{"id":9136,"date":"2012-04-25T06:00:38","date_gmt":"2012-04-25T11:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=9136"},"modified":"2012-04-26T08:55:54","modified_gmt":"2012-04-26T13:55:54","slug":"orphans-of-the-oil-fields-the-cost-of-abandoned-wells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/04\/25\/orphans-of-the-oil-fields-the-cost-of-abandoned-wells\/","title":{"rendered":"Orphans of the Oil Fields: The Cost of Abandoned Wells"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Texaco Inc. Photograph Collection, Courtesy Sam Houston Regional Library, Liberty, TX<\/p>

The early days of drilling in East Texas but does anyone know where all the wells are now?<\/p><\/div>\n

Scattered across the oil and gas fields of Texas where fortunes have been won and sometimes lost, there are at least 7,869 abandoned wells. The Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) which regulates drilling calls them orphans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By the RRC’s count, there are an additional 5,445 wells that are inactive and whose operators are\u00a0delinquent\u00a0in meeting regulations. Add to all that an unknown number of orphan wells drilled decades ago for which records have been lost, if they ever existed.<\/p>\n

You can find some of the orphans in the South Liberty Oil field in Liberty County. It’s just 45 miles east of Spindletop, the iconic oil field in Beaumont that a century ago was the most productive in the world.<\/p>\n

That was a different era.<\/p>\n

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“I can assure you that back (then), the environment was not part of the equation,” said Stuart Marcus.<\/p>\n

As a manager of the Trinity River National Wildlife Refuge<\/a>, Marcus is intimately familiar with this part of East Texas. As he drove the backroads just south of the town of Liberty, there are pump jacks that bob up and down bringing up the oil. Some are mere feet from homes, others are in forests surrounded by trees and vegetation.<\/p>\n

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Dave Fehling\/StateImpact Texas<\/p>

Pumpjack at work in Liberty County<\/p><\/div>\n

“Back in the day, this was an active oil field site. And as you can see, there are a lot of pumpjacks still in operation. But they’re low-flow. They don’t produce a lot of oil at this time,” said Marcus.<\/p>\n

Less obvious and harder to find are wells that no longer produce at all and were abandoned by their operators. An easier way to find them is using the RRC’s Orphan Wells data base<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Among dozens of different orphan wells and the companies that once operated them, one that pops up multiple times in the RRC data base for Liberty County is an operator with a memorable name: the Good Ol’ Boys Oil Company.<\/p>\n

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