GOLDSMITH Rancher Schuyler Wight is at war with the Texas Railroad Commission and he is determined to keep fighting even though he has lost most of the battles.
Having attended every monthly meeting of the energy industry-regulating agency since January 2023 in Austin, Wight says, “It’s a pretty frustrating experience because they don’t care about ranchers and landowners or the environment.
“They’re all bought and paid for by the oil companies. That’s the bottom line. Ranchers can’t afford to donate the kind of money that the oil companies donate to them.”
Asked why he continues, he shrugs and says laconically, “Might as well.”
Railroad Commission Chairman Christi Craddick responded through a spokeswoman that maintaining public trust is of utmost importance and she operates with complete transparency.
“Chairman Craddick’s personal financial statements are fully disclosed and publicly accessible,” the spokeswoman said. “She has a proven history of taking principled votes that consider fact and merit alone.
“These votes have led to increased safety and protected our state’s natural resources and our environment all while maintaining a regulatory climate that promotes energy independence and security and supports hundreds of thousands of jobs in communities across the state.”
A spokesman for Commissioner Jim Wright said it is untrue that Wright is unduly influenced by the energy industry.
“I’m not sure how to respond to a blatantly false accusation like that, so I won’t,” the spokesman said. “The fact is that Schuyler Wight has Commissioner Wright’s cell phone number, so the idea that the commissioner is not attentive or unavailable to Mr. Wight is just silly.”
Commissioner Wayne Christian did not respond to a request for comment.
The main point of contention is Texas’ estimated 8,500 abandoned or “orphan” oil wells, including 240 on Wight’s Santa Rosa Ranch near Imperial, 50 miles south-southwest of Odessa, many of which are regurgitating oil and briny produced water from fracking in other areas.
Wight wants the Railroad Commission to plug them with concrete and he said his presence at one such project last year prompted RRC Field Inspector Tommy James to order him to leave, call the Pecos County Sheriff’s Office and seek his arrest because he refused to go.
“I was just standing there and Tommy James started yelling at me and saying I couldn’t be there,” said Wight, who lives at the Y-T Ranch that he co-owns east-southeast of Goldsmith. “I went to the front gate and met the deputy, who said he couldn’t arrest me because I was on my own property.
“I wasn’t being violent. I have never been arrested in my life. I don’t have any kind of criminal history.”
Wight said he was watching the wells being plugged, with 10 now completed on the Santa Rosa, to be sure the work was done correctly. He said it wasn’t because the wells were not plugged from the bottom up and the concrete that was used was crumbly after it set.
Railroad Commission Communications Director R.J. DeSilva said from Austin that the commission has never called law enforcement on Wight.
“The incident Mr. Wight refers to is when one of his representatives assaulted an RRC employee,” DeSilva said. “Law enforcement was called in reference to the assault and not to remove or prevent Mr. Wight from being on his property or near the well site.”
The rancher said the incident DeSilva apparently referred to happened a year or a year and a half ago.
“Tommy James yelled at me and said, ‘You got to leave! You can’t be here!’” he said. “He called the Pecos County Sheriff’s Office, but nobody was assaulted.”
Wight said some temporary employees of his got into a verbal confrontation with RRC Field Inspector Jennifer Gonzales as they cut down power poles on the Y-T last summer because the lines had fallen down and were unsafe.
“Ms. Gonzales was trying to intimidate my employees from South Africa, but nobody hit anybody and the law wasn’t called,” he said. “They didn’t want to go back to South Africa because it’s a violent country.”
Wight said the commission’s three-minute limit for speakers was instituted two meetings ago.
DeSilva said the three-minute limit is a standard agency procedure for all speakers presenting under the public input item in RRC open meetings.
Wight said Craddick, daughter of former Speaker of the House Tom Craddick of Midland, has told state senators that the Railroad Commission averages spending $20,000 to plug each well, but some have kept belching saltwater and oil and polluting the soil after costing nearly $90,000.
The commission has 1,025 employees.
Wight said Wright, himself a South Texas rancher, is more personable and communicative than Christian and Craddick. “Wright has been a good bit more receptive,” he said.
“Wayne Christian is a Gospel singer and financial planner who has absolutely no experience in oil and gas. Christi Craddick is a well-connected oil and gas attorney.
“Christi admitted during a Texas Senate session that they’re just treading water. They’ll never catch up.”
He said Craddick “has been very snarky” and imposed the three-minute time limit for speakers at open meetings where as many as 700 items are disposed of in 15-20 minutes as part of the consent agenda with the commissioners having met privately before the meetings to decide how they will vote.
“They didn’t have the time limit till things started getting testy,” he said. “They have a green light, a yellow light and a red light with a buzzer.
“Craddick and Christian are really mad at me.”
Wight said Wright said Craddick, running for re-election against Democrat Katherine Culbert and Libertarian Hawk Dunlap, has a $9-million campaign fund.
He said the Circle Six Baptist Camp and Conference Center north of Stanton vigorously protested to no avail the commission’s granting of a permit for the Martin County Midstream Co. to build an adjacent 75-acre oil and gas recycling center.
“We have public health and safety concerns for our campers, staff and families,” Circle Six Executive Director Brian Colbath told the Baptist General Convention of Texas newspaper, The Baptist Standard. “We want to keep kids safe.”
The recycling center will consist of five above-ground storage tank collecting pits and four below-ground pits for oil and gas waste and Wight said it is typical of the commission’s pro-energy industry bias.
Wight has a video recording of his presentation to the commission of intact cylindrical core samples from a plugged well in Ector County and the crumbly concrete samples from one of his wells.
“This is junk,” he says. “It crumbles in your hands. It will not hold anything.”
Wight leaves the samples on the podium and Craddick, looking irate, asks, “Mr. Wight, could you please come remove your things? I would appreciate it.”
Returning with a trash bag and putting the samples in it, he asks, “Why does it offend you more than the trash you leave on my ranch?”
