If both sides hate the rules, and they are based in common sense, then it’s probably good regulation.
Will just add this here. State agency asking for additional $100 million to deal with abandoned zombie oil well emergencies.
Sounds like the public gets to pay for the cleanup of private companies that profited from the wells
That’s the price we’re gonna pay for decades of laissez faire policies by our RRC.
Yes big problem. Vote Hawk Dunlap. The incumbent is ineffective in dealing with this stuff. Been following this on social media lately.
The funny thing is that some of those ARE
actually plugged, but the operators did such a poor job of it that they’re still having blowouts
I think the issue isn’t so much a poor job but a negligent job of plugging.
I’m not real clear on the difference between
a poor job or negligent job, unless that means not doing any plugging at all.
My take from the article was that the presurized injection of waste water (produced water ) from fracking may be blowing out the plugs. I’m not sure if well plugging includes any pressurized post plugging testing or if the specs of plugging have been significantly upgraded to accommodate the era of fracking injection wells. It’s just ludicrous Texas waited 40 years to update regulations, even after horizontal shale fracking has been a thing since 1990s.
Probably mix of both. Negligence could imply that they knew the plugging/cementing work wasn’t that great but plugged them anyway. A poor job is a bit more generalized, whether it’s concerns of costs, laziness or just bad plugging companies that were contracted by the operators
Texas probably did know, but they didn’t do anything about it because of oil and gas lobbying. Top that off with the fact that plugging wells isn’t cheap, and so it’s much easier to just let taxpayers pay for it all instead of punishing the very industry that makes your state very powerful
This type of strategy however is much harder to do in federal lands/waters