Oil & Gas Inspectors Have Impossible Job

It is no secret that a poorly operated oil or gas well can pose a serious hazard to the environment. There have been many examples of oil and gas well poisoning the ground water and releasing poisonous toxins into the air. And it's not just the wells. Tests in Fort Worth recently have detected that pipeline switching stations are also releasing poisons into the air.

But the Railroad Commission, which oversees oil and gas production in Texas, tells us this is not a problem because they inspect those wells to keep them in compliance with the law. Is that true? Not really. Jeff Weems (pictured), Democratic candidate for a position on the Railroad Commission, says there is only one inspector for every 4,500 oil and gas wells. Thinking that couldn't possibly be true, the Austin American-Statesman decided to check on that. Incredibly, they found out Weems was not exaggerating the problem. They found the number is actually one inspector for every 4,586 wells.

Let's say that these inspectors work a five-day work week with a two-week vacation each year. That means they would work approximately 250 days a year (5 days X 50 weeks). If they were to thoroughly check one well a day, it would take an inspector 18.3 years to check every well he is responsible for just once. But let's be generous and say two wells a day can be thoroughly checked (and I seriously doubt that more could be done if the job was done properly). Then it would take the inspector slightly more than 9 years to check each well.

But that is assuming that no new wells are drilled in that 9 years and no problems are discovered that would make the inspector visit a well more than once. Since both of these are not just possible but almost guaranteed to happen many times over, you would probably have to double or triple that 9 year period. Each well is supposed to be checked at least once every year, but as we can clearly see that is an impossible task for an inspector to perform (and once a year is not enough anyway).

But the Republicans running this state and the ones on the Railroad Commission don't believe this is a problem. The executive of the Railroad Commission, John Tintera, says, "What Texas needs is what we have." This doesn't surprise me at all. It's been a long time since the Republican leadership in Texas thought the safety of Texans was anywhere near as important as protecting their buddies (and campaign contributors) in the oil and gas industry.

And it may soon get even worse. The Railroad Commission already has a hiring freeze on due to budget cuts in the past. Now state Republican leaders are asking all state agencies to cut their budgets by at least another ten percent (due to the recession and their own mismanagement the state will have a $12 to $15 billion deficit in the next biennium).

I don't doubt that some state agencies can be cut further, but there are some like the Railroad Commission that are already underfunded and should not be cut because it will impact the public's health and well-being. I know it will give the Republicans a nasty shock (and probably a bad case of hives) to even consider the thought, but it's time for the oil and gas industry to be taxed enough to hire enough inspectors to do the job properly.

Regular inspection of all gas and oil wells is too important for the state's environment and the citizens' health to go on being ignored.