From left to right, Railroad Commission Chair Christi Craddick and fellow commissioners Wayne Christian and Jim Wright at a commission hearing in Austin on Nov. 30, 2021.State regulators on Monday released their draft rules for what to do with all the hazardous oilfield waste that’s left over once a well is drilled.
“For those who think this is my rule — what Jim Wright wants — that couldn’t be further from the truth,” Wright said. “Even before I came to office, [commission] staff knew we really needed to take a hard look at Rule 8.”since 1984 “With all due respect to our friends on the environmental NGO side, they don't know what the field application is; they don’t understand what operators are literally doing day in and day out,” he said. “We all want robust environmental standards.”
In recycling, the mud can be cleaned and used for more drilling, rocks and gravel can be used to build roads and some of the less-contaminated water can be removed for other uses. However, “produced water” is most often injected back into the earth under a different permit, a method that has caused an
Pilsner says the facility ruined their sense of peace: Bright lights shine from it at night. There’s constant beeping from vehicles backing up and often the wafting stink of petroleum, insecticides and what he describes as a smell like skunks. He no longer wants to open the windows and he worries about the waste pits' liners leaking and contaminating the area’s groundwater.
Ron Pilsner stands next to a cistern to store well water on his Nordheim, Texas property on Sept. 10, 2023. For the past few years, he's been testing the water quality from the underground well, which can be dirty or contaminated. Pilsner's land, which has been in his family for over a century, rests next to a recently-built drilling waste dump.Ron Pilsner lays out the contents of a soil testing kit on his Nordheim, Texas property on Sept. 10, 2023.
Sister Elizabeth Riebschlaeger, a longtime activist and opponent to Nordheim's drilling waste facility, stands at a meeting hall near the city park on Sept. 10. The hall is where Riebschlaeger first gathered to meet with other opponents to the drilling waste facility.
A home across the street from an entrance to the oilfield waste disposal facility has a sign reading"DON'T DUMP ON NORDHEIM."but didn’t include specific standards. The draft rules say pits must be lined with a plastic strong enough to resist damage from crude oil, salts, acids and alkaline solutions. Critics of the commission said the new liner standards aren’t much stronger than the internal guidance used by the agency.
At the time, one commissioner agreed to give the group access to commission staff members, according to an interview Wright did on a, but none of the staff actually wanted to work with them on the rules at that time. A 2019 bill toWright received campaign donations from the oilfield waste industry, according to campaign finance reports.
Railroad Commissioner Jim Wright says the proposed rules for oilfield waste disposal will be good for all Texans, not just industry as critics have claimed.Commission staff then invited powerful oil and gas lobbying groups to take part in an “informal review” of the task force’s recommendations. Representatives from major companies such as ExxonMobil, Apache Corp. and Chevron were invited to attend commission meetings about the rules.
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