Across Texas, thousands of inactive oil and gas wells remain unplugged. These so-called “orphan wells” can potentially leak toxic chemicals into the air and water.
Legislation to address closing those orphan wells, as well as regulations around carbon capture projects, are at the top of Virgina Palacios’ legislative wish list. She’s executive director of the nonprofit Commission Shift and Comissision Shift Action.
Palacios spoke with Texas Standard as part of our look at what some advocacy groups are hoping to see during the upcoming 89th legislative session. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: What issues are you pushing for the most when it comes to oil and gas regulation this upcoming session?
Virginia Palacios: I think our top two issues are orphaned oil and gas wells and a new technology called carbon capture and storage.
Let’s talk about the orphan wells. I know that that’s been something that we’ve reported on here at the Standard. But tell us what it is that you want to see lawmakers do, specifically.
It’s a modern problem. And I think that’s the most important thing for folks to know, is that it’s caused by bad state policy.
And so we want to make sure that active oil and gas well operators have to plug their oil and gas wells as soon as the wells become inactive or at least within five years of the wells being inactive. Most oil and gas wells are allowed to go unplugged almost indefinitely, and we need to stop that.
Remind me, what is your second priority?
Our second priority has to do with carbon capture and storage. That’s a new experimental technology that most people hope will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lead to net zero emissions to help prevent climate change.
But it hasn’t really been proven, and some of the bills that have been proposed at the Legislature would completely remove liability from carbon capture and storage companies and make it very dangerous for people who live next to carbon pipelines or injection facilities.
I think some people would say, well, isn’t that limit to liability an incentive designed to get some of these oil and gas companies on board when it comes to investing in the technologies that I think a lot of people presume will have to be part of any fix when it comes to climate change?
The kind of bills that we’ve seen proposed are unlike any bills that we’ve seen before for this sector and would prevent anybody impacted from these pipeline explosions or injection well releases from filing any claims for noneconomic damages. And so these are the things like disfigurement or death.
It’s really important to maintain these kinds of liabilities early on when this technology is being deployed, because it will set the standard for how to build these facilities so that they’re safe in the future.
Should taxpayers be, though, footing the bill for this? Isn’t this ultimately the responsibility of those who are in the business?
I completely agree. The oil and gas industry should be footing the bill.
Right now, the way the state pays for orphaned oil plugging is through fees and surcharges that oil and gas operators pay. One of the proposals that we’ve seen that would address some of the budget surplus would take some of the funds from severance taxes that oil and gas operators pay to the state and use that for plugging more orphaned wells.
It’s not an ideal solution because those severance funds do go toward paying for public education. But, you know, ultimately, at the end of the day, the oil and gas industry should be paying for plugging its own orphan wells.
How much do you believe lawmakers are focused on this? I keep hearing a lot about, say, the issue of that voucher-like plan that the governor has been pushing for. What do you see as the, I guess, willingness to take on these issues in the Legislature?
I think legislator’s ears are definitely perked up on the issue. We’ve been getting around to a lot of legislative offices and educating them about the number of orphaned wells, the ways that state law creates orphan wells and what some of the solutions are.
And so I do think there’s a lot of interest in dealing with the problem, especially because we’ve seen so many geyser-like well blowouts in recent years. We’re seeing more leaks from unplugged wells.
I think the real question is going to be how we deal with it. Are we going to make taxpayers pay for it? Are we going to be offering incentive programs so that we’re paying operators to do things that they ought to be doing anyway? Or are we going to require them to use some of their large profits to pay for their own damages?
And so we ultimately just want to see a time limit on the number of years that wells are allowed to sit around inactive. And we think that’ll reduce the number of orphaned wells.
Anything else we haven’t touched on that’s on your wish list?
Yeah. We also want to see funding for first responders training so that they can respond to incidents related to carbon capture and storage facilities more rapidly.
