Ted Cruz bill would make it too easy for abandoned wells to pollute Texas with methane | Opinion

Sen. Ted Cruz’s office recently announced that he was joining with two fellow senators to “introduce bipartisan legislation addressing environmental hazards of abandoned oil wells.” In fact, it’s a thinly veiled effort to protect polluters.

Called the “Orphan Well Grant Flexibility Act,” the bill would make it easy for states including Texas to keep getting federal money to clean up abandoned wells without having to demonstrate that they’re properly plugging the wells or lowering methane levels.

You wouldn’t know that from Cruz’s news release, which did not even mention the word “methane.” The proposed language would amend the Energy Policy Act of 2005, one of the laws the Biden administration has cited in distributing federal funds for environmental projects under more recent legislation, including the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Cruz’s new bill specifically targets a section of that 2005 law that focused on “orphaned, abandoned, or idled wells on federal land.” It would add language ensuring that states cannot be required “to measure methane emissions” in order to be eligible for grants provided under this law.

In a written statement, Cruz said this change would “remove power from unelected Washington bureaucrats in dictating how abandoned orphan wells must be plugged,” and give states “the flexibility they need to make the best decisions for their constituents.”

But Texans don’t need to wonder what practical effect this legislation would have. The Texas Railroad Commission is already failing to address the widespread problem of abandoned wells. The new law would help the commission keep up its long record of failure while continuing to add federal taxpayer money to its coffers. As the Houston Chronicle reported earlier this month, the backlog of orphaned wells and risk of toxic leaks in Texas has been growing, even as federal funds have been flowing.

Cruz’s cosponsors include a few Democrats from Pennsylvania and Ohio, which are among the states experiencing similar problems with abandoned wells.

But even as a longtime Republican, I have no trouble recognizing that this legislation is especially hypocritical coming from Cruz, since he voted against both the Inflation Reduction Act and the infrastructure bill in the first place. He nevertheless has shown up to tout projects funded by these bills. On top of that, Texas is taking the federal funds for methane reduction despite rejecting federal funds to feed hungry children and expand Medicaid.

As the Star-Telegram has reported, abandoned oil and gas wells can “leak methane and other volatile organic compounds into the air.” Many Texans have tried for years to finally get the Railroad commission to address the problem. The Star-Telegram highlighted one landowner who couldn’t get any action from the commission, then found “billowing clouds filled the air and killed vegetation after one of the property’s old wells blew out.”

I’ve been tracking and fighting this problem for years. One of the many problems I’ve noted is that even many wells believed to be “plugged” aren’t. They either come unplugged or have potentially dangerous leaks.

The Biden White House has been pushing states to take action, releasing hundreds of millions of dollars — with Texas collecting the most. In December, the administration announced that another $350 million would be distributed to states to cut methane emissions from the oil and gas sector on nonfederal lands.

“Methane is a climate ‘super pollutant’ that is many times more potent than carbon dioxide and is responsible for approximately one third of the warming from greenhouse gases occurring today,” the Environmental Protection Agency said.

I’m a fan of small government and fewer regulations. But this is a matter of basic fairness to the people of Texas and taxpayers across the country. If a state collects federal funds to address unplugged wells, then measuring and reporting methane emissions is the least that state can do to demonstrate it is using the funds to have the intended effect. After all, I wouldn’t want my tax dollars to go to another state for lowering methane emissions without being able to find out whether the projects I’m helping to fund are actually lowering methane emissions.

Having clean air should be completely nonpartisan. There’s nothing Republican or Democratic about building a healthy, sustainable environment. Unfortunately, the proposed legislation is a powerful reminder that there’s also nothing partisan about doing the wrong thing.