Dressed in a dark plaid button down and jeans with a rodeo belt buckle, Schuyler Wight arrived in Austin once again to ride herd on the Railroad Commission of Texas, the agency that regulates the state’s vast oil and gas industry.
“God didn’t build the Garden of Eden out there in West Texas, but we’ve been making a living off of it for six generations now,” the rancher told the commissioners in January, his thinning white hair showing the imprint of his hatband. “I know you think it’s just a wasteland, but we live out there. We have to work out there. We have to drink that water. Our cattle have to drink that water. There’s a lot of pollution out there, and I’ve been asking you a lot of questions, and you’re not giving me any answers.”
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Once a month, for the last two years, Wight, a 61-year-old conservative Republican, has flown in from Midland, Texas, and waited for his five minutes of public input to remind the commission of his singular focus: Texas’ orphan well crisis. The open meetings are held in a windowless room and follow a standard protocol, with staff from each division presenting active cases to the three elected commissioners. Decisions affecting millions of dollars of oil and gas business happen in a bloodless exchange of impenetrable bureaucratese. It’s difficult for an outsider to follow the action. “Why are you not answering my questions?” Wight asked. The commissioners offered no response. They thanked Wight and moved on with the meeting.
Once again, Wight would leave the state capital without any answers — but he promised to return.
There are more than 8,400 orphan oil and gas wells in Texas, according to the commission’s latest count. But that number does not tell the whole story. The commission defines orphans as “non-compliant wells that have been inactive a minimum of 12 months,” with operators whose Organization Reports, Form P-5, have also been delinquent for at least a year. The wells on the state’s official orphan list meet those criteria, but there is an unknown number of abandoned wells in Texas that are not on the list. Some of them are over a century old and cannot be found in any state records. Others are technically the responsibility of active operators that, for whatever reason, appear to have abandoned them, along with the messes that surround them. For Wight, an orphan is any abandoned well that no one from the state or the private sector wants to plug — and he has dozens of them on his property.
Wei Wang, the commission’s executive director, described the state-managed well-plugging program as “very aggressive,” and the commission in a news release said it “exceeded performance measures set by the state Legislature.” The program cost the state $52.5 million in 2023, according to agency spokesperson Patty Ramon, with the federal government contributing another $25 million. But Wang’s assurances mean little to Wight or other landowners who are dealing with unplugged wells that are leaking produced water, hydrocarbons and gas to the surface, and threatening groundwater. And the problem only seems to be getting worse.
Wight at the site of a leaking orphan oil well in the bed of the Pecos River.
The orphans on the commission’s official list are spread across more than 170 of the Lone Star State’s 254 counties, and their number fluctuates constantly. State and federally funded contractors plugged 1,750 wells in fiscal year 2023, according to the commission. But scores of newly listed orphans erased the progress. According to the commission‘s reporting, the orphan list has grown by more than 300 wells since August 2022. If the state continues plugging about 1,700 wells each year, it will take nearly five years to work through the existing backlog of more than 8,000 orphans, even if no additional orphans are added to the registry.
For Schuyler Wight, that timeline has started to feel like an existential threat.
Wight said his great-grandfather came to Odessa in 1883, eventually homesteading ranchland in remote Goldsmith that was the family’s first solid foothold in West Texas. His great-grandmother signed the first oil lease on the land in 1928. Since then, generations of Wights, like many landowners in the Permian Basin, have worked with oil and gas companies under that same lease as a way to diversify their income. “Ranching in the Permian Basin, you better learn how to get along with the oil companies, or you’re going to be fighting yourself,” he said.
Today, Wight’s land is littered with the refuse of a century of oil and gas production. He’s bothered by the rusting tank batteries, long-stilled pump jacks and heavy cables that oil companies left behind over the decades. But it’s the leaky holes in the ground that have him flying to Austin every month.
Wight and his family own rangeland spread across six counties in the Pecos River country of West Texas, an arid, almost perfectly flat expanse that seems, at first glance, to support little more than mesquite, greasewood and invasive salt cedars. The barrenness is deceptive. Wight’s cattle subsist entirely on wild forage, including tobosa, a native desert grass that thrives in the region’s clay soils and can endure years of drought. Cattle are not so hardy, not even the short-haired Brahman and longhorn crosses that Wight runs. They need as much as 25 gallons of water a day in the West Texas summer heat, Wight said. There’s nowhere near enough surface water to quench that kind of thirst, so Wight has to water his cattle at stock tanks fed by deep underground wells — and that’s what has him worried.
Cattle at a stock tank on Wight’s ranch.
Wight said he has identified about 250 aging and derelict wells perforating his land and the water table underneath it, including a smattering of unlisted orphans he’s discovered, some that he said are actively leaking oil, gas and noxious chemicals, along with contaminated saline wastewater from fracking jobs. Using his own Geiger counter, Wight said he has documented the presence of radioactive material at some of the flowing orphan sites, and worries that whatever he sees seeping out of corroded wellheads at the surface is trivial compared to what’s happening underground.
Since the beginning of the fracking boom in the early 2010s, producers have pumped billions of gallons of water underground in the Permian Basin (a single well in the Permian can gulp down more than 14 million gallons, according to the U.S. Geological Survey , and more than 35,000 horizontal wells have been drilled in the Permian since 2011, according to the U.S. Energy Information Association). Oil and gas companies also pump water underground to repressurize aging wells, in a process known as enhanced oil recovery, and to dispose of wastewater that is a byproduct of production.
All of that additional water can ratchet up the pressure across a network of fissures, faults and water channels that links hundreds of square miles of subsurface geology. Increased pressure and subsidence has caused a spike in earthquake activity, with tremors sometimes felt as far away as Austin, Dallas and San Antonio. In November 2023, a 5.2 magnitude quake — tied for the fourth largest in Texas history — originated from a region in West Texas where there has been intensive fracking activity and wastewater injection.
Old well bores also occasionally spit out geysers of produced water, which is saltier than seawater, destroying the surrounding soil and costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to get under control. In January 2022, a blowout at a mystery well in Crane County launched a geyser of briny water more than 100 feet in the air and took about two weeks to contain. In the aftermath of the incident, Railroad Commissioner Jim Wright told Texas Monthly that he would “caution against any overreaction regarding plugging failures,” and that the geyser may not have been an indicator of a broader problem in West Texas.
But less than two years later, in December 2023, Crane County was the site of another blowout from an old well bore that took six weeks and $2.5 million to contain. In a press release, the commission — which paid for and carried out the containment operation — said there was no evidence that the well bore was an orphan oil or gas well. In fact, the state had no record of the well at all. The affected landowner happened to be Wight’s cousin Bill Wight, who is also a rancher.
Wight said that he and ranchers like him face ruin if produced water from oil and gas activities contaminates the underground aquifers and reservoirs they depend on. The overpressurized fluids that generate headlines when they shoot out of the ground are constantly seeking to penetrate underground pathways, threatening groundwater. Well bores are especially vulnerable because they connect multiple geologic strata, and even when properly plugged, they can suffer integrity issues as a result of corrosion, seismic activity or mechanical failures.
The corroded wellhead of the Cordz-Juul No. 13, an orphan well the Railroad Commission finished plugging on April 8.
According to Wight, contamination of a vital water source by migrating underground produced water would be more than a logistical problem: It could mean the end of a family legacy that is deep into its second century and that forms part of the cultural and economic bedrock of West Texas.
At the monthly commission meetings in Austin, Wight has urged commissioners to come out to West Texas to see the problem up close, offering to serve as tour guide — a role that he does not usually relish. “I don’t like to come to Austin and raise hell. I like to stay on the ranch, be a mushroom and hang out in a dark place,” he told the commissioners at its August 2023 open meeting. “But I’m one of the few ranchers that will come out and speak publicly about this, and I think you need to appreciate that,” Wight said. “We got a problem with orphan wells in this state, and y’all are worse than treading water. You’re drowning.” When Wight wrapped up his testimony, the three commissioners said, in unison, “Thank you, Mr. Wight.” To date, none of them has accepted Wight’s offer.
It takes a lot of land to raise cattle in West Texas. A cow with a calf grazing native vegetation requires 35 to 150 acres, according to the Texas Landowners Association. For Wight, keeping an eye on stock spread across such vast terrain requires a lot of saddle time and countless hours behind the windshield. He also keeps a small airplane in a hangar at his home, which he uses to check on his herd and to scout for leaking oil and gas equipment. Over the years, Wight said he has developed a sharp eye for problem wells.
In April 2023, on the way to one of his parcels in Pecos County, Wight slowed his pickup to point out an active wellhead visible from the highway. There was nothing obviously wrong with the wellhead, no oily puddles or signs of corrosion. But a circular depression around the structure suggested ground subsidence, Wight said, which may have indicated an integrity issue somewhere downhole.
Near Imperial, a census district south of the Pecos River with a population of 294, Wight turned onto a caliche road hemmed in by door-scraping mesquite. Emerging into a field of ankle-high greasewood, he pulled up to a dead pump jack. The air stank of rotten eggs — the telltale sign of hydrogen sulfide gas. At high concentrations, the gas is odorless and instantly fatal. A dark black puddle drained from what appeared to be a broken valve on the wellhead. Grayish salt rime coated the surface where fluids had evaporated, evidence of brackish water flowing to the surface. A sun-faded sign read: Mosaic Exploration Operating Shearer Lease Well No. 16. According to searchable records in the commission’s database, Mosaic Exploration Operating, LLC, has been inactive since October 2020.
Wight at the site of Mosaic Exploration Operating Shearer Lease Well No. 16. Since this photo was taken, Texas spent $92,000 to plug the well.
Production reports in the commission’s database show that another company called Mosaic Pecos, LLC, appears to have taken over operation of the Shearer No. 16 in January 2020. Both companies share an address in Midland and a manager, Mary Ann Newton, with four other companies with Mosaic in their names. According to production data in the commission’s database, Mosaic’s wells on the Shearer lease had not produced a barrel of oil since September 2021.
At another well site, the Cordz-Juul No. 13, corrosion had almost completely eaten through the wellhead and its components. Broken, rust-covered parts lay scattered around what was left of the cylindrical adapter that connected the production casing to the above-ground structure. Cattle hoofprints marked the oily mud around the wellhead. All of the vegetation in a 10-yard radius was dead.
According to the commission’s database, the Cordz-Juul No. 13 has been operated by Mosaic Midland, LLC, another of the Mosaic entities, since January 2020. Before then it was operated by Mosaic Exploration Operating, LLC. Production data show that the Cordz-Juul No. 13 produced its last barrel of oil in September 2021. The Texas Secretary of State’s office confirmed that all five of the remaining Mosaic companies forfeited the right to transact business in Texas in March 2023. According to the Texas Comptroller’s website, the agency “is required by law to forfeit a company’s right to transact business in Texas if the company has not filed a franchise tax report or paid a franchise tax.” A phone call to the number listed for the various Mosaic companies went unanswered.
Three more well sites on Wight’s land, or entirely surrounded by it, were like variations on a theme. Each had rusted-out equipment oozing what appeared to be toxic sludge, and each was surrounded by lifeless soil. Each appeared to have an operator that, for one reason or another, had left a mess for the state to clean up. Unseen were any plumes of odorless methane that may have been spewing from the dilapidated infrastructure — a greenhouse gas that is a potent contributor to global warming. At that time, none of the wells were on the official orphan list.
As of April 2024, Wight said he has found 14 unplugged, abandoned wells that were leaking fluids to the surface on his rangeland. But he said he doesn’t know the total number. “If I drove around and looked for leaking wells all the time, I wouldn’t have time for anything else,” he said.
Old oil lease information signs at the entrance to one of Wight’s ranch properties.
Wight’s demand to the Railroad Commission is straightforward: Take an aggressive attitude toward orphans and abandoned wells. Wight plans to pass his operation on to his daughters someday and wants to stop worrying about the unplugged wells on his property. He wants the orphan backlog to disappear so that he doesn’t have to fear a catastrophic disaster on someone else’s land destroying the water that everyone shares.
“It’s really unconscionable to me that y’all allow these kinds of messes to go on for decades, and they get to where they’re out of hand,” Wight told the commissioners in April 2022, when he testified for the first time. “These wells are going to cost millions of dollars to plug, and I don’t have the resources to do it.” Holding up enlarged photos of orphans on his property, Wight said he had already spent $225,000 of his own money plugging wells. “I got to pay that money back with cattle. I don’t have oil wells to pay that damn thing back with.” Commissioner Wayne Christian thanked Wight for his testimony and said, “You’ve got a legitimate concern, and we intend to address it seriously.”
Two years after his first appearance before the commissioners in Austin, one of the leaking wells he has complained about, APV McCamey’s Mag -N- No. 32, has made the orphan list — along with another 257 of the defunct company’s wells across the state. According to the commission’s database, APV McCamey has been inactive since October 2022, when its Organization Report expired. Production records show that the Mag -N- produced its last barrel in March 2021. To this day, none of the leaking Mosaic wells Wight has identified is on the orphan list — but the commission has started plugging some of them anyway.
Agency spokesperson Ramon said the commission had spent $19.7 million in state funds on well plugging as of the end of February 2024. The commission’s website showed that state-funded crews had plugged 601 wells so far this fiscal year, which began Sept. 1 and ends Aug. 31. “The orphaned well population can fluctuate monthly; there can be some higher numbers and lower numbers at any point in time,” Ramon said. “The RRC aggressively plugs wells and prioritizes high risk wells and plugs those first.”
After two years of fighting to get the Railroad Commission to act on what he said were some of the most polluting orphan wells in West Texas — some on his own land, some on neighboring properties — Wight said he’s “more motivated than ever.”
The pace of action on wells on Wight’s and his neighbors’ land is glacial, but driving action on the Shearer No. 16 and the Cordz-Juul No. 13, both of which have now been plugged, is a small victory. Along the way, Wight has built a network of allies in the Permian and around the country, including fellow landowners, retired oil and gas engineers, water experts, surveyors and watchdog activists.
“This isn’t just about me and my family,” Wight said. “I’m concerned about the ability of everybody to live out here. I truly believe that what we’re doing is not sustainable, and we can’t keep going down this path.” He’s already planning his trip to Austin for the April commission hearing. “If people really knew how much liability the state has for these orphans,” he said, “it would scare the hell out of them.”
Corroded oil well casings left behind on Wight’s property.
Copyright 2024 Capital & Main.
All photos by Elliott Woods.