The Dark Bounty of Texas Oil

New Yorker

I have a sister whose husband's family were in the oil business, as I liked to say - to impress people.

The facts were more mundane. The big oil companies bought up all the oil wells, that had been discovered by small oil companies. And them pumped them dry - or nearly dry, they were pumping more water, than oil - and they could no longer make any money from them.

So they sold them to independent operators, who could make a little money from them - because they didn't pay themselves any wages. There were no other jobs in the area, and poor jobs were better than none at all.

Eventually, however they could not make any money from them either. And they were faced with an unpleasant fact - they would have to cap over their wells, a process that would cost them money. In the old days, they could just walk away from them - but they would continue to seep oil and pollute the water table.

This was fine with my sister's oldest son, who had the heavy equipment necessary for doing this. He would pull up the old pipe, that was so corroded it was useless. Then another contractor would pump the hole full of concrete.