they have a well that’s leaking, an investigator goes to look at it, they say ‘it’s not leaking bad enough, call us when it’s leaking more’… there are examples of these sites becoming worse problems because the Railroad Commission couldn’t get to it fast enough.”
Recent legislation, in the form of SB1150, will require more frequent well testing for any inactive wells more than 15 years old, and increase the number of RRC staff for monitoring and enforcement of inactive wells. Yet components of the law intended to put a 15-year time limit on well plugging extensions have big loopholes. The Railroad Commission will need to tighten those gaps in the rulemaking process to hold operators accountable to plugging their wells within a reasonable timeframe that will prevent water and soil contamination.
“There’s a huge slate of solutions that are needed to ensure more resources are put into plugging wells now before they fail,” said Commission Shift policy manager Julie Range.
Commission Shift’s 2022 report, Unplugged and Abandoned, proposes specific policy changes to reduce the number of wells:
“It’s time to catch up our laws and regulations with the times and to meet the moment because we really are getting into a crisis situation here,” said Virginia Palacios, “We have been through drought too much in this state to put our groundwater at more risk.”
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Commission Shift, based in Laredo, Texas, is a nonprofit organization focused on reforming oil and gas oversight in the State of Texas by building support to hold the Railroad Commission of Texas accountable to its mission in a shifting energy landscape. Commission Shift educates and organizes a wide array of stakeholders to build support for changes at the Railroad Commission of Texas that improve the agency’s function, transparency, and accountability to people and places impacted by the oil and gas industry.
