An exclusive Inside Climate News analysis found that companies have spilled nearly 150 million gallons of toxic, highly saline wastewater in Texas over the last decade.Oil and gas lawyer Sarah Stogner visits Lake Boehmer in Pecos County where abandoned wells have brought produced water to the surface for decades. The Railroad Commission considers these water wells and therefore not under their jurisdiction.
The spills ranged from small leaks of less than 10 gallons to massive incidents — 19 of the reported spills exceeded 500,000 gallons. Although they represented a tiny minority of spills, with about 350 reported in the data, some of the most damaging incidents took place when produced water was spilled directly into streams, rivers, or lakes.
“I ain’t got a beef with the Railroad Commission at this time,” Willfong said. “But I didn’t get a lot out of them in the beginning.” An orphaned well in Crane County began spewing produced water in 2021. The salty water covered an area that required remediation and a large pit was left behind after the salty soil was excavated. Credit: Martha Pskowski
“There have been different systems of tracking spills over time, so there could be differences if you’re comparing different logs,” a Railroad Commission spokesperson said.As hydraulic fracturing allowed Texas to rapidly increase oil production, vast amounts of produced water were also generated. But even as fracking transformed the oil and gas industry, the Railroad Commission did not adopt formal rules for reporting and remediation of produced water spills.
The commission drafted the guidelines for produced water spill cleanup in 2009 that were never formally adopted. The guidelines state that companies are not required to report produced water spills but are “encouraged” to do so, an apparent contradiction of the commission’s statement to Inside Climate News.
“Texas has robust reporting requirements and cleanup standards for spills that may incidentally occur during oil and gas production,” Permian Basin Petroleum Association President Ben Shepperd said in a statement. “Oil and gas operators in the Permian Basin each have best practices they follow for handling produced water.”
For years, produced water has bubbled up to the surface from an abandoned well near Imperial. Known as Lake Boehmer, the site is encrusted with salt crystals and high levels of hydrogen sulfide.