In recent years, Schuyler Wight has noticed a growing number of abandoned oil wells coming back to life, gurgling fluids on the surface of his West Texas ranch. Last week he found the biggest one yet.
Gassy water was gushing from the ground and down a quarter mile of roadway before it drained into a pasture on a remote corner of his land.
“It’s by far flowing more than any other,” Wight said. “It’s getting worse, there’s no question about that.”
It’s the latest in a string of mysterious water features in the arid Permian Basin, the nation’s top producing oil field, that