Thousands of Oil and Gas Wastewater Spills Across Texas
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From the Texon Scar to the Sabine River, produced water spills have impacted soil, contaminated water resources and killed wildlife. But the Railroad Commission of Texas has resisted new regulations.
December 18, 2023
State of Denial: Fifth in a series about Texas’ environmental regulators.
In the early 2000s, the city of Midland, Texas, detected contaminated well water on its T-Bar Ranch property, which it purchased as a source of drinking water back in 1965. The pollution was eventually traced to a spill of produced water, a byproduct of oil and gas drilling.
The multi-million dollar clean-up effort continues two decades later.
The city found elevated levels of chlorides and total dissolved solids in several wells at the ranch, signs of produced water, and eventually sued the oil and gas company Heritage Standard Corporation for leaking produced water at its storage tanks and waste ponds, causing it to leach into the groundwater.
Oil and gas drilling, and particularly hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, rely upon large quantities of water, sand and proprietary chemicals, some of which are toxic, to free the oil and gas from geologic formations deep underground. Produced water is the liquid waste that comes back to the surface and contains both the drilling fluids and groundwater that can contain naturally occurring hazardous compounds from the earth, including arsenic and organic compounds such as benzene, a carcinogen.
In March 2023, the city’s utility director presented next steps to the city council, describing the conduct of Heritage Standard employees.
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