Railroad Commission Plugs Record 2,022 Orphaned Wells as San Antonio Well Keeps Leaking

The Railroad Commission of Texas plugged 2,022 abandoned oil and gas wells in the 2026 fiscal year, a number the agency calls a record, at a cost of $125,643,478. One well it has plugged before, under a vacant lot in a San Antonio subdivision, is still waiting on another fix.

The total beat the target the Legislature set for the agency by 300 wells, or 18.9 percent, the commission said in announcing the figures. “Protecting Texas land and groundwater requires decisive action,” Executive Director Wei Wang said.

Who pays

A well is classified as orphaned when it has been inactive for at least a year and its operator’s required organization report has been delinquent for more than a year. The commission then takes responsibility for monitoring it and hires contractors to plug it, scoring each site by age, location, condition and potential environmental harm and taking the riskiest first.

The money comes from state and federal appropriations and from the industry, through the commission’s Oil and Gas Regulation and Cleanup Fund and through production taxes paid into the state’s general revenue. The agency says operators plug about 86 percent of wells themselves, and it works with the attorney general and the comptroller to recover public money from the operator of record.

The San Antonio well

The commission’s own list of wells still to be plugged with state-managed funds, current as of August 31, includes the Thompson Callaway Spears lease in Bexar County, with the operator of record listed as Black Jack Services LLC and an estimated cost of $700,000 for one well.

That well sits on a vacant lot in the Preserve at Medina subdivision in San Antonio. It was drilled in 1955 and has been plugged and replugged several times since 2006, Inside Climate News and the San Antonio Express-News reported, at a cost of more than $1 million as of November 2024. The outlets reported that a consultant warned the commission in June that methane was moving toward homes.

“The well will be re-plugged using a different strategy and materials,” commission spokesman Bryce Dubee told the outlets, adding that the plan is under review and that the commission and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality are monitoring the site.

What comes next

The Legislature passed several measures in its last session aimed at orphaned wells, including Senate Bill 1146, which the commission says streamlines the process for operators to plug orphaned wells on or near their leases, and Senate Bill 1150, which requires operators to plug wells more than 25 years old that have been inactive for at least 15 years. The commission has not said when the San Antonio well will be replugged.