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. Watt said her property alone has “hundreds of wells” and “hundreds of miles of flow lines,” which transport oil and gas. Watt said landowners, let alone inspectors, are unable to regularly check on every well or pipeline.Watt said a Chevron representative eventually told her that produced water is not included in the Railroad Commission “definition of spills required to give notice” and the company would not be reporting the spill to the Railroad Commission.
The district offices of the Railroad Commission of Texas and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality occupy the same office building in Midland.Apache kept the lease. The Railroad Commission did not require remediation or issue any penalties. The event occurred after a Cimarex Energy salt water disposal unit in Culberson County lost power during a rainstorm. Roughly 18,000 barrels of produced water — or 756,000 gallons, more than enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool — spilled from the flow line into the Delaware River, in addition to 420 gallons of oil. The river is home to the endangered Texas hornshell mussel.On Aug.
“We conducted a flyover this past Thursday and since we are not observing any sheening or negative impacts to the river or surrounding shoreline, Cimarex will be discontinuing this operation,” a Cimarex supervisor wrote. A spokesperson for EPA Region 6 said the Railroad Commission is not required to notify federal officials about produced water spills, unlike crude oil spills over a certain size.
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