Texas has a serious problem with orphaned wells and while the state might not have a plan the federal government does. The Department of the Interior has announced that Texas will receive over $343 million to cap orphan wells. ...
Texas has a serious problem with orphaned wells and while the state might not have a plan the federal government does. The Department of the Interior has announced that Texas will receive over $343 million to cap orphan wells. ...
In the flatness of the southern half of Crane County, where a clump of mesquite trees can count as a landmark, you can see a new hundred-foot column of salt water from five, maybe ten miles away. It shoots into the air under extraordinary pressure, as if someone had aimed a fire hydrant straight at the sky. Beginning on New Year’s Eve or in the early hours of 2022, an...
But something eerie is going on beneath the land, where Watt once played among the mesquite trees, jackrabbits and javelina and first drove the dirt roads at 10 years old. One by one, the wells seem to be unplugging themselves. They’re leaking dangerous chemicals that are seeping into groundwater beneath her ranch....
Amy Townsend-Small has been chasing methane her entire professional life. The quest has taken her from Southern California freeways to sewage plants to animal feedlots. Sniffing out the potent greenhouse gas, which traps 86 times as much heat as carbon dioxide after it’s emitted into the atmosphere, has required her to breathalyze cows and take chemical measurements at large manure lagoons. When fracking took off around 2010, Townsend-Small shifted her...
In the past five years, 207 oil and gas businesses have failed. As natural gas prices crater, the fiscal burden on states forced to plug wells could skyrocket; according to Rystad Energy AS, an industry analytics company, 190 more companies could file for bankruptcy by the end of 2022. Many oil and gas companies are idling their wells by capping them in the hope prices will rise again. But capping...
People can die when small rural pipelines called "gathering lines" explode. But after decades of talk among industry representatives and regulators, the death of a little girl in Texas serves as a reminder that there are still no rules....
Scattered across the oil and gas fields of Texas where fortunes have been won and sometimes lost, there are at least 7,869 abandoned wells. The Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) which regulates drilling calls them orphans....