I know a few of you have seen me post pictures and videos from this Alabama ferry field in SE leon county. I had to go on my neighbors property today to check on something and seen this while i was there. The neighbor never noticed this and he doesn’t have any minerals so he never looks at this well. Hopefully this will be our white bronco on getting our minerals back. This field has been sitting for years with no production and everytime the RRC starts anything the owner pops out of a hole and pays them off. This is the third time within a year something like this happened. Most people in this area (my parents as well) signed a pretty weak lease in the early 80’s. I will be contacting the RRC about this.
RRC came out today and inspected it. They are schedule to plug this one since the owner is no where to be found. We are hoping others will in plugged as well and our minerals released because of no production for over the last 12 months. Most of these wells hasn’t produced anything in several years. I also took the field guy to a well he didn’t even know it was there. Half these wells in this field isn’t even mapped on the RRC mapping. Then getting to them you have to walk to because either the creeks washed out the crossing or the roads to them are grown up. I am meeting with the district manager out of Henderson Thursday to show him other problem wells in this field. People on the northern side of this field are have oil show up in their drinking water. Luckily we haven’t had this issue here yet. But if these wells are taken care of we could.
You and your neighbors may need to contact the Austin Office of the Texas Railroad Commission along with Certified Letters. return receipt requested since the Henderson Office won’t do anything. I believe the State or the Federal Govt. can come up with the money. All this operator is doing is trying to hold (HBP) these leases to sell for another oil and gas play. Maybe the Comstock Play or the other players.
I am working on that now. I also contacted Mr. Dunlap that ran for commissioner this past election. He got me in contact with a houston news paper. We are about to expose just how screw up the RRC is on these well clean ups are. Most of the field guys try to do their jobs but Austin sits on their butts and do nothing. They just bandaid these cleans for a bigger problem in the future all over the state. If they are really about clean and water they wouldn’t have so many orphan weĺls around the state. They let companies leave these problems when they should hold the accountable.
What about the operation that has these rights HBP’ed that has their gathering system on Hwy 7 west of Centerville? Go to the App. District and see who is paying property tax on it and their address. If I owned mineral rights in this water flood mess I would hire a law firm to get my mineral rights released before they sell or lease them for the deep gas play by Comstock and others.
That was Lasmo Energy on 7. They have some wells producing but not many. With everyone tied up in these units from the water floods in our area i have to get everyone to go along. The crazy thing is no one wants to rock the boat to get the minerals back. I do have over 300 mineral acres no tied up in this field so if someone comes leasing i will update it and maybe work a deal with the company leasing to include my other land.
Thats what got me. You would think the RRC would have sold the oil in these tanks to be use to clean this up. I asked the field clean up guy about damages payment and he said the state doesn’t pay damage payments. They took all the oil soak soil and dumped it inside the firewall. Which then took up space for the oil to stay inside the firewall with it still leaking out. I asked the guy what happens if we get a hurricane here and it dumps several inches of rain and causes the oil and water to overflow the firewall. He said lets just hope that doesn’t happen. They are sure playing with fire. It this place gets hit by another lightning strike it wiĺl be a major fire.
The RRC and TxDOT are still DEI type hires. If you report them not taking care of a problem it’s like the “FOX Guarding the HEN HOUSE”. They are policing themselves! You might try making a trip to the Austin Office and get a name of a person that may ultimately get something done.
