Part One of a Series Examining the Texas Railroad Commission
Texas Railroad Commission meetings can get quite boring. Just ask Commissioner Wayne Christian.
Oil and gas attorney Sarah Stogner spoke during the public comment period of the Commission’s Oct. 15 meeting. Stogner was there to warn the Commission about some abandoned wells near her client’s property. A company wants to collect carbon dioxide from the air and inject it deep into the ground nearby. This carbon capture process allows companies to access lucrative carbon tax credits by claiming they’re reducing CO2 in the atmosphere. (More on that in Part 2 of this series.)
In an interview with the Record, Stogner said Christian was looking at his phone while she spoke about her client’s concerns.
“I’m sorry Mr. Christian, am I boring you?” Stogner said.
“Yes,” Christian replied. “OK, well, when you live it it’s not boring,” Stogner said, before continuing her talk.
“I was the fifth or sixth speaker, and he had been looking down and not paying attention to the speakers before me,” Stogner told the Record in an interview last week. “Then I got up there and he just continued to look at his lap. So I was planning on saying ‘Am I boring you,’ and him saying, ‘No, I’m paying attention’or whatever. For him to say, ‘Yeah, you are,’ I was a little bit speechless.”
The Record emailed Commissioner Christian and his chief of staff asking for a comment on his boredom over Stogner’s remarks. We also asked him to comment on concerns over abandoned wells in general. He has not responded as of press time.
Stogner often speaks at the RRC meetings about old, abandoned oil and gas wells. She ran against Christian for a seat on the Commission in 2022. A big part of her campaign focused on the RRC’s mandate to plug abandoned wells.
She runs the X (formerly Twitter) account @zombiewellz, where she profiles abandoned wells that leak toxic substances on private property and pollute aquifers. Recently, she’s teamed up with Hawk Dunlap, a Libertarian running against the incumbent RRC chairwoman Christi Craddick. They help landowners identify and mitigate “orphan” wells on their property after the operators abandon them.
When operating companies go out of business, it’s up to the RRC to deal with their wells. The State of Texas provides funding for the RRC to plug those old wells.
Earlier in the Oct. 15 meeting, Commissioner Christian praised RRC staff for plugging more wells every year than the State mandates.
“Consistently, we exceed the number they tell us to plug,” Christian said. “It’s always concerning, we get blamed with not plugging enough wells. I’m sorry, go to the Legislature and get the money and we’ll give it a bearwrestle.”
But according to another citizen who spoke at the meeting, the RRC isn’t wrestling hard enough. Schuyler Wight, a rancher from the Midland area, complained about the poor plugging job that RRC contractors performed on one particular well.
“Y’all spent $62,000 of the State’s money to plug this well,” Wight said. “So I went out there and picked up the cement samples from this well. I brought them here with me today.”
Wight displayed three crumbling chunks of cement that he said came from the well in question.
“The cement that came out of that well is no good,” he said. “It’s coming apart. It’s crumbling. It’s got holes in it.”
Wight said the RRC needs to provide better oversight on the contractors it hires to plug abandoned wells.
Stogner and Dunlap made headlines recently for helping landowners deal with abandoned wells. The Houston Chronicle referred to them as “first responders of sorts” for areas affected by “zombie” wells. They were on scene in Reeves County earlier this month when an old plugged well failed, gushing a 100-foot geyser of toxic saltwater into the air and causing the Federal Aviation Administration to issue flight restrictions over the area.
“We’ve excavated four wells that the Railroad Commission has plugged under their orphan well program, and all four of them are leaking,” Stogner said. “They’re not actually plugged. The Railroad Commission likes to brag that they’re spending all this money and time, and they’re plugging more wells than the Legislature requires. They’re plugging at them, but they’re not actually plugging them.”
Stogner blames the Commissioners for lack of serious oversight. At the Oct. 15 meeting, the RRC took action on 359 items of business. It took them about 20 minutes. In each case, they voted to approve or deny as recommended by staff. There was no discussion on any of the items, except for Commissioner Charistian’s remarks praising the staff for plugging more wells that the State requires.
“Everything’s on a consent agenda,” Stogner said. “They’ve got their scripts. There’s no questions asked. This is supposed to be the time when they talk about things and confer. But everything gets done beforehand with the chiefs of staff, so they’re not violating the open meeting requirements. But they’re not actually having open meetings.”