In the Permian Basin, Big Oil and Gas Leave a Legacy of Leaking Wells and Contaminated WaterAllison Woolverton | October 26, 2025 This summer, E...

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In the Permian Basin, Big Oil and Gas Leave a Legacy of Leaking Wells and Contaminated Water
Allison Woolverton | October 26, 2025

This summer, Earthworks embarked on a road trip with partners that started in the Permian Basin, which spans from West Texas to Southeastern New Mexico, and ended on the Texas Gulf Coast. Record-breaking production of oil and gas in the Permian Basin has made the U.S. the world’s top oil and gas exporter, causing environmental and health harms in communities all along the supply chain. This is the third blog in a series documenting those harms. Click here to read the first.

From Sierra Blanca, we journeyed east to more oilfields of the Permian Basin, where pumpjacks dot the sparse, desert landscape. The Permian Basin, which spans from Southeastern New Mexico to West Texas, produces nearly half of the United States’ crude oil and a quarter of the nation’s methane. The oil and gas industry brags about this, but this has left the region with tens of thousands of leaky, abandoned, toxic wells that impact the land, water, and communities.

Here, we met Hawk Dunlap, a lifelong oilfield worker and well control specialist who is unafraid to speak out about the destruction the industry has left behind. On the 22,000 acre Antina Ranch owned by Ashley Watt — roughly twice the size of Manhattan — Dunlap monitors the 330 wells on the ranch and has uncovered a troubling trend. Of the 150 wells that he has actively investigated, all have shown signs of leaking, despite supposedly being plugged by the company that owned them. The leaks are underground, potentially polluting the groundwater. When the emissions make it to the surface, they release harmful chemicals into the air as well. Because the operators have theoretically plugged these wells, no one except the state of Texas is left responsible for all of this pollution, and they make no effort to clean them up.

Dunlap spent the bulk of his career travelling the world, working on oilfield fires and explosions. What he sees in Texas’s Permian Basin, he says, is worse than anything he has seen elsewhere.

Lifelong oilfield worker Hawk Dunlap explains challenges of plugging abandoned wells near Monahans, Texas in June 2025.
Corporate Negligence, Community Risk
Leaky wells are caused by a combination of underground pressure from wastewater being injected underground, and poor plugging practices. In 2022, Watt filed a lawsuit against Chevron and other companies she believes are responsible for the leaking wells on her ranch.

Large international oil companies like Chevron, Hawk tells us, “are not doing any root cause analysis. They’re refilling the cement, getting a rubber stamp by the Railroad Commission and driving off. But the plugs fail.”

The Railroad Commission is a misnomer for the Texas agency responsible for regulating oil and gas activities, not railroads. In the 1980s, smaller oil companies went out of business and larger corporations, like Chevron, bought them up. Hawk points to this shift as when orphaned- and zombie wells started to pop up.

“Across the state, we now have injection of produced water, poor plugging practices, histories of water flooding, the list goes on,” Dunlap says.
SOURCE: https://earthworks.org/blog/in-the-permian-basin-big-oil-and-gas-leave-a-legacy-of-leaking-wells-and-contaminated-water/

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