A Forgotten Oil Well Births a 100-Foot Geyser in West Texas

[TexasTowelie]

Briny water spews high into the air from a former oil well in Crane County on January 4, 2022.


In the flatness of the southern half of Crane County, where a clump of mesquite trees can count as a landmark, you can see a new hundred-foot column of salt water from five, maybe ten miles away. It shoots into the air under extraordinary pressure, as if someone had aimed a fire hydrant straight at the sky. Beginning on New Year’s Eve or in the early hours of 2022, an estimated 25,000 barrels of briny water has emerged from the earth with a dull roar each day, turning the surrounding West Texas landscape white with salt and other minerals.

Even so, as is often the case in the Permian Basin, what’s happening above ground is far less interesting than what the hell is going on underground. “I’ve never seen anything like that in West Texas,” says Bruce K. Darling, a former exploration geologist for Pennzoil who is now a hydrogeology consultant in Austin. “That’s definitely not natural pressure.”

There is no natural aquifer within hundreds of miles capable of shooting water skyward like this, and the source of the blowout was initially a mystery. No well appears at the location in the mapping database of the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates oil and natural gas activity. Nor does one appear in the state’s water-well database. Nonetheless, within a couple days, Railroad Commission contractors had arrived on the cattle ranch about 35 miles southwest of Odessa where the geyser formed. The water had already turned the land marshy. By January 9, there were several excavators, motor graders, and bulldozers building a berm to capture the water.

On Monday of this week, one part of the mystery was solved. Researchers digging through the state archives discovered a 1,390-foot-deep dry hole that was drilled at the geyser’s location by Gulf Oil in 1948. In 1957, the well was plugged and forgotten. Gulf had once been one of the world’s dominant oil companies, but it was acquired by Chevron in 1984 in what was then the largest corporate merger ever. Chevron, which is based in San Ramon, California, therefore bore responsibility for the long-forgotten well, which is why the Railroad Commission said it turned over command of the blowout to Chevron on Tuesday. A Chevron spokesperson said in an emailed statement that “we are committed to assuming full responsibility for onsite operations, remediation and costs.”

Read more: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/west-texas-geyser-oil-well-chevron/

[Javaman]

1. excellent article that every Texan needs to read. nt