As oil industry collapses, public lands at risk
More than a dozen oil companies have gone bankrupt since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unless Congress acts, taxpayers may be left to clean up their messes, including those in Texas’ national forests, state parks and other public lands.
In Texas, 95 percent of land is privately owned. Our limited public lands preserve jaw-dropping landscapes, protect our drinking water, and provide homes to wondrous wildlife such as the bald eagle and bluebird. We all especially treasure access to the outdoors during this pandemic, which has stressed both our health and our finances.
But the state and federal governments have allowed the oil industry to ravage even these limited treasures, from Sam Houston National Forest to Caddo Lake State Park. According to the U.S. Forest Service, there are a stunning 4,694 oil and gas wells in Texas’ national forests and grasslands. Well pads, wastewater disposal sites, access roads, pipelines and other infrastructure built for fracking have turned more than 6,800 acres of these wild areas into industrial zones.
These mineral leases are already made at bargain basement rates. The Trump administration recently lowered these rates even further, attempting to incentivize production even as the market struggles with a massive oil glut. A study last year even found oil companies sometimes pay nothing at all.
There is also a lack of economic accountability for wells that have been abandoned — about half of the wells in Texas’ national forests and grasslands. When a well no longer produces sufficient oil or gas, the operator is supposed to permanently plug it to prevent methane leaks and protect groundwater. But often that doesn’t happen. Operators go bankrupt and walk away without cleaning up. Toxic and dangerous “ticking time bombs” are left behind.
From 1993 to 2008, so-called “orphan wells” contaminated groundwater at 30 sites in Texas. In Scurry County, a well leaked brine into the region’s aquifer for 22 years before being discovered. About 150 miles west, near Imperial, brackish water flows from an orphan well to create Boehmer Lake, which contains toxic levels of salt and kills any vegetation it comes into contact with. Unplugged wells also leak methane, a major contributor to global warming.
The oil companies have to put up a bond so there’s money to pay for clean up if the company goes belly up. But low bond amounts mean the sites either don’t get cleaned up or taxpayers are left holding the bag. According to the Government
Accountability Office, 84 percent of bonds for drilling on federal lands are too low to cover full cleanup costs, “because most bonds are set at their regulatory minimum values, and these minimums have not been adjusted since the 1950s and 1960s to account for inflation.” As a result, American taxpayers can pay upwards of $93,000 per well for remediation.
Although Texas has more than 6,000 orphan wells, the state plugged only 1,700 wells in 2019.
Now, with the oil industry in crisis, we may see a wave of oil company bankruptcies. As companies go under, we will see consolidation in the industry with potentially some benefits to the environment. But thousands more wells could also be orphaned and require cleanup ultimately funded by me and you.
Our nation’s oil and gas fiscal policies are antiquated — some policies have not been updated in nearly a century. Legislation under consideration in the U.S.
House would ensure that oil companies pay their fair share and are fully responsible for cleaning up any mess they make, and improve transparency and public participation in the leasing process.
The pursuit of oil and gas was once good for Texans. Now, it's leaving us holding the bag for environmental destruction no one can afford. We clearly need to get off of oil as quickly as we can, starting with drilling on public lands across the country.
In the meantime, we need to stop the worst impacts of drilling. Oil and gas companies are losing the public relations battle they manipulated for decades, and it’s in their best interest to accept and adhere to stronger environmental regulations.
It’s time for Congress to make the oil companies pay for their own clean up and then tell them to take a hike — right out of our public lands.