Hawk Dunlap: The Railroad Commission Race is a Fight for Corpus Christi
Water supplies, jobs, and the Coastal Bend’s future all depend on it.
by Hawk Dunlap
The state government recently issued a warning to Corpus Christi: There's a “looming water crisis.” Immediate action is needed. “Texas is running out of water, and the crisis in Corpus Christi is the canary in the coal mine," Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said.
Here’s something very few Texans realize: The race for the Texas Railroad Commission plays a crucial role in solving this.
Why? First, the RRC has nothing to do with railroads. It has a nonsensical, misleading name. Its job is to regulate oil and gas. And second, our oil and gas industry currently injects millions of gallons of water into the ground every day.
We should instead clean that water for data centers and other industrial uses. That would go a long way in helping protect freshwater supplies for hardworking Texans.
But the RRC isn’t making this happen. That's just one giant way they’re failing the people of Corpus Christi. They’re also letting abandoned oil wells poison huge parts of our state, kill crops and endanger existing water supplies. All Texans are in danger.
The Texas Railroad Commission’s notorious incompetence must end. That's why I’m running for commissioner. And it’s why I need your support.
Early voting is underway now. Election Day is March 3. Find voting locations here.
Learn why major newspapers all over the state have endorsed my campaign. Visit hawk4texas.com.
The industry can thrive without destruction
Other candidates try to scare you that regulating oil and gas makes jobs disappear. They insist that cleaning up the messes plaguing our state will somehow hurt the economy. They have it backwards.
Unlike my competitors in this race, I have more than three decades of experience leading oil and gas projects all over the world, across more than 100 countries. I’ve successfully resolved blowouts, fires, complex drilling challenges and more.
I’ve seen how doing the right thing protects everyone -- except the politicians who want to profit off of failure. Cleanup projects build jobs. We need to set a new course, immediately. If I’m elected, I will.
Abandoned wells are ‘rotting away’
Corpus Christi is both a crucial hub for oil and gas and a powerful example of what happens when the industry isn’t regulated. People across the region grapple with abandoned oil wells.
They’re “ticking time bombs,” a local ranch owner said when one blew out on her property. Texas Monthly reported that hundreds of abandoned oil wells “are rotting away in Texas bays,” including 300 between Baffin Bay and Sabine Lake.
These dangers aren’t new; they’ve been known for many years. In 2015, Politico reported on a refuge in the Corpus Christi area where a deep well was “leaking gas, oil and about 60 barrels of brine a day.”
But instead of solving the problem, the RRC has let it fester. “Texas has 476,790 unplugged oil wells that are a toxic nightmare—and it’s getting worse,” Fast Company reported.
I’ve spent the past few years traveling across Texas, seeing these for myself. I meet with landowners, ranchers, homeowners, and other people suffering from the commission’s failures. I take my own measurements at lots of sites, and find the conditions are very different from what the commission lets on.
And by injecting all that wastewater into the ground, the state is creating a host of additional problems -- earthquakes, overloaded infrastructure, and new leaks. Some dead wells suddenly turn into “zombie wells,” springing back to life as geysers shooting liquid poison more than 100 feet into the air.
Safeguard the Coastal Bend
The list of dangers to the region keeps going. Numerous experts have called out the RRC for dangers to the Coastal Bend.
Rhiannon Scott, executive director of the Coastal Watch Association in Ingleside, said granting the commission “primacy over Class VI injection wells would be a dangerous mistake. This agency has repeatedly failed to protect Texans from the risks associated with Class II wells—allowing groundwater contamination, sinkholes, and earthquakes to go unchecked. Transferring authority for carbon storage wells, which pose short term risks and even greater long-term risks, would only compound these failures.”
“One project in our backyard at McCampbell airport would put our community at risk due to faulting and unplugged wells in the area,” she added. “We also have the threat of a blue ammonia plant next to a primary school with a 66 mile pipeline travelling through our Coastal Bend communities.”
Here’s what all this boils down to: Corpus Christi does not have a Railroad Commissioner watching out for it. If I’m elected, I’ll change that.
But it’s a tough race, and we’re in the final stretch. Please vote in the Republican primary, and select me as your candidate. And if you’re able to, donate or volunteer.
I’m no politician; I’m a lifelong oil and gas guy who knows this job has to get done. When I returned to Texas after working on oil sites worldwide, I was shocked at the conditions here. We have some of the worst oil messes on Earth. If I’m given the chance, I’ll make sure they finally get fixed.