Photo by Greg Rohloff

Leftovers: Abandoned oil well equipment lies in a pasture north of Amarillo. Clearing junk is the ultimate goal of oilfield cleanup efforts.

Well, Time to Deal With It

Old wells pose fire threat, need remediation

By Greg Rohloff
Business Correspondent

The dry winter and spring with abundant vegetative growth left over from last year adds up to two things.

Photo by Greg Rohloff Hot Wire: An electric line lies on the ground providing power to an oil well. When such lines weather and deteriorate, they become a hazard for range fires.

The first is the dangerous fire conditions that have the bulk of the Panhandle under a fire warning from the state forest service.

The second is an opening for local landowners, with cooperation from the state's oil and gas associations, to fix the environmental problems caused by abandoned oil wells.

While the threat to groundwater is apparent when an old oil or natural gas well, no longer productive, is abandoned without being plugged, other aspects weren't so apparent until after the spring 2006 grassfires swept across vast stretches of the Panhandle.

Prime causes were downed electric lines and sparks from loose lines whipped together by the wind.

Often, abandoned wells still have electric service that had powered the well pumps, and just as often, those lines are sagging and easily whipped together by the wind or are already down on the ground.

Legislation in the Senate to require well operators to clear electric service from inactive wells failed to clear the Legislature in its last session.

But landowner lobbyist Kerry Knorpp and the Inactive Well Study Group, which includes representatives from the state's oil and gas associations, including the Texas Oil and Gas Association, which represents the major oil companies, persuaded the Texas Railroad Commission to send out letters to well operators warning them of the fire dangers.

That, said Knorpp, is key to persuading the Legislature to make further improvements to state law requiring well operators to take care of their inactive wells if they are no longer economically viable, even with $100-a-barrel oil and $9.50-an-mcf natural gas.

And while oil and gas producers may snicker at environmental groups as tree-huggers, the support that this proposal has gotten from the oil and gas associations and from the large ranches where many oil and gas leases are located, puts them on the same side as environmentalists clamoring for the cleanup of groundwater resources and the land.

When the House Energy Resources Committee meets in Amarillo on May 20, the letter from the Railroad Commission will be pointed to as progress in correcting the problems with abandoned wells, placing the burden on the operators rather than a state fund set up to plug abandoned wells before they lead to greater environmental problems, said Wayne Hughes, executive director of the Panhandle Producers and Royalty Owners Association.

"What we're looking for is a list of approaches a producer can take to clean up an inactive well site," Hughes said.

What will be presented will be similar to the legislation that died in the last session because it came out too late to be considered by both chambers of the Legislature before the session ended.

Additionally, presentations will be made on June 10-11 when the Senate Natural Resources Committee and the Oil Field Cleanup Fund Advisory Committee meet on successive days, Knorpp said.

The cooperation of land owners, associations representing independent producers and royalty owners, and the Texas Oil and Gas Association, which at times has been at odds with the other associations because the interests of the major oil companies and independents rarely coincide, has fueled an optimism that proposals now will become legislation in the next session.

Given the Legislature's reputation for handling matters — had the Texas Legislature gone up Mount Sinai, we'd all be referring to the Seven Commandments with the other three dying in committee — the optimism is relatively unguarded.

Donna Warndof, director of public affairs for the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners, whom Hughes credits with persuading the Railroad Commission to send its fire hazard letter to operators, credits the work of the study group in vetting proposals for giving them a strong chance of becoming legislation.

"The very creation of the Inactive Well Study Group acknowledges that these groups needed a forum to communicate with each other," Warndof wrote in an e-mail correspondence with The Amarillo Independent.

Each study group member takes proposals to his association members, creating strong avenues for communication, she noted.

"That communication has been key," she said. "When proposals have opposition, we learn about it in their own words instead of assuming we know why.

"We hear it sooner than later and have a chance to work on it before the proposal gets too far down the road so people don't feel like their time was wasted."

The study group will present legislators the consensus reached by the group.

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Posted: April 10, 2008