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Fixing old oil wells in Texas' historic oilfied is hit and miss

Dave Fehling

When it comes to drilling deep into Texas to bring up oil and natural gas, things can go wrong. Sometimes old oil wells leak. While the Railroad Commission of Texas says it uses fees from oil & gas industry pay for cleaning up so-called orphan wells, government watchdog groups have criticized Texas law as too lax, requiring bonds that aren’t nearly big enough to cover the cost of the remediation of old and polluted well sites. State Impact reporter Dave Fehling traveled to the East Texas oil patch to look into B & B Oil’s deserted wells.

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