An abandoned West Texas oil well has created a 200-foot-wide sinkhole
This story is published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter here.
UPTON COUNTY — A sinkhole around an old oil well is growing at an alarming rate on the Kelton Ranch in West Texas.
Radford Grocery #17 was originally drilled as an oil well in the 1950s and later converted to a saltwater disposal well, according to state records. The well was plugged in 1977.
The Kelton family, which owns the ranch, became alarmed recently as a sinkhole around the well rapidly grew. Water pooled in the bottom of the sinkhole. Then crude oil began migrating up from underground and formed a dark layer over the water.
By mid-March, the sinkhole was roughly 200 feet in diameter and 40 feet deep, big enough to fit a four-story building. The smell of crude permeated the air. The family has stopped using a water well they fear could be contaminated.
At some point the Radford Grocery well's plug failed, creating a connection between the water table and the oil reservoir underground. Because the well was previously plugged and has no active operator, there's no clear company the Keltons can turn to for help. The Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas drilling and plugging in Texas, has sent personnel to the site. But so far the Kelton family says there is no plan of action from the state agency.
'It can be fixed,' said Hawk Dunlap, a well integrity expert, as he looked over the sinkhole on Thursday. 'But it's not going to be cheap.'
The sinkhole is the latest in a string of catastrophic incidents with old oil wells in the Permian Basin of West Texas, some plugged and others not. From sinkholes to blowouts to persistent leaks, more than a century of oil drilling in the region has left a daunting array of environmental hazards. These emergencies are in addition to a long backlog of wells to plug around the state.
Acknowledging the growing challenge, the Railroad Commission requested an additional $100 million from the Legislature late last year. 'The number and cost of emergency wells has significantly increased over the last five years,' RRC deputy executive director Danny Sorrells wrote to legislators, in a letter first obtained by the Houston Chronicle.
'This matter has been reported to the RRC and referred to our Site Remediation,' said agency spokesperson Bryce Dubee. 'Commission staff are monitoring conditions within and around the sinkhole and considering options for addressing any concerns about groundwater quality.'
The Kelton Ranch is a few miles outside McCamey in rural Upton County. McCamey is one of countless Texas towns formed in an oil boom. Wildcatter George McCamey struck oil in 1925 and soon several companies were drilling in the area. The town, named for him, grew quickly.
The Rodman-Noel oilfield outside of McCamey, which includes the Kelton Ranch, was discovered in 1953, according to a nearby historical marker.
The Kelton family purchased the property in 1963. The Keltons remember a family tradition of walking from the ranch house to drink the well water, which was always of good quality. The family still has cattle on the ranch. They do not own the mineral rights to the oil underground, which were severed from the property rights — a common situation in the state.
Upton County is still one of the top oil-producing counties in Texas. But the area around McCamey is no longer a drilling hot spot. The Texas Legislature dubbed the town the 'Wind Energy Capital of Texas' in 2001, and wind turbines dot the nearby bluffs.
Records indicate the Radford Grocery well 'caved in' after it was plugged in the 1970s. The Keltons say the sinkhole has grown significantly in the past 18 months. The well casing fell deeper into the hole. They think an underground formation washed out, but they do not know why. The hole in March was notably bigger than in photos from January 2024.
'It's suddenly much larger,' said Bill Kelton. 'And it's suddenly got oil.'
The Railroad Commission has a long-standing state program to plug orphan wells, which do not have an active operator and were not plugged by their previous owner. The agency also received significant federal funding to plug orphan wells during the Biden administration.
In addition to the Railroad Commission's recent funding request, a Republican-backed bill in the Texas Legislature this session would set a timeline for operators to plug inactive wells.
However, wells such as the one on the Kelton Ranch pose an additional challenge. Because they were previously plugged and do not have an active operator, they are not considered orphan wells. The legal responsibility for cleanup when a plugged well fails is the subject of a lawsuit over another property 50 miles north as the crow flies.
Antina Ranch landowner Ashley Watt is suing Chevron, saying the failures contaminated her property. Her attorney, Sarah Stogner, has taken to calling these situations across the Permian Basin 'zombie wells' that come back to life long after they are plugged, spewing salty water, oil or hazardous gases.
The problem is mounting month by month. The Kelton Ranch is about 40 miles from a pair of blowouts that happened in Crane County in January 2022 and December 2023. Another blowout in October 2024 alarmed the Reeves County town of Toyah. Yet another leaking orphan well was identified last month in nearby Pecos County, on land that rancher Schuyler Wight leases for cattle grazing.
The Railroad Commission has responded to several recent well emergencies. Plugging the well that caused the December 2023 blowout cost $2.5 million. The more recent blowout near Toyah was plugged by the pipeline company Kinder Morgan.
Meanwhile, earthquakes linked to wastewater injection wells continue to rock the area. The Railroad Commission has restricted deep injection to reduce seismicity in the area.
Southern Methodist University geophysicist Zhong Lu has published papers on the Permian Basin's sinkholes, earthquakes and subsidence — the gradual sinking of the ground. His research indicates that the combination of intensive oil and gas drilling and the limestone and salt formations of the Permian Basin have made the surface unstable.
Landowners like the Keltons are seeking answers as the pockmarked surface of the Permian Basin sinks, shakes and crumbles.
Disclosure: Southern Methodist University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Yahoo
Bessmer residents want answers about 4 million square foot data center coming to city
An aerial view of a proposed data center site within Bessemer's city limits. Residents who live near the property are concerned about a lack of information about the project and disruptions from the center -- which, if built to planned capacity, would be one of the largest in the United States and could become one of the largest single consumers of electricity in the state. (Lee Hedgepeth/Inside Climate News) This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. BESSEMER — They all came here for peace, and so far, the land has given it to them. For Marshall Killingsworth, the peace comes from the owls whose hoots echo across the valley as he sits in his favorite spot in his garden. For David Havron, it's looking up at the stars at night as the moonlight glistens off the lake just outside his back door. For Mary Rosenboom, it's the calls of the songbirds as the sun slowly sets over the hilly terrain. For Becky Morgan, it's the view of the mountain from her recliner—through the long windows that line the sides of her home. But all these residents in this area of rural Jefferson County are afraid—fearful that their peace may soon be disturbed. 'Town is moving closer to us,' Jeff Lowe said last week. 'And we're not happy about it.' Killingsworth, Havron, Rosenboom, Morgan and Lowe are just a few of the residents whose homes are adjacent to a 700-acre, wooded plot of land that soon may be transformed, through years of construction, into a 4.5-million-square-foot data processing center located just within the city limits of Bessemer, Alabama, a city of about 25,000 southwest of Birmingham. If built to planned capacity, the data center would be one of the largest in the United States and could become one of the largest single consumers of electricity in the state. Of nearly a dozen residents interviewed by Inside Climate News, none expressed support for the project as planned. Instead, all shared fear and frustration over their inability to obtain information about the $14.5 billion proposal from politicians charged with representing the public. Efforts by Inside Climate News to speak with public officials in Bessemer about the proposal, called Project Marvel, were met with silence. The mayor, his chief of staff and the city's attorney all signed a non-disclosure agreement with the developer, staffers said, and would not be able to answer questions about the project. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Members of the Bessemer City Council, tasked with approving or rejecting the rezoning necessary for the proposed data center, have repeatedly refused to comment. 'I thought I answered your question,' said Carla Jackson, a council member who represents the area of Bessemer where the data center is planned. 'And I was so sweet about it. Right now, while it's under litigation, I'm not going to talk about it.' In the last decade, technological evolution has quickened pace, with massive data centers now in demand for more intensive computational tasks like cryptocurrency mining and processing artificial intelligence (AI) requests. That digital demand, in turn, has made its way into the physical world as tech companies search for cheap land, electricity, water and resources necessary for the development of large data processing centers like the one being proposed in Bessemer. A data center is like a city with computer servers as the buildings, requiring network cables, power sources and cooling infrastructure, like roads, power lines and sewer networks in a municipality. Data flows like traffic. Similar to the police and surveillance in a city, a data center also has security infrastructure—electric fences, anti-ram barriers, infrared cameras, alarms, lights and sometimes even guard stations and other surveillance systems to protect against attacks. As of early 2025, the United States has more than 5,000 data centers, according to industry reports, compared to around 1,000 just five years earlier. And with that increased demand comes an inevitable, increased demand for resources. The proposed data center campus in Bessemer, if realized, would consist of 18 buildings, each larger than the average Walmart Supercenter, that would house massive server farms for data storage and processing. Located on about 700 acres of wooded land currently zoned for agricultural use, the proposed physical infrastructure would require the permanent clear-cutting of at least 100 acres of forest. The company behind the project is a newly created limited liability company, Logistics Land Investments LLC, first formed in May 2023, according to records from the Delaware Secretary of State. The company's registered agent is not a person, according to business records, but the Corporation Trust Company, also based in Delaware—an entity that has been used by large tech companies like Google and Apple for corporate dealings in the past. Despite its brief history, Logistics Land Investments has already found itself in at least one legal battle. Court records show that company has been sued by the First Baptist Church of Red Oak, Texas, a place of worship that was located on land the development company was interested in buying for another project. After the sale fell through, the church sued, arguing that the company had wrongly breached their agreement. The president of Bessemer's City Council, Donna Thigpen, was the only public official interviewed who confirmed she had not yet signed an NDA. In fact, Thigpen said, she'd been largely left in the dark on the proposed data center thus far. 'We have not met with the builders yet,' she said. 'We know nothing about it.' She referred further questions to the mayor's office, though she noted he'd signed an NDA. The mayor's office did not respond to several requests for comment. The only information about the project made public so far has been in limited answers from the company's attorneys to residents' concerns voiced in planning and zoning meetings held earlier this year. Those few answers provide only small, fragmented insights into what could be one of the largest capital outlays in recent state history. But even that information is probably more than is legally required to be given to residents, according to arguments made by an attorney for Bessemer in a recent court hearing. 'There's no provision in the code of Alabama that authorizes the asking of questions, the furnishing of environmental reports or development plans or anything of that nature,' he told a Bessemer judge. 'You have a right to be heard as to whether you agree with that ordinance or not. Nothing more, nothing less.' The city had landed in court after a group of residents filed suit, claiming that property owners weren't given proper public notice ahead of a recent public hearing on the proposal. Because residents packed the meeting room, the city argued in court, there was no deficiency in public notice. Monica Agee, a Jefferson County Circuit Judge in the Birmingham division, issued a temporary restraining order on April 14 preventing the Bessemer City Council from voting on the proposed rezoning of the property from agricultural to industrial. After issuing the restraining order, Agee transferred the case to the county's Bessemer division, where the matter was scheduled for a hearing. Agee's temporary restraining order was 'wrong and illegal,' attorney Shan Paden, representing the city, told Bessemer judge David Hobdy at an April 23 hearing. Hobdy scolded the lawyer for his comments about the judge. 'I take issue with the fact that you're saying that judge knew what she was doing was wrong,' Hobdy said. 'That's a circuit judge of Jefferson County, too, so I think she had appropriate authority to act at her discretion.' Lawyers for both the residents and the city of Bessemer brought up the size of the project in making their respective arguments about how the judge should eventually rule. 'This is a $14 billion project,' Paden said. 'To give you the scope of that, the entire value of all the real estate in the city of Bessmer in 2018 was $345 million dollars,' Paden said in part. Public officials should be judging the merits of such a project, the lawyer argued, not a judge. Lawyers for the residents living near the proposed data center site, on the other hand, argued that the size of the project demands robust public notice and close adherence to relevant law. 'This is about protecting property owners' rights to protect their land from money-grabbing AI developers who have devastated many, many communities across the country,' the residents' attorney, Reginald McDaniel, said. John Parker Yates, another attorney for the residents, reminded the judge that the identity of the developer and its potential client is still not known. 'This could be a Chinese data center,' he said. 'And that's scary—that could be happening in our backyard and us not know.' In the end, Judge Hobdy chose not to dismiss the lawsuit outright as lawyers for the city of Bessemer had asked him to do. Instead, he told both parties that he planned to hold over the case long enough for city officials to begin the public notice process and rezoning process again, in accordance with Alabama law. If and when that process is complete, the judge said, he'd consider ordering a dismissal in the case. Hobdy set a status update hearing in the case for Aug. 1. Despite the delay in the necessary rezoning achieved through the residents' lawsuit, community members opposed to the project now have another, likely more difficult task ahead: to convince public officials to vote against moving the proposal forward. Marshall Killingsworth walked in his garden on a recent afternoon, his daylilies blooming in the warm Alabama sun. Killingsworth, 80, retired after working for decades in IT at major companies, including Blue Cross Blue Shield and Drummond Coal. Even in retirement, though, he's busier now than ever. He spends much of his time outside, tending to an elaborate, well kept yard overlooking a wooded valley where the data center is now proposed to be built. Soon, Ron and Becky Morgan, married nearly 28 years, came and sat with Killingsworth. Ron, an Army veteran, jumped into the conversation as soon as he arrived, talking intensely about potential noise, light pollution and the environmental impact of the necessary clear-cutting and construction. Becky placed her arm on Ron's leg. 'We just got here,' she said, laughing. 'Other people want to talk too.' In Alabama, almost all the new electric demand that the state's largest energy company, Alabama Power, has projected is for data centers, said Daniel Tait, executive director of Energy Alabama, a nonprofit organization that advocates for clean energy in the state. Many data centers use alternative energy sources, including solar, wind, nuclear and hydrogen, to reduce carbon emissions and reduce their reliance on the electric grid, although investors in the Bessemer project have not outlined any such plans. Lawyers representing Logistics Land Investments did not respond to requests for comment. As demand for digital content grows, an 'arms race' has escalated between tech giants to build digital warehouses and bring their services to market first. Data centers were initially smaller and demanded 50 to 200 megawatts of power to run. Driven by the development of AI, a new, second round of data centers uses five times more energy, averaging 2 to 3 gigawatts to sustain operations. They are considered 'high capacity' because once the center is running, it doesn't stop. 'You can't turn it off like the AC,' Tait said. If built to full capacity, the Bessemer data center campus is projected to consume around 1,200 megawatts of energy and could feasibly consume around 10.5 million megawatt hours per year. That's more than 90 times the amount of energy used by all residences in Bessemer and more than 10 times the amount of energy used by all residences in Birmingham annually. Increased demand for energy, or at least the potential for it, is already driving Alabama Power's desire to double down on fossil fuel investments. The company, an effective monopoly, has asked the state's Public Service Commission to approve its purchase of a gas-powered power plant in recent days, potentially exacerbating the state's reliance on dirty energy that contributes to climate change. When a technology company proposes to a municipality to build a new digital storehouse, however, sometimes 'elevated demand load is overstated because every party is financially invested in overstating the need,' Tait said. Even as the city moves forward with its plans, for example, there is no guarantee the data center will have customers once built. Jefferson Traywick serves as Jefferson County's first ever economic development advisor. In an interview, he said that there are multiple potential customers engaging with investors about potential end use. Traywick said he'd signed an NDA as well, so he couldn't say who those possible customers might be. 'I really don't even know,' he said. Ideally, data center companies should pay for their own infrastructure, but in practice, this often doesn't happen, Tait said. The vast majority of these infrastructure projects benefit only the data center, not the broader customer base. Tait believes building these operations 'should not be on the backs of regular people to benefit the wealthiest corporations in America.' These corporations, he said, 'should pay their fair share. If anything, they should pay more than their fair share.' Brenda Small and her daughter, Brianna, live in a small trailer park just outside the boundaries of the proposed development. Last month, they were quick to express their opposition to the project. Small said her power bills are already approaching $500 some months. 'That's ridiculous for one month,' she said. Small worries her bills will soar even higher because of increased energy demand from the data center. In Georgia, tech companies and consumer advocates have negotiated and agreed that the data center operators cover their own infrastructure costs rather than passing those expenses entirely to consumers. Georgia has also been more forward-thinking about clean energy, Tait said. But Mississippi's approach to cost allocation is a 'free for all.' Last year, Mississippi passed a state law that declares anything Amazon needs to build is automatically in the public interest, with no Public Service Commission review. This approach is 'the most egregious example we see in terms of a cost allocation problem,' Tait said. Alabama law contains tax carve outs for capital projects, including a specific, 30-year tax abatement meant to attract large data centers. If approved by Bessemer officials, a tax abatement under the economic development law could amount to a tax cut of more than $500 million. So-called 'hyperscale' data centers like those used by Google, Meta and other large tech companies can consume hundreds of gallons of water daily and millions annually. Smaller centers use less water but can still consume a significant amount of a town's water supply if not properly managed. To cool the heat generated by thousands of servers in one data center, a chilled water system is typical for a hyperscale data center. The central chiller cools the water, circulates it through heat-absorbing coils, and dissipates the heat into the air through a cooling tower. The water then recirculates. In smaller centers, water can be piped to nearby wastewater facilities. Lawyers for Logistic Land Investments have said in documents that the proposed Bessemer facility's end user may choose to rely on a so-called 'closed loop' cooling system meant to reduce water usage and waste, but it's unclear exactly how that system will work—what the water demand will be and where wastewater would be discharged. Despite the rapid construction of new data centers driven by the demand for AI, cryptocurrency mining and cloud computing, Alabama lacks a comprehensive water plan. Under state law, if you own land next to a river or stream in Alabama, you can use the water without a permit. Businesses using more than 100,000 gallons of water daily are required to file a certificate and declare the water usage as beneficial, but the reporting is largely self-regulated without meaningful oversight, and penalties are nonexistent for non-compliance, according to Cindy Lowry, executive director of Alabama Rivers Alliance. Most states in the east have a regulated water withdrawal system, she said. Alabama does not. 'We have virtually nothing,' said Lowry. If different sources pull from one river, like the Black Warrior River, and everyone is filling out a certificate, 'There's nobody looking to say: 'How much can the system handle? How many straws are in the system?'' Lowry said. By consuming large amounts of water, a data center, like the one proposed in western Jefferson County, has the potential to become the largest water consumer in the state. Already, 80 percent of water withdrawals in the state are for cooling coal, gas and nuclear plants, Lowry added. Often, utilities may not have initially planned for such massive water demands. With their high water consumption for cooling systems, data centers pose several significant water challenges for Alabama. A data center can strain local water utilities capacity, increase water bills for existing customers, disrupt the natural flow of rivers, reduce the water available for downstream users and potentially destroy local ecosystems. Dynamics like these worry Ron and Becky Morgan. The couple is among the few residents in the area on well water, Becky explained, putting them at risk of becoming victims of groundwater contamination—water used to cool data centers is mixed with chemical coolants—or more general water scarcity. 'We're on the front lines when it comes to water,' she said. Jeff Lowe, a retired firefighter, said he worries about the impact the facility will have on the ability of first responders to adequately address fires in the area. 'They say Warrior River is going to supply it,' Lowe said of the local water utility. 'But I don't know if they can. They can't even keep the fire hydrants around here going.' Lowe said he also wonders about the additional fire risk posed by the data center itself, potentially replete with electronic equipment and lithium batteries, in a community with limited resources to respond to large, industrial fires. 'I just don't know if they have the resources to deal with something like that before it gets out of hand,' he said. On the whole, residents fear perpetual daylight will replace starlight and the 24-hour mechanical whir of machinery will be their surround sound, drowning out the birdsong. They foresee the banks of Little Blue Creek and other wetlands being deforested, the lakes flooded with potentially toxic runoff laced with coolants and wildlife driven from their habitat. David Havron, president of the Rock Mountain Lakes Landowners Association, is one of the residents who filed suit against the city, resulting in the restraining order that delayed the city council's vote to move the project forward. He worries that the nighttime view from his dock, just a stone's throw from his back door, will soon be ruined in favor of a project that he believes will provide little benefit to his neighborhood or those living in it. 'It's going to look like a sunset,' he said of the light pollution. 'A constant haze in the sky.' With less vegetation to absorb rainwater because of the clear-cutting necessary to complete the project, Havron said residents are worried flooding could become worse in the area, with runoff potentially filling the lakes around which many of the residents have built their homes and lives. Then, there's the risk to wildlife. 'It'll all be gone,' Havron said. 'It'll run off. There's a set of bald eagles. There's deer and coyotes, racoons and turkeys and everything else here. It'll all be gone … It's going to have to be cut.' Not long after Ron and Becky Morgan had arrived at Marshall Killingsworth's garden gathering, Mary Rosenboom came and sat down among the daylilies, completing the circle of neighbors brought together by the fight to save their community from an unwanted development. A sales professional, Rosenboom said she'd never delved into political or environmental issues until the data center came knocking at the community's door. Once she began to look into the potential impacts, she quickly realized this was a fight she was willing to join and, if necessary, help lead. Now, she's become an accidental activist. 'It was absolutely an accident, but here I am,' she said. Sitting in front of her was a brightly colored binder, filled with research on data centers, city governance and what the impact could be in her community. It's a hard fight to win, Rosenboom said, when there's so little information being provided about the specifics of the project. The non-disclosure agreements, the residents said, was one of their top concerns. 'When you're dealing with public funds and public ordinances, there should be no NDA,' Ron Morgan said. Even if public officials are unwilling to talk about the possible impacts of the project, the residents around the site say they're ready for a war. Securing the restraining order and delaying the process was a battle won, they said, but the fight is still well underway. Becky Morgan, also a plaintiff in the suit against the city, said that previous public hearings have been largely a formality, with officials doing little to meaningfully engage with citizens' concerns. 'It's just a farce,' she said. And when it came time for officials to ask questions of the developer, there was little desire on the part of public officials to push the data center representatives for more substantive information. 'They already had their marching orders,' her husband, Ron, said. 'And now we have ours.' The next stage of the fight is already underway. The last week of April, more than 100 residents gathered inside Rock Mountain Baptist Church to hear from lawyers McDaniel and Yates about what may come next. The pair characterized securing a delay in the rezoning process as a win but warned residents that a protracted legal fight could drag on for years and cost the community upwards of six figures. Outside the legal realm, the lawyers said, residents should do all they can to press local political leaders to oppose the project and provide as much information about the proposal as possible before and during newly scheduled planning and zoning commission and city council meetings in the coming weeks. No matter what, the lawyers told the crowd, fighting a municipality with practically unlimited resources over a multi-billion dollar project will be an uphill battle. It was a reality many of the residents were already coming to terms with. They were ready for the fight. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Yahoo
Texas has thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells. Who is responsible for cleaning them up?
LULING — Just six minutes from 5,700-person town's historic city center, where an old oil museum still nods to the boom days, the ground groans as oil workers pull steel tubing — each piece is longer than a bus — out of a well drilled in 1983 that stopped pumping profits last year. Rain pours on this quiet Texas field, but the crew doesn't stop their steady pace. The job has become all too familiar. They're sealing one of thousands of unplugged orphaned oil and gas wells scattered across the state — abandoned holes left behind by companies that went bankrupt or just walked away. The last company to own this particular well was Geomeg Energy Operating Co., an Aransas Pass-based oil and gas company. This March project was a snapshot of what plugging a well looks like: part routine, part roulette. Sometimes workers find corroded cement casings, pressurized gas, or unexpected debris that can turn a cleanup into a days- or weeks-long job. 'Even the simplest well can take time,' said Nicholas Harrel, a state managed plugger with the Texas Railroad Commission. From the air, the wells look like pinpricks across the Texas landscape. But on the ground, they can erupt like geysers, leak methane, and threaten water supplies with toxic chemicals like hydrogen sulfide, benzene and arsenic. Abandoned oil wells are piling up across Texas, posing a growing environmental threat and saddling taxpayers with cleanup costs that have already reached tens of millions of dollars. In West Texas, at least eight orphaned wells have blown out since late 2024, spewing brine, a salty liquid laden with chemicals from drilling, and toxic gas. One leaked for more than two months before it could be capped. Another has created a 200-foot-wide sinkhole. 'We have more orphan wells coming on than we are plugging,' Railroad Commission Chair Christi Craddick said. 'We've exceeded our plugging numbers every year, but we still have more orphan wells that keep coming.' Who's responsible for cleaning up these wells, and what happens if Texas falls behind? Here's what to know. Orphan wells are oil, gas, or injection wells with no clear owner — either because the company went bankrupt or disappeared. These wells have been inactive for at least 12 months, meaning the wells do not produce oil or natural gas. Some of them are unplugged. Texas has nearly 8,900 orphan wells, according to the Railroad Commission's most recent list. Many are concentrated in oil-rich areas like the Permian Basin, including Reeves, Crockett, and Pecos counties. Pecos has more than 600 of them — the most of any county. Frio County, southwest of San Antonio, follows with close to 500 orphan wells. Many were plugged with inappropriate materials or using practices that are now obsolete. Older wells — especially those drilled before the 1950s — are more likely to have been abandoned and documentation on who last owned a well can be hard to find. The Railroad Commission of Texas, the state's oil and gas regulator, is responsible for ensuring that operators plug wells properly. Once a well stops producing oil or gas, operators are supposed to plug their own wells within 12 months. But when they don't — in some cases because they went bankrupt — the responsibility can shift to the state. The agency then evaluates how dangerous the orphan well is — to the environment and public safety — and places the well on a list to be plugged by contractors the agency hires. The Luling well was added to the Railroad Commission's list in October 2024 — one of five wells scheduled for plugging in the area. A big concern is air pollution, particularly methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere and accelerates climate change. These wells often leak methane, as well as hydrogen sulfide — a toxic colorless gas that smells like rotten eggs. This gas is especially dangerous: it can cause headaches, dizziness and at high concentrations can be fatal. For years, experts and ranchers have warned about the rising threat that unplugged wells pose to rivers, lakes and groundwater when they leak oil, gas, drilling fluids, and fracking wastewater, also known as 'produced water' a toxic mix of salt, hydrocarbons, arsenic, radium and other naturally occurring chemicals. Unplugged wells can create pathways for those chemicals to migrate into groundwater zones. A spokesperson with the Railroad Commission said they are unaware of any cases of groundwater contamination from orphan wells in Texas. The risks aren't just slow-moving — some are explosive. The common industry practice of injecting the massive amounts of fracking wastewater into deep wells can put pressure on underground geological formations. In some cases this pressure has led to increased earthquakes. In other cases, researchers have linked injections to well blowouts — sudden eruptions of water and gas that migrate underground until they hit an old well and burst from the earth. Blowouts can happen in any well. However, orphan wells and older, plugged wells are less likely to withstand the pressure and blow. Last year in the West Texas town of Toyah, a well erupted and spewed a foul-smelling, hydrogen-sulfide-laced plume that took 19 days to contain. Residents had headaches and wore masks to protect themselves. Harrel, the Railroad Commission well plugger, said that while the Luling well is a 'non-emergency' well, meaning it did not pose an immediate threat, it was still a concern because fluid was rising in the well and could eventually threaten groundwater. The Luling well is located in a field called Spiller known to have higher hydrogen sulfide levels. A 2024 study found that at least 20 wells in a Luling oilfield were releasing dangerous amounts of hydrogen sulfide gas. Residents report smells as far as Austin — 50 miles away. The Railroad Commission operates a State Managed Plugging Program, which is partly funded by the Oil and Gas Regulation and Cleanup Fund that receives bonds, enforcement penalties and permitting fees paid by operators. However, critics say those funds often fall short of actual cleanup costs. The agency has plugged more than 46,000 wells through the state plugging program since its inception in 1984. The commission said it has budgeted $22.75 million a year to plug 1,000 wells a year. For the past five fiscal years the agency has plugged an average of 1,352 wells per year. But that money doesn't go nearly far enough. The cost to plug just two emergency wells this fiscal year hit $9 million, nearly 40% of the state's entire annual plugging budget, according to Craddick, the agency chair. To keep up, the commission has increasingly relied on federal support. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, passed by the U.S. Congress in 2021, included a $4.7 billion nationwide injection to plug orphan wells on public and private lands. Through that law, Texas received $25 million in 2022 from the U.S. Department of the Interior and another $80 million in early 2024 to plug orphan wells. Combined with state funding, those dollars helped plug over 2,400 wells in 2023–24. However, federal funds are uncertain with changes in administrations. Meanwhile, plugging costs have also skyrocketed. Just a few years ago, Craddick said it cost around $15,000 to plug a well. Today, the average is closer to $57,000, and that number jumps dramatically for wells with high water flow or hazardous leaks. For example, a blowout near Odessa in late 2023 took more than two months and $2.5 million to contain and plug. The RRC warned last year that it can no longer sustain the growing cost and scale of the problem and requested an additional $100 million in emergency funding from lawmakers — about 44% of its entire two-year budget — just to keep up with the backlog, tackle urgent sites and cope with rising costs due to inflation. Lawmakers are considering this as part of the overall state budget. The costs of plugging a well vary by region and are based on how deep the wells are, according to Harell. While the Luling well's cost has not been finalized, according to the commission's cost calculation information, the well's cost will be about $24,000. The agency prioritizes wells that are actively leaking or pose immediate threats to the environment, groundwater and people. They might be releasing toxic gases like hydrogen sulfide, flooding land with contaminated water, or dangerously pressurized. These wells must be plugged right away, regardless of the cost, according to the commission. While Craddick noted at a hearing in February the state had 15 priority wells, a commission spokesperson said the number of priority wells fluctuates every day, with typically zero to five wells classified as emergency at any given time. 'If the fluid level in the well, the hydrocarbons and produce water in the well, gets up too close to that freshwater aquifer then it imposes a higher risk to contaminating that groundwater aquifer, so we wanna make sure that we get to those as wells first,' said Travis Baer, an oil and gas division district director at the Railroad Commission. The Luling well is categorized as a 2H priority well — still high risk but not a full-blown emergency. At the Luling field, red trucks and equipment surround a rusted pump jack, a mechanical device used to extract oil from an underground well to the surface. One of the trucks has two tanks that hold cement, another carries a cement mixer and a pressure pump. The process starts with a site assessment: Crews glance at hand-held devices hanging from their neck to test for dangerous gases like hydrogen sulfide and determine the wind direction so they can position themselves upwind. Once the site is secure, three workers wearing hard hats remove equipment inside the 2,000-foot-deep well — steel rods and tubing used to carry oil or gas to the surface. Almost two hours later, the workers were still pulling out tubing. Baer, the division district director, said these materials are often salvaged and sold to help offset plugging costs. Next, they assess the well's structural condition and measure how high fluids have risen inside. Once the well is fully evaluated, crews identify the underground zones that once produced oil or gas — known as perforations. A cast iron bridge plug (mechanical plug) is dropped down the hole, tightly sealed to provide a solid base and prevent fluids from leaking. 'This gives us a permanent bottom, it stops gas migration into our cement plug. So we know we're getting the best plug on bottom to seal off the perforations in the zone,' said Randy Niedorf, a well plugger with the company Bulldog Oil Well Service. Then, cement is pumped deep into the well. It flows to the bottom and rises up around the casing, sealing the wellbore and blocking any potential pathways for gas or liquid to migrate. Multiple cement plugs are installed along the well's depth, including near groundwater layers, to ensure complete isolation of oil and water zones. The final step is land restoration. Once the well is sealed, crews clean up the site. The Luling well was plugged in two days and all five wells in the area were plugged in about a week. First round of TribFest speakers announced! Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Maureen Dowd; U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio; Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker; U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-California; and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas are taking the stage Nov. 13–15 in Austin. Get your tickets today!
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Yahoo
For Homewood's spotted salamanders, a win and a warning
Ruby Banta (center) and friends Nova Russell (left) and Colette Duvall (right) held a yard sale to benefit the spotted salamander via a local nonprofit, Friends of Shades Creek. (Courtesy of the Banta family) This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. HOMEWOOD — Nine-year-old Ruby Banta thought it was a pretty simple choice, even for adults. 'This was the salamander's habitat first,' she said after an afternoon soccer game. 'It's not a college habitat.' Ruby was among the youngest of activists—sending a crayon-colored appeal to the City Council to save a sensitive salamander site—who had reason to celebrate this week. Officials at Samford University, a Baptist college just outside of Birmingham, announced a new location for sports fields in a planned commercial development that would have encroached on the habitat of the local spotted salamander population. Dozens of Homewood residents, Samford community members and local environmentalists had opposed the earlier master plan of a development called Creekside. Homewood closely identifies with the salamander, which burrows on the slopes of Shades Mountain and migrates across South Lakeshore Drive every spring. For the past 20 years, the city has held a salamander festival to educate the public about its slippery spotted neighbor. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX At a press conference Monday, the chief executive of Landmark Development, the company contracted by Samford University to complete the project, claimed victory in saving the population that his company's proposal had put at risk. 'I think we can stand up now and very confidently say, 'We saved the salamanders,'' Robert Dunn said about the agreement among the city, the university and Landmark to redraw its plans. 'The issues of concern did not fall on deaf ears.' The sports facilities are now planned to be built further west to avoid the salamander habitat. In Homewood, a fight for the spotted salamander Ruby's mother, Allison Banta, explained that the girl had learned about the salamander's dilemma by reading an Inside Climate News report over her mother's shoulder one night. She 'was immediately enthusiastic about figuring out how to help,' Banta said. Ruby, who has a pet lizard named Popcorn, told her third-grade teachers about the situation. She drafted a letter to City Council members about the salamander's plight. 'Please don't build there,' Ruby wrote, her crayon drawing of a yellow-spotted salamander adorning the top of the page. 'Samford already has an amazing school.' She recruited friends to shift an already-planned yard sale to benefit Friends of Shades Creek, an all-volunteer nonprofit organization in central Alabama that publicized the threat. 'Save the spotted salamander,' the children's cardboard sign read. Ruby is no stranger to the salamander. After a soccer game Tuesday, she chatted about a trip she'd taken during its mating season. She ventured out in her pajamas on a rainy night to help the creatures cross a roadway to one of several vernal pools where they lay eggs. 'We had to help them cross because it's a pretty big road,' Ruby said. 'So we have to protect them.' University of Alabama at Birmingham biologist Megan Gibbons was among the organizers of the broader community opposition to the development and was pleasantly surprised when she heard the change in plans. 'I expected this would be an uphill battle that would end in disappointment,' Gibbons said. 'But this is a rare win for the environment.' 'This is SUCH GREAT news!' Alabama Rivers Alliance, a statewide network of groups aimed to protect water resources, posted on social media. 'Thank you to Friends of Shades Creek, Cahaba Riverkeeper, Cahaba River Society and everyone else who spoke up for the spotted salamanders! Compromises and creative solutions can be found when the right voices are gathered and heard.' The environmental nonprofit that benefited from Ruby's yard sale praised the decision and process in a statement. 'Friends of Shades Creek is profoundly grateful to Samford University and Landmark for their willingness to listen to our concerns about the salamander vernal pool habitat and open mindedness to find a new solution for Creekside East.' This is a rare win for the environment. – Megan Gibbons, University of Alabama at Birmingham biologist Samford University's president said this week that the residents provided useful information and helped all parties reconsider. The development, billed as a 'livable town square environment' including shops and eateries, is part of the university's plan to expand and enhance its campus. 'Like any large development, we needed to hear the feedback of our community and the citizens of Homewood. The largest concern that was voiced was ecological damage, not just the salamanders but also the watershed and other related issues,' university president Beck A. Taylor said in a statement. 'We considered the concerns of our community and we went back to the drawing board. We tried to find an equally attractive opportunity or alternative. We found it. In fact, I would argue that it's a much better alternative for us.' Gibbons said the new plan shows that positive change can happen when residents band together. Ruby and her friends were a notable example, she said. The yard sale, she said, is 'motivating for other kids. It's motivating for neighbors, and it should be motivating for an institution like Samford.' Despite this win, the threat of habitat loss for salamanders and other plants and animals is ever present, she said. Research shows that spotted salamander populations are on the decline. Three out of every five salamander species are at risk of extinction. Of the many threatened amphibian species, more than 90 percent face habitat loss, the most common threat. 'You can name any animal or plant, and if they're in trouble—if their populations are in decline—the main reason is probably because of unbridled development. Development that's not taking into account the environmental circumstances and the plants and animals that live there,' Gibbons said. Even small wins in the face of imminent development are encouraging, she said. 'If we have more outcomes like this, maybe we can begin to reverse this pattern of habitat loss and destruction,' Gibbons said. 'We need to be careful about where we're developing and develop in an environmentally conscious way. It's a constant battle, but we have to show up to the fight.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
