A draft bill offered by James Matlock would create an Orphaned Well Adoption and Critical Mineral Recovery Program under the Railroad Commission of Texas. The bill number is blank in the draft, which indicates it has not been filed.
Under the draft, the commission could designate qualified operators to run one or more orphaned wells within an approved "resource recovery unit" of at least 600 acres. The operators would extract critical minerals, such as lithium and uranium, from produced water. They would also treat that water and sell or transfer it for non-potable uses, including cooling at data centers. The draft defines a data center as a facility used mainly to store, manage, process or transmit digital data, including facilities for artificial intelligence or cloud computing.
Requirements and protections
To qualify, an applicant would need to be an operator in good standing or meet standards set by commission rule. The applicant would also have to show a supported claim to a continuing right in the mineral estate or to the right to extract minerals from produced water. The applicant would post financial assurance set by the commission, and submit a plan of operations. Under the draft, designation would suspend the plugging obligation for the adopted wells while the operator complies with the law, commission rules and the approved plan. The plugging obligation would return if the designation ended or the operator did not comply.
The draft says designation would not relieve an operator of liability for damages. It also says the bill would not impair existing property rights of surface or mineral owners. Under the draft, the commission would have to adopt implementing rules within one year after the act takes effect. The rules would be required to prioritize protection of usable-quality groundwater, prevention of waste, and the bill's policy goals.
Findings in the bill
The draft includes legislative findings that orphaned wells are both a potential environmental liability and an underused resource. It also says that recycling treated produced water could conserve freshwater and aquifers, and that converting orphaned wells could reduce taxpayer exposure to plugging costs. These are the bill's stated findings, not independently verified claims.
The PDF does not say how many orphaned wells exist in the program or where any unit would be located. It also does not include the definition of an orphaned well from Section 89.047 of the Natural Resources Code, which the draft references.