Railroad Commission of Texas requested an additional $100 million in emergency funding from the state to address the issue of leaking and erupting wells in Texas’ oil fields. Houston Chronicle and Texas Tribune reported after the commission submitted its annual budget request in August, executive director Danny Sorrell sent a letter in October to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dade Phelan for the emergency funding. He said the agency’s $226 million budget request does not include enough money “to protect the groundwater and the environment” from increasingly common well blowouts.
The commission said it addresses actively leaking wells regardless of whether it has enough money in the designated budget – a practice that Sorrel said has become unsustainable and caused the agency to plug fewer non-emergency wells.
Ben Sheppard, president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, told Texas Tribune, “We would support the legislature going above and beyond the commission’s request for plugging and remediation funding. The industry generates billions of dollars every year, and it seems appropriate that more of these dollars could be utilized for this important purpose.”