State lawmakers want to throw a major lifeline to the Texas Railroad Commission , which regulates the oil and gas industry. For the last 20 years, the Railroad Commission has struggled to plug all of the state’s orphan wells — uncapped holes in the ground that become wards of the state when companies go bankrupt or dissolve.
These wells have plagued Texas in recent years, providing a pathway for toxic gas and contaminated water deep underground to travel to the surface and threaten protected aquifers.
The increasing number of derelict oil and gas wells being documented is also likely to burden the Texas taxpayer — as the commission takes on more expensive leaking wells , its costs are escalating faster than the funding to plug them. The commission plugged more than 1,000 wells last year, yet the list of wells that need to be plugged at the state’s expense grew 6% to 8,347.
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Lawmakers and industry groups want to force oil and gas companies to plug the wells while they are still around to do the work. As it stands, operators can leave an open hole in the ground indefinitely…