- Title: Meet the duo taking on big oil and exploding orphan wells in Texas
- Date: 14th August 2024
- Summary: WARD COUNTY, TEXAS, UNITED STATES (JULY 25, 2024) (REUTERS ) CRUDE OIL POOLING AT TOP OF EXCAVATED WELL VARIOUS OF HAWK DUNLAP, OIL WELL CONTROL SPECIALIST, LOOKING AT CRUDE OIL POOLING AT TOP OF EXCAVATED WELL PECOS COUNTY, TEXAS, UNITED STATES (JULY 23, 2024) (REUTERS ) VARIOUS OF OIL INFRASTRUCTURE OVERFLOWN WITH CRUDE OIL AND OIL STAINS ON THE GROUND WARD COUNTY, TEXAS
- Embargoed: 28th August 2024 10:51
- Keywords: hawk dunlap laura briggs oil and gas orphan wells produced water texas railroad commission west texas zombie wells
- Location: WARD COUNTY + PECOS COUNTY, TEXAS, UNITED STATES
- City: WARD COUNTY + PECOS COUNTY, TEXAS, UNITED STATES
- Country: US
- Topics: Pollution,Environment,North America
- Reuters ID: LVA001627612082024RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text:On a sprawling ranch in Pecos County in late July, oil well control specialist Hawk Dunlap used a backhoe to uncover an abandoned or so-called zombie well that had sprung back to life despite being plugged just over a year earlier, hissing gas and bubbling toxic water into the dry Texas dirt.
Dressed in bright red coveralls and a silver hard hat, Dunlap hopped off the machine and into the hole to clear away remaining soil with a shovel, and then picked up a brittle chunk of cement that was part of the casing meant to keep fluids and gases underground. He crushed the cement into dust with a light squeeze of his fingers as the Briggs family, who own the ranch, formed a circle around him.
"The longer you wait to plug a well like this, the more expensive it's going to be," Dunlap said.
The Railroad Commission (RRC) is the regulatory body that, despite its name, oversees oil and gas operations in Texas. And Dunlap, a three-decade veteran of oil fields around the globe, has become one its most vocal critics.
Armed with a portable gas detector and mobile phone, Dunlap has spent much of the last two-and-a-half years documenting a flurry of oil well blow-outs and leaks across West Texas at the behest of landowners, in an epidemic he says is being caused by low-quality plugging jobs left behind by operators and their contractors and approved by the RRC.
He and his partner Sarah Stogner, an oil and gas lawyer who documents their work on social media, say they have now recorded over 100 leaking legacy or "orphan" wells with no responsible owner, which were listed in RRC records as properly plugged, including the one at the Briggs Ranch in Pecos County.
Reuters reporting in West Texas, along with interviews with landowners and experts and a review of RRC records, show why the state regulator is under increased pressure to step up its oversight. The added scrutiny comes at a time when over the last two years, more and more abandoned wells have started to spill or even gushed back to life, formed salt and chemical-laden lakes or caused sinkholes.
Making matters worse is the rising pressure pushing up from beneath the ground due to the billions of gallons of wastewater injected back into reservoirs for disposal in latest fracking-led drilling boom in the Permian basin, the largest U.S. oilfield. That pressure, Dunlap says, likely causes the badly plugged wells to burst.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it would investigate whether to revoke the RRC’s permitting authority for waste disposal wells after Texas watchdog group Commission Shift filed a federal complaint alleging mismanagement.
Faced with the rising number of calls from worried landowners, Dunlap is running a long-shot campaign to win one of the three RRC seats as a libertarian this autumn, hoping to change the organization from within.
Among the changes he would like to see: quicker and better quality plugging of wells, accountability for the oil companies who left them behind, and a new name for the Railroad Commission to make clear it regulates the oil industry.
“I spent 27 years roaming the Earth lauding the fact that Texas does it bigger and better than everybody else. So you have to understand that when we started excavating and investigating … it was, quite a bit of a gut punch for me,” said Dunlap, who said he has worked in 103 countries.
In 2022, Texas received a $25 million initial grant from the bipartisan infrastructure law's orphan well program to address the issue. It got another $80 million in January but with strings attached: use of the money requires the RRC to measure the amount of methane and other gases leaking from plugged wells before and after plugging. The RRC has estimated that it will need over $481 million total to plug its wells.
Laura Briggs said things have only been getting worse.
Less than one week after Dunlap dug up the previously plugged well on the property, a separate old leaking well less than 1,000 feet (300 m) from her house and animal pens suddenly had an explosive blowout of produced water. Briggs' gas monitor showed high levels of toxic hydrogen sulfide.
In early August, a vacuum truck arrived at the ranch to start hauling away the fluid streaming out of the well as it pooled up near her livestock.
“It's going to suck up what’s coming out of that well,” Briggs said about the truck. "Then he’s going to take it off and dump it into a saltwater disposal well, which is why these wells are leaking.”
(Production: Evan Garcia, Adrees Latif, Ali Withers) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2024. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None