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 prolific oil and gas wells of Texas also generate billions of gallons of salty liquid known as produced water. A lot of this toxic water, just like crude oil, tends to get spilled.
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.” The totals from the analysis are likely incomplete. Different district offices of the Railroad Commission ask companies to report spills at different thresholds, and the entire system depends on operators self-reporting their mishaps — with little enforcement to ensure that they do so consistently and accurately.
The spokesperson said the commission issued 116 violations of Rule 3.20 during fiscal year 2022. However, Railroad Commission staff were not able to identify how many of these violations were for produced water spills as opposed to oil spills. According to the District 8 office in Midland, which covers the heart of the Permian Basin, companies only must report spills larger than 250 barrels of produced water. But there are many smaller spills on the district spreadsheets, indicating companies may have their own internal standards., which classifies spills of 25 barrels or more as major releases and spills between five to 25 barrels as minor releases.
Left: 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. Right: Salt crystals from produced water that has spewed across a ranch in Crane County. The salt and chlorides can take years to break down and have lasting impacts on soil health.
Apache reported that a storage tank spilled 77,500 barrels of produced water on July 28, 2020 in Reeves County, about 10 miles north of Balmorhea. An Apache spokesperson said regulators and the company agreed that it would be “more harmful” to dig up the soil instead of allowing rainfall to dilute the produced water.
On Aug. 5, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department documented a fish kill in the Delaware River, including minnows, perch, and carp. A Railroad Commission inspector, Glenn Gainey, visited the site on Aug. 7 and district engineering specialist Wade Goode met with company executives two days later. The EPA disagreed. The agency’s Region 6, which covers Texas and New Mexico, eventually issued a consent agreement requiring Cimarex to pay a $13,220 penalty and continue water testing for three years on a 40-mile section of the Delaware River.
The Railroad Commission’s 2009 draft guidelines for cleaning up produced water spills focus on reducing chloride levels in soil and identifying potential groundwater contamination. The guidelines also recommend testing for additional contaminants, including benzene, toluene and metals in some cases.
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