Water is bursting from another abandoned West Texas oil well, continuing a trend | Hacker News Reader

Water is bursting from another abandoned West Texas oil well, continuing a trend

texastribune.org

179 pointstoomuchtodo172 comments

I'm still trying to figure out if dealing with OPEC and having to constantly control and monitor some of the most conflict prone areas and governments that have no love for America. . . . OR. . . .having to deal with trying to be energy independent and all the issues that come with it like what's being pointed out in the article.

There is no silver bullet for being able to power a country with 340+ million people - some of who live in very inhospitable climates (Arizona/Alaska) where one solution will work for everything and everybody.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but every time something like this happens, we focus on all the negatives instead of understanding the alternatives aren't that great either.

The military interventions around the world are not only due to our own needs for oil but also to control the access of others. Even if the US was energy independent the national security complex would still insist on invading everywhere

Our military and standing as a super power has been in decline for a while now. I don't think we really have the military superiority or ability to just simply invade countries any more. With China, Russia and Iran aligning against us both economically and militarily, I don't see much of what you're talking about happening.

Russia annexed Crimea and we did nothing. Russia invaded Ukraine and besides sending billions in aid, we haven't done anything militarily. The attacks against Israel went unprovoked and we've got all we can handle with the anti-Israeli protests going on here on our own soil - let alone trying to send troops to any of these hotspots. China has been sabre rattling about taking over Taiwan and all we can manage at this point are sternly worded memos. Add in the amount of conflict going on in Africa that nobody seems to want to deal with either. All the while China has steadily moved economically in on Africa and has essentially pushed us out of the country altogether.

What you're saying in 2024? I don't see the US has the capabilities to do that any more.

Ukranian invasion in particular have shown that US and Europe seriously under-invested in military. While western countries have been able to do very impressive tech, it was produced in small quantities, and once a real (although a regional) war broke out, it became clear that even Russia can drastically outperform western factories in raw production capacity.

With risks of much larger conflict with China become more serious, I really hope that americans reconsider their priorities and invest in military production before it's too late.

Russia produces a lot, but loses even more.

Indicators of that include bringing T-55 tanks to the battlefield, which require four, instead of the usual three, crew members to operate, which is troublesome.

They produce artillery rounds at a rate of 250k per month, but fired approximately 10mln during the first two years of the war.

The Black Sea Fleet is unlikely to recover anytime soon - if ever.

The list goes on. What good is production capacity ig it's wasted like that?

Russia is getting its brand new billion dollar (per unit) air defense systems blown up almost weekly by 1990s US equipment bud.

Ah, but how many weeks in a row? ;)

Is it a production problem or that the US government, especially the House Republicans, won’t approve sharing with Ukraine? Shipments appeared to resume instantly once permission was given, and that’s higher-tech stuff than what Russia is making or even buying from China and Iran.

I agree that the USA can't invade everywhere, no matter how much the hawks insist.

That said, "Any more"?

Russia is much less of a threat to you now than the USSR was between invading Poland and the fall of the Soviet Union and end of the Warsaw Pact. China and the USSR are why the US didn't win in Vietnam or North Korea, and you've had all those decades of fun with Cuba (including that time Castro offered to send some election monitors to help the US).

In general, the US does well as a team player, but isn't so good when it tries to be a loner. Looking over the Wikipedia list, of the wars you've won without allies, have been against very small, weak, opponents:

• United States invasion of Panama, 1989–1990 (but only if you don't count the Panamanian Opposition as an ally)

• The Tanker War is listed, but the full page for that war says the US was supporting Iraq at the time

• 1986 bombing of Libya

• 1923 Posey War, the main page for which… well, 2 casualties in total, so if that's a war then what are school shootings? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posey_War

• United States occupation of the Dominican Republic (1916–1924)

There were plenty of solitary successes before that, but even the end of that last one was a century ago now. The successes, like WW2, the USA was one country amongst many.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...

> Russia invaded Ukraine and besides sending billions in aid, we haven't done anything militarily.

An analyst I follow says this is deliberate, based on the US worldview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxZ402BMSs8

> The attacks against Israel went unprovoked and we've got all we can handle with the anti-Israeli protests going on here on our own soil - let alone trying to send troops to any of these hotspots.

Israel and the various Palestinian armed groups have been provoking each other for as long as I've been reading news. This doesn't justify any given example of bad judgement on either side, but they've definitely been provoking each other. And you're really not got all you can handle for the anti-Israeli protests, protests are a police action at most, not military.

I can't see the US forces being able to do much to help in the current Israel-Palestine mess, though, no matter what next step you think is the most important for peace in that area — given the politics, the only lever the US can pull on at this point is how many weapons they're willing to sell to Israel… and Israel has a huge weapons industry, about 10% of the global export market.

> China has been sabre rattling about taking over Taiwan and all we can manage at this point are sternly worded memos.

Yes, but that's also basically what's been going on since the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949, which resulted in the retreat of the Republic of China government to… Taiwan (fun fact: guess which of the two Chinas had a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council from 1949–1971).

A hot war between two large nuclear weapons powers?

Nukes are intended to keep peace, as in "mutual assured destruction". And they still work in this capacity :-/

Yes and now that a single hypersonic missile can disarm a carrier group, we can have even more Peace as America is persuaded to stay home /s

It’s not for nothing that Europe and China have been outpacing the U.S. in terms of renewables deployment. The only country that sees military intervention as the fix is us.

Europe, honestly, just can't afford that, even if they wanted. This is why e.g. Germany still has to buy natural gas from Russia, even while supporting the war effort of Ukraine against Russia.

Actually they built a bunch of LNG terminals very very quickly and now get most of their gas from that

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63709352

You can see rapid progression to zero of Russian imports for natural gas in Germany if you scroll down to the info graphic in this article

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-dependen...

Germany is also famously anti nuclear

Most gas in Germany comes via pipelines from Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium. LNG is at around 10%.

https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Gasversorgung/aktuelle_g...

Not everything is about resources. Are you one of those people who thinks Taiwan is about chips? That conflict predates the chips, it's about face, prestige and reputation, but I often read people on HN saying it's all about chips.

When all you have to explain the world is a hammer every problem will look like a nail. It's a form of cognitive bias.

I haven't seen anyone suggest China wants to re-unify because of chips; I would say US's incentive to guard against reunification is supply-chain sensitive.

It's a popular narrative that Taiwan can deter an invasion by having their fabs rigged to blow up and thereby depriving China of that resource. But China would want to take Taiwan and terminate the ROC government even if the island were an underdeveloped backwater with nothing of value because it represents a bastion of resistance to the CCP, a hold out from their civil war. Party prestige, not resources.

Furthermore, America has been invested in the defense of Taiwan for far longer than the chips have been involved. America needs to remain committed to Taiwan if it wants other countries, particularly Japan and South Korea, to take America's support seriously. Reputation, not resources.

I mean to remember reading that the chips are mostly there to stop an invasion. Taiwan was afraid of losing US support so the government set up a plan to make the country vital for the US economy, ensuring their protection.

It's probably an exaggeration though

Fair enough. I have heard the narrative that the chips are economic leverage against an invasion and agree it's an insufficient deterrent.

Energy production is national security. Each country should treat it as national security. US is lucky to have oil/gas fields, but it would not last for ever. Even ignoring the ecological impact of extracting fossil fuel, or impact on climate to burn fossil fuel, the fact that is a limited resource should force the US to move other energy production (e.g. nuclear, solar, wind, hydro) and migrate the energy consumption to electricity... if we want to soft land, when fossil fuel would get expensive (peak production, wars, etc.).

One thing I never understood about government policy with renewable energy is that surely it is a country's best interest to be as much energy independent and energy diversified as possible. Both from national security, geopolitical and economic point of views. Not even considering the environmental impact.

For example, Brazil has a huge production of combustible-grade ethanol which, although subsidised by the government, helps stabilize fuel prices for everyone in the country. When oil prices go up, ethanol production goes up which smooths price fluctuation.

In raw numbers the subsidies probably costs more for the economy than just importing oil when considering the years of cheap oil. But if you take into account all the business that don't collapse and go bankrupt because of that the math doesn't look so clear-cut. That on top of economy diversification.

This is just the economic argument of one alternative energy source in one country. The national security, geopolitical and environmental impacts are even harder to quantify but are extremely important as well.

For example, every country probably benefits a lot from having the ability of deploying more nuclear power plants, so it might be worth building a limited number of them just to keep the industry alive (especially if the industry is local to your country). That is even if you, as a country, decides against nuclear long term.

You mistake political interest with national interest, unfortunately.

I think O&G have large constituent voting bases from entire states. Let alone lobbying. Once Solar / Wind employ 1000s of highly concentrated workers for entire lifetimes, you'll see the political winds shift - pun intended.

Nuclear is the future and I would say the only way to achieve a "green" one. There is the issue of spent fuel disposal, but hopefully if fusion technology advances, then even this could be solved.

Also the issue of mining the uranium, which is horrible for the areas mined. Nuclear isn’t an option because of financial reasons anyways and probably never will be, and that’s as a person who loves nuclear and used to be a budding nuclear power plant operator.

> Nuclear isn’t an option because of financial reasons anyways

Can you say more? This is probably the first time I hear that nuclear energy is not financially viable.

It’s too expensive. Every other option is several times cheaper. It’ll never get less expensive because the inherent risks necessitate the expense. These expenses are mostly related to having to plan, construct, and operate a plant with perfection, which costs more than other power generation which don’t have as catastrophic a risk profile. Unfortunately, even with modern reactor designs, the risk remains high, so the cost remains high.

Almost but not quite.

The rules that require perfection are not there because of actual risk. We're past the point where things are already so safe, and releasing so much less radiation than coal plants, that getting stricter just makes the world worse.

Keep thinking that, but you’re wrong. Nuclear requires perfection.

But "perfection" is like the shoreline length paradox - once you look deep enough, you will never achieve perfection, it's physically impossible, so all you're doing is making it impossible for yourself to do anything.

Case in point - UK's latest nuclear power plant has been delayed and costs literally billions of pounds more than planned because hairline fractures were discovered in the reactor containment vessel. That sounds bad, right? Anyone who hears "nuclear containment vessel" and "fracture" immediately goes into panic mode and hence why the amount of money being spent on fixing this issue is literally unlimited and the entire project will be massively over budget in every possible way.

But......other nuclear reactors in britain(and in fact across the world) operate with the same fractures in their vessels and it's not considered a reason to shut them down. It's an inevitability of the manufacturing process, the vessel is still strong enough to withstand any kind of situation it could conceivably end up in, so it's literally nothing. But because it "sounds" bad the British public are spending billions to improve something that doesn't need improving, because like you said "Nuclear requires perfection". And I don't disagree with you in principle, but I think we have to acknowledge that perfection has a number of degrees to it.

> other nuclear reactors in britain(and in fact across the world) operate with the same fractures in their vessels and it's not considered a reason to shut them down

This should be viewed as "corrupted regulators" rather than "magically strong materials".

In 1986, the Challenger blew up. We learned that although originally good safety standards had existed, over time a series of small exceptions had been made, each one on the theory that "hey it never blew up yet, a small change won't matter".

Reactor licensing works like that. Sure, the reactor vessel is cracking which was never expected to happen. Sure, the graphite bricks are cracking which was never expected to happen. The important thing is, it never blew up yet, and that means it's perfectly safe to ignore the problems.

At some future point there will be a Problem and it will be dutifully explained that a series of small deviations from safe practices became normalized, blah-blah, and everyone will nod and take the lesson to heart, until it happens the next time.

>>This should be viewed as "corrupted regulators" rather than "magically strong materials".

Or you know, the fact that some of these reactors have been operating for close to 50 years and are fine is proof that it is actually indeed fine.

I don't know - would love to hear an expert argue either way.

The thing to ask is whether it's part of the (current) design and fully reviewed by engineers. The original design isn't gospel. What matters is updating the analysis.

What's the acceptable chance of leaking 100x as much radiation as a coal plant? Same question for 10x, 1x, 0.1x, and 0.01x

If you answer "zero chance" for all of those answers, you're being unreasonable, and choices like that increase the radiation you'll be exposed to.

Not op, but he is probably referring to the costs of building a nuclear power plant in the US which requires a lot of safety systems, concrete, approval process, etc.... the key is that a coal or gas fired power plant would have the same costs of the steam turbine system but the reactor part of the power plant is vastly more complex in terms of controls and safety compared to a gas or coal fired plant.

Long story short, because of the reduced complexity in powerplants using fossil fuels, they are inherently cheaper per kilowatt. And therefore the more complex nuclear power plant costs more to setup and takes longer... Thus increasing the overhead and therefore rate at which one must charge for the power to be economical

>>. Nuclear isn’t an option because of financial reasons anyways and probably never will be

The thing is......the "core" of national energy grid shouldn't operate in the "for profit" model. Any wealthy country should have enough nuclear power stations to be completely independent of any external energy source, even if they lose money operating them. It's a matter of national security, not free market. That's just my 2 cents though.

I personally would like to see that, too, and under the auspices of the naval nuclear program currently running in the USA, however I doubt it’s politically feasible.

Do you have the same opinion about cobalt and lithium mining? Both are also horrendous for the environment and have major recycling issues, but people continue to push for EV's over ICE autos.

Sure but those can also be recycled. Standard nuclear reactors cannot. Like I said though, nuclear is financially non viable.

energy independence != energy price isolation

we still have to police the red sea despite producing enough oil for ourselves

Another fun part of having capped oil wells all over the place is that they can seep hydrogen sulfide gas. It can permanently disable you or even kill you.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/tox...

If you don't force people doing nasty business to pre-pay cleanup costs, they get to keep the profits and socialize the expenses of cleanup to everyone else.

That's why there are hundreds of EPA superfund cleanup sites, no-one has to pay, just bail out of town and keep the profits.

Alberta has an orphaned well program to cover this (more likely the drilling company no longer exists vs. "skipped town") but even with the forethought it still doesn't work.

because the Jason Kenney & Danielle Smith (aka UCP leadership) decided to let the oil companies off the hook.

The parent comment specifically talked about prepayment of cleanup costs - i.e. taking their money before it's drilled, so that when companies go bankrupt, there is already money set aside to do the cleanup. The Alberta system does not do this.

The book Empty Mansions [1] is about the heiress of Montana copper mining interests, Hugette Clark (father is namesake of Nevadah's county). IIRC, she inherited multiple properties and $300m+USD. A quite fascinating view into the insanity of an eccentric ultrawealthy, who lived into the 21st Century at times thread-barren.

The unfathomable wealth she squandered on bullshit throughout her mostly-anonymous lifetime of luxury... could have supported hundreds of other 20th century families. As specific example, she maintained a Santa Barbara mansion, for decades, without ever visiting the property.

That she was given it all from her father creating a superfund site... probably helps explain much of her reclusiveness [that and loss of sister at a young adult age].

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Empty-Mansions-Mysterious-Huguette-Sp...

> could have supported hundreds of other 20th century families

Unless she literally burned the money in a pile in her back yard, then that's what spending does, put the money in other peoples hands.

She spent the money on things with no lasting value but she spent the money.

Money, spent, represents using up the labour of others. Spending money on frivolous things is absolutely wasting something: not the money per se, but other people's time and effort.

> Money, spent, represents using up the labour of others.

Except the labor is entirely voluntary. The people performing the labor had the option of saying "no."

> but other people's time and effort.

In exchange for money so nothing was wasted other than the potential value of the money to the spender.

Critically the notion that "it _could_ have supported hundreds of families" is wrong. The money obviously _did_ support those families.

The families received the benefit of the money, minus the cost of the labour. If they had received just the money, without paying the labour cost, they would've been better off. (Or, they wouldn't have needed as much, meaning the money could have been spread among more families.)

I recommend reading The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes. Chapter 10 discusses this in some detail. (While reading, keep in mind that John Maynard Keynes is not correct.)

> minus the cost of the labour.

What cost? Labor is time traded for money. If they didn't do this job they would have to do another.

> If they had received just the money, without paying the labour cost, they would've been better off.

By what metric? Labor must be practiced and the hours of time devoted to it increases ones skill. "Better off" in that they could have done nothing and got money anyways, but if that wasn't a realistic option, then it's pointless to consider it.

> I recommend reading The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes

Did he ever work for a living?

> "Better off" in that they could have done nothing and got money anyways,

Or done another job and had more money (see your previous paragraph). Unless you think people only work when they immediately need the money, in which case,

> the labor is entirely voluntary

is incorrect. Economists disagree on many of these points, and each viewpoint ends up with a mostly-consistent model of economics, but jumping between viewpoints the way you are doing is not valid. Ex contradictione sequitur quodlibet: your conclusion is certainly nothing I've ever seen an economist propose.

> Did he ever work for a living?

Wikipedia's right there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes#Career But I didn't cite him because he agrees with me. I cited him because he's the economist who's come closest to saying what you're saying. Spoilers:

> If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is.

The rest of the chapter explains how I've quoted him out of context, and he would laugh at you if you seriously proposed doing this.

If this is fracking water, it's truly horrifying.

TFA posits that it's actually fracking water creating the pressure that is pushing the old "fill" water out of these wells. That's somehow less reassuring b/c it means the fracking water is creating enough pressure to blow old wells out, doesnt it?

Seems like the difference between fracking water and fill water could be very little under some circumstances

This water is probably worse than fracking water. In addition to being contaminated with oil, etc, according to the article it's 5-8 times saltier than sea water. These wells are literally salting the earth around them.

and also lots of >hazardous compounds such as arsenic, bromide, strontium, mercury, barium, and organic compounds, particularly benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes.

This will likely contaminate the land, rendering it unsuitable for agriculture and, I dare say, potentially transforming it into a barren wasteland incapable of supporting organic life.

Salt will definitely render the land unusable, but most of those other things are the consumer’s problem, not the producer. I find it highly unlikely that governments in Texas will ever successfully prevent a farmer from growing food on poisoned land, for the same reasons that governments in Texas let these wells become seeping messes in the first place.

Watched a video of a guy who owns an oil and gas company and when a nearby company started fracking their well, it produced enough pressure to 10x his own output without any effort on his part.

reservoirs are big sponge-like rocks. The pressure has to go somewhere.

Why not conclude it’s a chemical reaction…

> West Texas oil producers pump millions of gallons of so-called produced water, laced with chemical lubricants and numerous hazardous compounds such as arsenic, bromide, strontium, mercury, barium, and organic compounds, particularly benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes, underground every day for disposal, often into old oil and gas wells.

Because volume expansion from a reaction wouldn't be that large. Things aren't burning/etc.

Direct injection of large volumes of water (with those things in it) is more than enough to explain it. No need for reactions of any sort.

The issue is that the injection should be into far deeper sections. Something in the active injectors is leaking and therefore the injected liquids aren't making it to the bottom of the well and are flowing out the sides and into shallower permeable sections. The simplest explanation would be a bad casing (i.e. the steel sides of the well) in a major disposal well, but it's likely more convoluted than that. Either way, it's a significant problem for a lot of reasons.

Yeah, its probably a more boring problem of inadequate regulations and corporate negligence.

I guess the next goldmine idea of carbon sequestration will work great with hundreds of thousands of leak points.

https://undark.org/2024/03/26/carbon-storage-abandoned-wells...

> Dunlap suspects it may be related to the injection of fracking wastewater. West Texas oil producers pump millions of gallons of so-called produced water, laced with chemical lubricants and numerous hazardous compounds such as arsenic, bromide, strontium, mercury, barium, and organic compounds, particularly benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes, underground every day for disposal, often into old oil and gas wells.

No shit. The Permian Basin is home to some of the biggest fracking operations and they've been depleting the ground water to supply the wells so much they've started to run out and have to recycle the waste water: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/12/19/texas-permian-basin-...

Pennsylvania is increasingly having a similar problem with what they're calling "frac-outs" where the fracking water breaches nearby wells and poisons residential water: https://www.wesa.fm/environment-energy/2022-07-15/dep-invest...

The Pennsylvania situation is completely different. Those were wells drilled decades ago that were extremely shallow and done with very simplistic methods that didn't isolate the well from ground water. That type of drilling is no longer done. The wells in the Permian are below multiple levels of bedrock well below any pumpable ground water and they're lined with impermeable barriers all the way up the well.

Further this article isn't even about fracking. The wells water was pumped into were ancient abandoned wells, not fracked wells.

>Further this article isn't even about fracking. The wells water was pumped into were ancient abandoned wells, not fracked wells.*

The oilfield firefighter quoted in the article (who has experience with wells in 102 countries), suspects that the Texas problems are related to fracking. So I don't think fracking can be dismissed out of hand, even if it's the old wells that are failing.

Hawk Dunlap, an oilfield firefighter who lives in Crane County and surveyed the recent blowout for Wight last week. “It’s not clear what the source is.”

...

Dunlap suspects it may be related to the injection of fracking wastewater

To be clearer, it's not related to fracking wells as the wells being injected into are not fracked wells.

Isn't that the same thing the fracking companies tell people when their well water is contaminated? It's not related to fracking because we're not injecting water into your wells?

no, because fracking is the deliberate fracturing of the reservoir with increased pressure, which can penetrate into the water table and contaminate water wells. This is using the old well as a disposal for the used/fracking/whatever water - not repressurizing this well. The column of fluid acts as a cap on the reservoir pressure that wants to vacate the old well. What's likely happening is an alternative exit (maybe created by fracking, maybe not?) is allowing the well to produce, vacating water, contaminants and oil.

People forget that Pennsylvania is the birthplace of industrial petroleum extraction. There are abandoned wellheads all over, many of which exist in no records anywhere, and which are often in the middle of dense forest that has grown up since they were drilled. PA was also logged extensively for charcoal, timber, and fuel for locomotives. A forester once told me that nearly the entire state burned over during the peak of deforestation at the beginning of the 20th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_City,_Pennsylvania

Interesting problem: how would you locate unmapped abandoned wells for triage and plugging?

Unfortunately I think they're mostly discovered when there's a fish kill in a nearby stream, or somebody's well water starts smelling funny. Industry in PA has a long history of closing up shop and leaving environmental problems for future generations to trip over. I talked with a plumber who told me a story about the heavy-duty multi-stage treatment system he installed for a house where the well water was basically acid mine drainage. He had to bring the pH up from 4! When he took out the old water heater, it was full of heavy brown sludge, which he had to drain before it was possible to move it.

This is very helpful! Would some of the metrics this device can track be attributable to when this pollution occurs? Specifically thinking rapid ph change, and and a deployment of these devices in a sensor fabric across vulnerable bodies of moving water.

Perhaps also an opportunity for a distributed network of water sensors on private water wells still in use.

https://www.crowdsupply.com/georgetown-scientific-llc/nectar...

The first article you linked to is absolutely, mind-boggingly insane.

Just one of the absurd quotes from it:

    Fears hit especially hard in the state’s western desert and plains, where fracking is booming. Almost 80% of this vast region’s documented water demand is met by a complex collection of aquifers — colossal, subterranean formations that filled up over millions of years. 

    “We’re just planning to deplete it. It’s not like we’re conserving it. We’re just making the crash landing slow and somewhat tolerable,” said Jeff Bennett, a hydrogeologist in the West Texas town of Alpine who worked for 15 years for the National Park Service nearby.

end.

    Such a fate awaits the Ogallala Aquifer, the nation’s largest underground body of water, which swoops into West Texas from the north, and for which the Texas Water Development Board calls “managed depletion” its “management strategy.”

I mean.. What? But it gets better:

    Some of the water is reused in fracking, but the large majority is pumped underground and discarded. Planners have considered treating it to irrigate crops instead, which California does with wastewater that is much less salty and doesn’t include fracking fluids.

They have so much heavily polluted, toxic water they don't what to do with that they want to pump it in our food supplies. They are not content enough of polluting the water supplies for the coming centuries, they also want to make sure that food-growing land is unfit for human use as well. Very, very impressive.

""It’s the latest in a string of mysterious water features in the arid Permian Basin""

""Last year, an eruption of salty water swamped several acres on Wight’s cousin’s ranch, a geyser shot up from a well in Crane County, then another on the Antina Cattle Ranch. Nearby, a large pond of gassy groundwater has become a permanent feature called Boehmer Lake.""

This is the opening line of a disaster movie.

Dinosaurs? Climate Change? The Earths Core heating up? Neutrinos?

Who would have guessed that the Great Filter preventing interstellar civilizations is greed?

> Nearby, a large pond of gassy groundwater has become a permanent feature called Boehmer Lake.

Well, at least somebody had a sense of humour, and named it appropriately..

Original title "Water is bursting from another abandoned West Texas oil well, continuing a troubling trend" condensed down due to title limits.

Another option would have been: "Water bursting from another abandoned Texas oil well, continuing troubling trend"

Why is a Railroad Commission in charge of capping oil wells?

In Texas that's how it works, the Railroad Commission of Texas. The RRC was created in 1891 to regulate railroads, but its role expanded to include oil and gas regulation in the early 20th century.

That's a more interesting question, and history behind the answer, than you might expect.

The Texas Railroad Commission was founded in the 1880s during a progressive political movement there against monopolistic businesses, largely railroads.

Its remit extended to more general monopoly regulation first to oil pipelines in 1917, perhaps reasonable as another transportation-related activity, then oil and gas production in 1919. It took on natural gas delivery in 1920, bus lines in 1927, and trucking in 1929.

In the 1930s, as the East Texas Oil Boom developed, the TRC along with the US Department of Interior effectively became part of the structure which managed US, and by extension, global oil markets until the early 1970s, when the US no longer had surplus oil production. In the 1930s, the TRC and the Texas Rangers literally seized wellhead production by force of arms in order to curtail wildly surplus production which was both tanking (so to speak) oil prices (hitting a low of $0.03 per barrel) and premature oilfield depletion through excessive extraction.

(Oilfield extraction at the time largely relied in the inherent gas pressure of the fields, resulting in early drilling producing "gushers" where oil could spout hundreds of feet into the air. Like poking many holes into a balloon or bottle, excessive drilling reduced that pressure, and could often leave much oil unrecovered within formations. Limiting drilling and extraction reduced individual operators' yields but increased the overall field yield. Other countries, particularly those with nationalised oil operations such as Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, etc., effectively arrived at similar trends.)

There are also principles of resource recovery which were either established or enshrined by the TRC, notably "Rule of Capture", a whole 'nother discussion. And the (unrelated) issue of regulatory capture, in which a government regulatory agency overseeing an industry tends to over time answer to rather than govern over that industry.

Wikipedia of course has a good general overview: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzWlrARDVbQ>

Daniel Yergin's epic history of the oil industry The Prize discusses the TRC in the context of the East Texas Oil Boom in chapter 13, which makes for fascinating reading, not only about the oil industry but about the actual realities rather than the theoretical operations of "free markets" and natural resource extraction.

And for those interested in a deep dive, several books, including David Prindle's Petroleum Politics and the Texas Railroad Commission (1984) <https://openlibrary.org/works/OL9371845W/Petroleum_Politics_...>, Mark A Miller's Oils & Gas and the Texas Railroad Commission (2015) <https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24732694W/Oil_Gas_and_the_Te...>, and William R. Childs's The Texas Railroad Commission (2005) <https://openlibrary.org/works/OL5476040W/The_Texas_Railroad_...>.

This is one of the best comments I’ve read on hn recently. Thank you!

Comments like that is why I keep coming back here. It's just next level discussion.

Thanks, both of you.

The question may have been why the TRC and not the company that drilled it.

That's a more interesting question, and history behind the answer, than you might expect.

Indeed. I'm just glad that there exist people whose purpose is to stay on top of subjects like this.

I'd run across the TRC myself some years ago, had much the same question, started investigating that and a few related issues, and ... just kind of kept going.

Gordon Rattray Taylor made the observation most often presented as "the most exciting phrase to hear in science , the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!), but 'That's funny ...'". (Often attributed to Isaac Asimov, see: <https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/03/02/eureka-funny/>.

The same relationship holds strongly elsewhere. "Why the hell is the Texas Railroad Commission in charge of oil production?" was pretty much what started me on this rabbit hole. Yergin's chapter off-handedly mentions the "Rule of Capture" (which originates with British Common law and the legality or illegality of hunting wild game on one's own, others', or public (Crown) lands, and through a Texas Supreme Court case (Houston & Texas Central Railroad Co. v. East (1904), of which I would still like to find the court's opinion) came to be applied to groundwater, and by later extension, oil and other "mobile" minerals.[1] To the extent I have found the court's opinion, it is, roughly (the reference isn't immediately available): the behaviour of subsurface water is unknown and unknowable and hence the Rule of Capture applies. This was untrue at the time and has been further strongly refuted by subsequent geological and hydrological science. Law, however, is precendential rather than scientific, and poorly-founded rulings may remain in effect for a very long time.

There are a few related ... mysteries and/or inconsistencies in the law and economics of mineral extraction, including Hotelling's Rule, which purports to explain the pricing of mineral resources (including coal and oil), but ... based on an extremely reliable and detailed pricing history of oil, absolutely fails in that. Hotelling cites numerous sources, including himself and earlier economic works (Gray, 1914, and Ricardo, 1909[2]), but no geological or scientific works outside the domain of economics, which strikes me as ... a peculiar oversight.

Back on Google+ I was asked in a discussion whether or not there was some relationship between the oil industry and climate denialism, much of it based on "Young Earth" creationism. That lead me to Lyman Stewart, founder of Union Oil of California, as well as Biola University, and a set of publications entitled "The Fundamentals".[3] "Biola" is an initialism for "Bible Institute of Los Angeles", and the movement known as religious fundamentalism takes its name from the latter. Both Biola and Fundamentalists have had a long association with young-earth creationism and many forms of climate and other denialism.[4][5] Stewart is only one of many profoundly religious early oil magnates, with another notable exemplar being John D. Rockefeller (and even more so his wife Laura). Extractive industries generally seem to attract and/or cultivate highly religious types, and even the field of geology is markedly more religious than other sciences based on various citations I've seen.

I'm not attributing any particular conspiracy here so much as a tendency for such behaviours, ideologies, and thought patterns to be mutually reinforcing, though in what I see as highly pernicious ways.

________________________________

Notes:

1. See "History and Evolution of the Rule of Capture" <https://www.twdb.texas.gov/publications/reports/numbered_rep...> (PDF)

2. The "Law of Rent".

3. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman_Stewart>

4. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biola_University>

5. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fundamentals>

And a late self-reply as I've found the relevant case citation, for whomever may find this useful, most likely Future Me....

Texas Supreme Court cases are recorded in West's South Western Reporter. Westlaw is famously obsessive with copyright, but all cases prior to 1928 are now in the public domain.

There's an online archive of South Western Reporter at Hathi Trust:

<https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100333420>

(Via the Online Books Page at University of Pennsylvania: <https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=swrep...>)

The full citation for the case, which gives the volume and page number, is:

  H. T.C. Ry. Co. v. East

  Full title:  HOUSTON TEXAS CENTRAL RAILROAD COMPANY v. W.A. EAST

  Court:  Supreme Court of Texas

  Date published: Jun 13, 1904
  Citations
  81 S.W. 279 (Tex. 1904)
  81 S.W. 279

So we want South West Reporter, volume 81, page 279.

Which is here:

<https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044103152245&se...>

(Hathi infuriatingly doesn't permit full-volume downloads, but you can download PDFs one page at a time...)

I'd turned this up using a GPT (FastGPT from Kagi), asking it what the early-20th century Texas case concerning rule of capture was, whether that case was online anywhere (reply: not really, though there are several discussions of it), and then where Texas State Supreme Court rulings were published. OCLC failed to give reasonable references, the Internet Archive doesn't seem to carry these, but the UPenn Online Books Page (Homepage: <https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/>, a hugely useful tool I'm deciding) pointed me to Hathi.

On GPT: the ability to go through a series of questions about a topic, rather than just doing a keyword search, really is transformational. I'd been an early user of Google (1998/9), and online library catalogues for over a decade before that. Being able to inquire about topics and narrow down where to find things is tremendously useful, and I'm still wrapping my head around this as a tool.

> There’s nothing uncommon about a leaky old well. Many in West Texas were drilled during World War II and 80 years underground can do major damage to steel and concrete casing.

This makes me hope carbon sequestration never takes off.

What could possibly go wrong...

(And yes, their pilot test locations have been, indeed, leaking..)

>> Texas’ oilfield regulator, the Texas Railroad Commission, has yet to offer…

can anyone explain why the Railroad Commission regulates oilfeilds? is it because there aren’t many railroads in Texas?

Cause: They poked holes deep in the ground and billions of tons of land, at a minimum, are pressing down as hard as it can.

Unless the holes are huge enough like 1000 feet wide, the pressure of the land above should be able to even out on the surrounding walls of the hole. Geoligical event similar to this are sinkholes that happen in Karst areas. But those are sinkholes. And the surface depression from that sinkhole is visible.

Instead, what would be more rational to assume is that the grounds are settling (which they generally do), and the water inside the voids are being squeezed out. The water is coming into contact with softer deepwells and is bubbling to the surface.

Sigh... all thats happening is formation pressure overcoming an improperly capped well. This article is making it out to be some stupid mystery but it's pretty obvious... even the original article contains errors or leads the user to incorrect conclusions (likely intentionally). I'll surmise a guess to whats happening at the bottom of my comment.

"Capping" is supposed to be temporary, with the intention: of usage later combined regular reinspection, or permanent kill later ("plugging"). A plugged well is injected with high pressure concrete to/past the impermeable rock layers, past the multiple steel/concrete well casings that travels through aquifers. Why would you cap a well instead of plugging? lets explore that and see if you can guess the correct answer.

I'm greatly oversimplying this, but the state is supposed to keep track of capped wells to make sure 'something' is done with them. Given the age of these wells (80+ years ago or WW2 era) it doesn't surprise me if shortcuts were taken and records don't exist.

I think if you're going to be against something, it's really important to understand it. My opinion is this is an environmental issue that should be addressed, but treating it with sensationalism and throwing pseudoscience in is just going to add confusion and tie up resources that could be used to fix the problem. These fluids need to stay in the ground... especially the salt water, as that simply does not break down in nature.

The articles author and comments here lack a basic knowledge of Geology:

> Dunlap suspects it may be related to the injection of fracking wastewater

This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of whats happening. Fracking involves the injection of fluids to expand cracks in formations, then flash filling them with an aggregate. This allows formation fluids to flow faster. It's not like you're sitting here pumping up formation pressure to eleventy billion and keeping it there. That would be counterproductive to production anyway: you want stuff to come out of the well, not stay in the ground.

To be perfectly transparent though, there are extractions methods where a flow is introduced into a formation by creating a pressure differential in a formation; you suck at one end and blow on the other. No idea if that's present where the issue is taking place, but it's unlikely.

> If this is fracking water, it's truly horrifying

If a formation underwent production after fracking... where do you think that "fracking water" went? This comment shows a fundamental misunderstanding of whats happening.

> Pennsylvania is increasingly having a similar problem with what they're calling "frac-outs" where the fracking water breaches nearby wells and poisons residential water

This is more than likely surface contamination by some ding dong fracking company, but that doesn't make good headlines. It's hard to take stuff like this seriously... production formations are thousands of feet below ground, far far far below the water table, which sits on top of the bedrock and impermeable layers. If said layers _were_ permeable, no water table could exist, because the water would simply keep going "down". The sensationalism around fracking is face-palm inducing.

> The Permian Basin is home to some of the biggest fracking operations and they've been depleting the ground water to supply the wells so much they've started to run out and have to recycle the waste water (link)

> If you let people pump garbage water into the ground on your property, you deserve what comes back up

Fracking is a one time operation. It's important to understand that.

The other comment links an article that says:

> Fracked wells in West Texas don’t just produce petroleum. Much more than anything else, they spit up salty, mucky water.

This is actually really important to prevent earthquakes and ground movement. If you remove x number of fluids and don't replace them, you'll cause shifts in rock layers. The best place for extracted fluids is back where they came from, in roughly equal amounts.

What's happening in Texas is people are extracting fluids from one area, seperating oil from the saltwater, then gung-ho slapping that water back into the earth in another. This produces a formation pressure imbalance and causes earthquakes among other issues. Nobody can really predict whats going to happen when you do this... we simply don't know "whats down there". As such, a "Dead" formation is probably now being pressurized and blowing out caps that were half-arsed capped. As a matter of fact, companies will keep old wells unplugged for the explicit purpose of turning them into salt water disposal wells.

So in conclusion salt water injection is the root problem, but the media puts a magnifying glass on "fracking" for whatever reason and nothing actually gets done.

Nothing you say here is a defense of this industry. Some of it is an indictment. Was that your intent?

Both sides annoy me.

The comment is correcting the article. Why would it be a defense of the industry?

so to summarize... it's the oil companies with bad drilling practices yet again (and not fracking)? injecting wastewater and causing pressure imbalances?

Yes... very close: It's bad production practices, not drilling practices.

After the well is 'completed', you move onto 'production'. The practice of using old wells as salt water injection points for production wells is practice that is relatively unscrutinized. Since said old wells are often miles away, often drilled into different formations, this causes problems ranging from earthquakes to repressurizing depleted formations (which I'm betting is what is bursting the half-arsed well caps).

Worse off, the salt water thats reinjected deep into the earth can take decades to migrate, leading to earthquakes 20+ years later.

The saving grace about this practice is that is truly is below impermeable rock layers (yes even fracked formations), so it's unlikely to ever reach the surface, except in the case where other mistakes were made.

> I think if you're going to be against something, it's really important to understand it.

As someone who considers themselves an environmentalist, and thinks we are doing some terrible things to the Earth right now that we're going to be paying back for generations, I couldn't agree more. I used to love the passion, but having seen first-hand how counter-productive it can be (when it's coupled with low information), I wish people would hear and accept that message.

When it comes to disagreements, especially political (which the Earth/environment should not be a political issue, but here we are), the people you are trying to convince are going to pay attention the worst representatives, and they will suck all the oxygen for the debate away. Some of that is done in bad faith, but mostly it's just human nature.

Please people, for all that is holy:

1. Stop treating the other side as enemies that just hate the planet and want to kill it. Virtually nobody believes that. It's a different set of priorities. Many people on the other side have their priorities in the wrong order, but you won't be able to help fix them if you don't understand them. (also you may be the one who is wrong! don't be the arrogant person you believe them to be. Stay humble, and stay true to the truth, even if it's not what you want it to be).

2. Educate yourself before you make a decision. If you care about the Earth (which you very well should!) learn about it! Don't make dumb arguments out of ignorance, as that will just push intelligent/informed people away.

3. Build trust and bridges, not wedges. Most people in the oil industry (or whatever issue it is) do care about these things. If you demonstrate trustworthiness by being fair and accurate, they will listen to you. You may not convince them immediately, but I promise it will make a difference. If you make an ass out of yourself though, you will never, ever change their minds, and you make it harder for the next person to do so because you pollute the water (an intentional metaphor).

Getting this right may very well determine how long humanity gets to live on this planet, so this is serious business. We need to change, and we need to change soon, so the time for games is over.

Literally no one in the oil industry cares enough to quit the oil industry. Also: environmentalism will always be politics. Our opponents don’t have “different priorities” as in philosophical differences, it’s a matter of profit and control and freedom to litter when they feel the urge.

Part of the problem with the oil industry is we use the hydrocarbons in the most wasteful/dumbest of ways: Burn them.

I'd be happy to never see hydrocarbons burnt again in my lifetime. However, they still have important applications: everything from textiles to medicine to structural components to the insulation your the ethernet cables that transferred the data you're reading this post on.

My opinion is we need to get rid of the "burning things" industry but keep the capacity to extract this useful natural resource in a way that doesn't add C02 to the air, doesn't harm the environment, and benefits us and leaves something for future generations.

Wow GREAT point actually, I am a huge fan of plastic. It’s impossibly tough to know how to support plastic without supporting the combustion industry (Miltary-Incendiary Complex?), but that’s life for everyone who can afford to choose their job. I have a friend who’s struggling with how to use his ChemE degree to help create lifesaving medicine without giving his career to some of our most cartoonishly evil corporations, and I personally struggled with the desire to work on LEO satellites without supporting the US military directly.

A good lesson to never deal in absolutes :). I’ll say this instead: most people working in oil and gas aren’t doing it because they considered the facts and decided that it was a good future. They’re just there because it pays well and they figure the earth will prolly be fine. I mean, it’s huge! And I’ve never seen a climate apocalypse…

Making plastics still generates carbon dioxide, and their existence has their own problems. Some of them, are apparently quite bad such as microplastics.

Yeah, disposable plastics for instance. Thats why I qualified it, because burning them is dumb, throwing them away is just as dumb, especially when people don't throw them away properly and they end up in the ocean.

A lot of that burning is not even being used to make stuff or heat our homes. Flaring is the most wasteful solution to a problem of storage.

yeah I don’t think anyone’s against the concept of fracking, we’re against the concept of fracking for profit and/or without EPA oversight. Thanks for sharing your expertise tho! TBF “it seems rare to me” isn’t exactly a slam dunk refutation of the quoted expert, but I’m willing to hear it out - your alt explanation seems logical, also

> I don’t think anyone’s against the concept of fracking

There are many people absolutely against the concept of fracking.

There are people against the extraction of oil & gas entirely and would argue we should stop, today.

Yeah. The problem is the externality of the resulting CO2 causing climate change. Stopping that is pretty high on a lot of people’s lists.

>Sigh... all thats happening is formation pressure overcoming an improperly capped well

They know that pressure is what's forcing the water from the previously capped wells, the unresolved question is -- what's causing that pressure and where is the water coming from? Could be from fracking, could be something else, but proving it is the hard part.

Poorly capped wells are a problem, but this water ejection, at least on the scale they are seeing now, is a new problem.

The distinction you're making is basically immaterial for the general public. The key takeaway for us is that hydrocarbon extraction is polluting groundwater and contaminating surface land. The exact reason for those negative externalities are important for regulators and industry to understand, but the general public doesn't care if their well water is toxic because the deframbulator was not halogented before exfinescing the sanestration fluid or because the subpermeable supertransverse formation was extereated. All they know and all they need to know is that regulatory mechanisms are missing or failing and our natural resources are being despoiled. That's all they need to know to go to their political representatives and demand that they do something.

Nevertheless, the exact mechanism is a perfect topic of discussion for Hacker News.

No.

I don't support spitting categorically incorrect statements because it fits "with my cause". That is the definition of unethical. People deserve to know the truth and make informed decisions.

Thats how we got here; that's how the players want things to remain: confusing. Truth leads to true change.

> A plugged well is injected with high pressure concrete to/past the impermeable rock layers, past the multiple steel/concrete well casings that travels through aquifers.

Now imagine having hundreds of old oil wells around, some of them are rusted out and can totally transfer fluids up from down under to the water table level.

They probably need to inspect every well and make sure it's properly plugged with concrete, not just a cap on top.

> They probably need to inspect every well and make sure it's properly plugged with concrete, not just a cap on top.

This is the real take-away here. Not some narrative that fracking is definitely bad (it might be, might not be), but that The TXRRC needs to be more on top of continuing to monitor and/or plug wells before these things happen.

^ 100% the point! Thank you! ffs fracking has nothing to do with it!

Plugged wells are safe for eternity. In fact, nature does this (look up Devils Tower monument) on it's own.

Capped wells are kept around... because they might come in handy for salt water injection. They need to be permanently killed at the end of their lives with high pressure concrete.

It's just dumb this practice is even allowed to take fluids from one formation and put them in another. But hey, as long as "BAN FRACKING" is the headline both the oil burning companies and the regulators will succeed in doing nothing to prevent environmental damage.

Socialism is alive and well for corporations. Oil wells should be fully plugged and dealt with before they can be abandoned by the companies pumping them. Instead, private land owners and taxpayers foot the bill. Disgusting.

Ostensibly they are, but the article posits that the definition of “fully plugged” here is not really actually “fully plugged”.

I was thinking they could have solved this earlier, perhaps if they had found they couldn’t plug wells properly decades ago, they might not have allowed as much drilling, or would have researched and experimented sooner to figure it out. My point being, the fact that these companies abandoned it without thinking is a cause of the current issues.

There's definitely an orphan well problem and cases of very irresponsible O&G companies, but you gloss over the challenges with hindsight and an incomplete understanding of the science & technologies involved. It's more like space exploration than it's like "digging a deep hole"

I’m sure it’s a hard problem, too bad taxpayers are the hook now instead of the corporations that took that unknown risk.

CaPiTaLiSm WiLl InNoVaTe!!!1!

That is what you get when you cut the budget of the EPA over and over. Hate to be snarky, but there is a reason for EPA oversite.

Maybe this will get people in Texas understand why the EPA is needed.

Come on, this is crazy talk. If we empowered the EPA, they might decide to further regulate companies, and those companies might subsequently capture slightly less profit for shareholders. How can you even suggest this? Won't someone spare a thought for the resource extraction company shareholders, if only just for a minute?

Nope, they'll conclude that the EPA is ineffective, then cut and / or eliminate it!

If you let people pump garbage water into the ground on your property, you deserve what comes back up. Unfortunately, subterranean water movement doesn't obey private property borders.

The land owners do not always have a choice.

"Under split estate law, the surface owner must allow the mineral rights owner reasonable access. Protections for the surface owner vary; in some states an agreement is required that compensates them for the use of the land and reclaims the land after extraction is complete."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracking_in_the_United_State...

Even not taking that into account, aquifers and groundwater and other subterranean formations don’t stop at property lines. If I’m your neighbor and I inject some dirty water at high pressure into my ground there’s a nonzero chance it might pop out on your land

Never get tired of watching libertarian ideals collide with reality. Property rights do not make you an island, and what you do on your property with your property might well affect mine if I happen to be next to you.

Well, they had a choice to sell their mineral rights, or purchase land that had no mineral rights.

This is often just false.

It is? People can just come on your land and force you to let them pump oil? Even if you own the mineral rights to your land?

I'll admit I'm not familiar with Texas but that doesn't seem right. Here in colorado, you're never forced to sell your mineral rights and let people on your land, but if your neighbors sell their mineral rights, and an oil field that is under your property is being drawn from, you will receive royalty checks, even if you'd rather the oil stay in the ground. But, no one can make you build an oil well on your land.

Not sure about Texas, but this absolutely a thing elsewhere. The GOP is currently working on making this easier in my state: https://www.yahoo.com/news/recent-changes-ohio-easier-force-...

I believe subdivision property in Texas doesn’t come with mineral rights.

I can only imagine how upset an HOA would get if drilling operations were performed without an approved architectural modification request.

> you're never forced to sell your mineral rights and let people on your land

You are correct; if you own the surface and mineral rights you are not obligated to allow for any surface use. The thing you describe where someone drills on neighboring property and you are tagged along is called Force Pooling and is a much more complex topic.

You are not guaranteed to be force pooled -- if your neighbor has enough land to lease a full unit, it's conceivable that resources may still flow from your minerals towards the productive well without being compensated. It's usually in the landowners best interest to negotiate in good faith with a lessee than to be force pooled.

If you own only the surface rights to your land and someone else owns the subsurface minerals or a lease to the subsurface minerals you can absolutely be obligated to allow surface access for development and production under reasonable and usual terms for such.

If the only houses available to purchase are houses on land that already had mineral rights sold off, your only alternative choice is to be homeless.

You don't get to make choices in a vacuum.

It’s pretty rare to find a ranch for sale with all the mineral rights intact.

I have some bad news for you... it's everywhere

https://www.fractracker.org/waste/

Neat Site. Because I was curious, and it's relevant to the sheer number of oil wells that have to be dealt with. Here's a picture of the Odessa / Midland area of West Texas.

FracTracker, West TX, Oil Wells (purple) https://i.imgur.com/PpPzDeM.png

From: https://ft.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?appi... (if you want to look at other areas)

With how many there are in West TX, I could almost believe the ground is collapsing. Drilled and vacuumed out so much, its like foam underneath. There's a known issue with sinkholes also.

https://blog.smu.edu/dedmancollege/2022/02/28/these-monstrou...

These wells may have been drilled before the current owners were alive.

> There’s nothing uncommon about a leaky old well. Many in West Texas were drilled during World War II and 80 years underground can do major damage to steel and concrete casing. Many of those wells were also flooded with water to squeeze out the last drops of oil.

But that doesn't mean that modern activities can't affect the stability of the groundwater in those wells. If the outflow is pretty salty it stands to reason that it's produced water that was dumped underground.

He's a fourth-generation rancher so the previous owners are his own family. His own family collected the payment for these wells and maybe made a mistake.

The people that made those decisions are gone

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