Greenwire: Texas officials are urging lawmakers to crack down on oil field practices that have left some Exxon Mobil Corp. fields with leaking pipelines, wells and storage tanks. The country’s biggest oil producer has left a stretch of Texas unkempt, leaving residents in danger of explosions and gas fires. Exxon has tried to keep the chemical leaks buried in court while it embarks on a new phase of exploration nearby.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress is considering stricter drilling regulations, which many say are needed to ensure that companies are not constantly cleaning up old messes. U.S. EPA says it currently has no authority to force companies to clean up their active fields and instead defers to state regulators, who often let oil companies decide if cleanup is necessary.
Elizabeth and Stephen Burns, who own a ranch near some of Exxon’s old fields, are filing suit against Exxon and Chevron Corp., which owns a smaller section. The suit alleges the companies did not keep their equipment away from vegetation, damaging thousands of acres of land. If found guilty, the two companies would be on the hook for cleanup costs, which could run in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Exxon said it has already spent $1.6 million at the ranch and is conducting soil and water tests to head off environmental threats.
But there are more than 100,000 wells in Texas alone that have not been capped, as well as thousands of abandoned processing plants and compressor stations. That is largely a result of lax environmental restrictions in the 1950s and ’60s when oil companies were entering the state.
California, the third-largest oil producing state, has recently stepped up efforts to force oil companies to clean up their fields, and Pennsylvania has set up restrictions on new oil projects and has stepped up enforcement (Joe Carroll, Bloomberg, April 16). – JP