Backlog of Texas orphan wells and the risk of toxic leaks grows, even as federal funds flow

Almost 18 months after hundreds of millions of dollars started flowing to Texas to plug inactive oil wells threatening land and water supplies, the state is struggling to reduce its backlog of abandoned wells, according to a review of Texas Railroad Commission data. The Texas Railroad Commission’s most recent list of wells needing to be plugged numbered almost 8,200, a 3% increase from August 2022 when the state received its initial $25 million grant. That should have been enough to plug an additional 800 oil wells beyond what the commission was already doing. But with new abandoned wells constantly being added to the list, Texas and other oil-producing states are stuck in a constant game of catch-up to plug old wells before they begin to leak a toxic mess of oil and salt water.

The Railroad Commission plugged 19,000 wells between 2005 and 2022, but another 21,000 sites were added to the orphaned well list during that time, according to a coalition that includes the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity. “While some states like Pennsylvania boast large inventories of (older abandoned) wells, for most states the orphan well crisis is a present problem,” the group said in comments to the Department of Interior last month. The Railroad Commission declined to make officials available for an interview. But in a written response, a spokesperson for the agency described the orphaned well list as constantly fluctuating. “Understand that the RRC aggressively plugs wells and prioritizes high risk wells and plugs those first to prevent groundwater pollution,” she wrote. Congress passed legislation in 2021 setting aside $4.6 billion toward plugging the hundreds of thousands of orphaned oil wells that have been identified in the United States. More than $100 million of that money has been distributed nationwide so far, with 730 abandoned wells plugged in Texas, more than any other state, the Interior Department reported in November.