Drillers spill millions of gallons of wastewater in Texas

The prolific oil and gas wells of Texas generate billions of gallons of salty liquid known as produced water. And a lot of this toxic water, just like crude oil, tends to get spilled — not just occasionally but hundreds of times a year.

From a spill of 756,000 gallons into the Delaware River in West Texas that sent chloride levels soaring to hundreds of small spills in one Permian Basin county, there’s hardly a corner of Texas not impacted. But messy record-keeping and ambiguous rules at the Railroad Commission of Texas, the state agency charged with regulating oil and gas drilling, have long obscured the scope and severity of these spills from the public.

The Railroad Commission has never formally adopted 2009 draft guidelines for reporting and cleaning up produced water spills. The agency delegated the authority to set different reporting thresholds to district offices, in a system that relies on self-reporting by offenders and includes little enforcement to assure accuracy and compliance.

A commission spokesperson said that produced water spills must be reported and that the agency fully investigates and mitigates all spills. But because the agency has never adopted guidelines, numerous companies are under the impression they are not required to report spills at all.

Inside Climate News has conducted the first-ever public analysis of produced water spills in Texas using data provided in response to open records requests to the Railroad Commission.

Over the decade from 2013 to 2022, the analysis found that oil