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Abandoned oil wells are blowing out and leaking across the Permian Basin, raising concerns that ranchland will soon be rendered useless and potentially threatening West Texas’s critical groundwater supplies.
Yet while the situation is growing increasingly dire, concerns are also growing that the state regulatory agency charged with ensuring so-called zombie wells are properly plugged and shut-in isn’t quite up to the task.
Orphan Wells In Texas: What’s the Problem?
The Texas Railroad Commission defines an orphan (aka, zombie) well as one that is inactive and unplugged and has not been productive for a minimum of 12 months.
While state law requires all oil and natural gas well operators to pay – in the form of a bond, letter of credit or cash deposit – to plug orphan wells, the Commission typically takes responsibility for cleaning up oil and gas wells abandoned by now-defunct companies. As of June, 8,580 wells were documented on the Texas Railroad Commission’s orphan wells list. However, an unknown number of zombie wells are undocumented and could otherwise meet the orphan criteria in the future.
Abandoned, unplugged oil wells pose a significant risk to the groundwater and surrounding communities, and they emit substantial levels of methane – a major greenhouse gas – into the atmosphere. Zombie wells also take a toll on property values, with one study in Pennsylvania finding that building development dropped by half in areas with high orphan well concentrations.
The REGROW Act was passed in 2021 as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). Among other things, it is slated to invest $4.7 billion in plugging and remediating documented orphan wells across the country. Texas received an Initial Grant Fund of $25,000,000 last August, plus another $79,673,757 in the first allocation of Formula Grant funds in January 2024. Based on current estimates, the state could receive approximately $318.7 in Formula Grant funding through the life of the program.
The Environmental Defense Fund estimates that roughly 120,000 zombie wells across the country are eligible for closure funding under the REGROW Act, including about 7,151 documented in Texas.
Texas Struggling with Backlog of Zombie Wells
Between 2016 and 2019, the Texas Railroad Commission plugged an average of 1,661 wells annually. With federal funds now flowing, it might be assumed the pace of those operations would accelerate significantly. Unfortunately, the reality isn’t so straightforward. In fact, according to a recent report published by The Houston Chronicle, the Commission is still struggling with a backlog of zombie wells – a circumstance that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.
Since the REGROW Act funding became available, the Railroad Commission has used Texas’s share to plug 730 abandoned wells – more than any other state in the country. Officials expect the number to rise to 2,000 this year and 2,200 next. However, as the Chronicle points out, more than half of those wells are being paid for with federal money, meaning 600 fewer wells will be paid for with state funding each year.
“They could have put way more money into plugging, and they chose to decrease funding,” said Virginia Palacios, executive director of Commission Shift. “The commission talks about getting it down to a manageable number near zero, but I don’t see how it’s possible.”
That decrease in state funding could also endanger the Railroad Commission’s ability to tap into additional REGROW funds. While the early rounds of grants were based on states’ inventory of zombie wells, future rounds will depend on a state increasing its own funding beyond what was spent between 2010 and 2019 and implementing stronger regulations to address the problem of orphan wells.
Railroad Commission Oversight Under Scrutiny
When it does actually get around to plugging abandoned wells, the Railroad Commission’s record is spotty at best. In fact, according to a recent report from Reuters, some of the abandoned well blowouts plaguing Texas in recent years resulted from low-quality shut-ins performed by drillers and their contractors – and approved by the Commission.
In many of those cases, billions of gallons of fracking wastewater injected back into reservoirs for disposal caused the poorly plugged wells to erupt and spew produced water – contaminated with chemicals like radium and boron – out onto the land. As a result, the watchdog group Commission Shift filed a federal complaint alleging mismanagement, a move that prompted the EPA to announce an investigation to determine whether the Commission’s permitting authority for waste disposal should be revoked.
“We believe that a rigorous and transparent evaluation by the EPA will ultimately lead to stronger protections for our water resources and greater accountability for regulatory practices,” Palacios told Reuters at the time.
Our Undefeated Midland Oilfield Accident Lawyers continue to monitor developments related to the state’s zombie well problem and will post additional updates as new information becomes available.
In addition to being undefeated, we’ve recovered billions, including record-setting verdicts and settlements, for the victims of oilfield blowouts, explosions, and accidents across Texas and throughout the United States and consistently win against the country’s largest oilfield operators and drilling companies.
Contact the Undefeated Midland-Odessa Oilfield Accident Lawyers from Zehl & Associates Injury & Accident Lawyers for Help Today, Call 1-888-603-3636
For more information, please contact our Undefeated Oilfield Accident attorneys in Midland-Odessa, Texas at Zehl & Associates Injury & Accident Lawyers to schedule a free consultation today.
We proudly serve Harris County, Midland County, and throughout the state of Texas. We are located in Houston and Midland and throughout the state of Texas:
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