Jackie Chesnutt props up a sign next to a leaking oil well operated by Core Petro on her property near Knickerbocker.
Paul Ratje/For Inside Climate News
Jackie Chesnutt poses for a portrait on her property in Tom Green County. She has documented pollution from oil wells and filed complaints with state regulators.
Paul Ratje/For Inside Climate News
Jackie Chesnutt feels underneath a tank that is rusted out on its base. It’s part of a tank battery operated by Core Petro on Chesnutt’s property near Knickerbocker.
Paul Ratje/For Inside Climate News
Jackie Chesnutt looks through documents pertaining to oil wells located on her property, many of which have leaked.
Paul Ratje/For Inside Climate News
Chesnutt’s dog, Einstein, rests on a sofa at her home in Knickerbocker.
Paul Ratje/For Inside Climate News
A certificate showing Jackie Chesnutt’s registration as a professional engineer sits next to other relics from her career in her home office.
Paul Ratje/For Inside Climate News
A windmill supplies water on Jackie Chesnutt’s property. She worries that pollution from oil wells could pollute the groundwater she relies on.
Paul Ratje/For Inside Climate News
A leaky oil pipe sits on the ground next to a tank battery owned by Core Petro LLC which is in disrepair on Jackie Lynn Chestnutt’s property in Knickerbocker.
Paul Ratje/For Inside Climate News
Jackie Chesnutt points to a leaky oil pipe next to a Core Petro tank battery in disrepair on her property near Knickerbocker.
Paul Ratje/For Inside Climate News
On Sep. 16, 2024, Railroad Commission inspectors documented extensive hydrocarbon pollution at Well #2 on Chesnutt’s ranch. The commission never issued any fines.
Railroad Commission of Texas
On Sep. 16, 2024, Railroad Commission inspectors documented extensive hydrocarbon pollution at Well #2 on Chesnutt’s ranch. The commission never issued any fines.
Railroad Commission of Texas
Pictures of the three Railroad Commissioners of Texas hang in the office in San Angelo. From left: Wayne Christian, Jim Wright and Christi Craddick.
Paul Ratje/For Inside Climate News
Jackie Chesnutt points to a leaking oil well operated by Core Petro on her property near Knickerbocker.
Paul Ratje/For Inside Climate News
Jackie Chesnutt photographs a leaky oil well on her property in November 2025.
Paul Ratje/For Inside Climate News
Jackie Chesnutt holds a piece of soil hardened from the produced water of an oil well.
Paul Ratje/For Inside Climate News
An aerial view of Jackie Lynn Chesnutt’s property in Tom Green County. She has owned the ranch for nearly three decades and worked to increase tree cover and provide wildlife habitat.
Paul Ratje/For Inside Climate News
TOM GREEN COUNTY — Some Texas oil wells gush hundreds of barrels of oil a day. But many are like those on Jackie Chesnutt’s ranch, which only trickle out a couple of barrels per month.
Chesnutt, a retired engineer, says the five wells operating on her West Texas ranch are out of compliance with state rules and should be shut down. Core Petro, the company that runs, them says it’s struggling to break even, let alone pay to plug wells. Besides, it says, all its wells are in compliance with state regulations.
Article continues below this ad
Such situations are not uncommon.
There are thousands of oil and gas wells like these around Texas: low-producing wells leased by companies operating on a shoestring. About two-thirds of the active oil wells in Texas, or 99,000 wells, produce fewer than 10 barrels of oil a day, according to the state regulator. To remain active, they must produce at least five barrels for three consecutive months or at least one barrel for 12 consecutive months.
Companies will often maintain a minimal amount of oil production rather than plugging a well, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Landowners like Chesnutt argue the pattern can lead to pollution and burdensome equipment on their land.
San Antonio Express News Logo
Make us a Preferred Source on Google to see more of us when you search.
Add Preferred Source
Oil industry analysts and environmental advocates say some companies report the bare minimum of oil production to avoid plugging wells.
Article continues below this ad
Advocates of reform say stricter rules are needed to ensure companies plug wells in a timely manner and assume the costs so they don’t become the state’s responsibility.
Texas has more than 159,000 inactive wells. If the operator of one of those goes out of business, the unplugged well eventually becomes an orphan. And Texas already is facing a record high backlog of more than 11,000 orphan wells.
Fighting back
Chesnutt is the rare landowner fighting back against this broken system. The 69-year-old and her now-deceased husband bought the 375-acre property outside San Angelo in 1998. After retiring from a career working at a pharmaceutical company, she now tends goats and sheep on the ranch.
Article continues below this ad
Her complaints to the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry, have gone nowhere, she said.
“The wells on the lease are all producing,” commission spokesperson Bryce Dubee said.
Chesnutt has resorted to shutting off power to the wells because she says they are out of compliance. Core Petro says that it’s Chesnutt who is breaking the law by shutting off power and, without electricity, it has no way to produce oil.
“We’re between a rock and hard place,” said Cassie Ohlhausen, who runs Core Petro with her husband, Kent. “We’re not financially able to plug a bunch of oil wells. That’s not why we’re in this business. We’re in this business to produce oil wells.”
Article continues below this ad
Chesnutt’s growing frustration has spilled over into confrontations both with Core Petro and Railroad Commission staff. The commission alleges that Chesnutt physically assaulted staff members and endangered them with aggressive driving. The owners of Core Petro say she has threatened them with a gun. Chesnutt disputes their claims.
The Railroad Commission declined to answer numerous questions about the lease on Chesnutt’s ranch. Instead, it provided a letter sent to Chesnutt describing the alleged altercations with staff members. The commission has not issued any fines to Core Petro.
Chesnutt’s ranch is one small window into the vast problem of Texas’ aging oil assets. Existing financial mechanisms are not enough to retire the thousands of low-producing oil wells littered across the state. The problem eventually falls to the state or becomes a thorn in the side of landowners like Chesnutt.
Persimmon Creek Ranch
Persimmon Creek Ranch lies where the desert scrubland of the Trans Pecos region meets the rocky woodlands of the Texas Hill Country. About 200 miles northwest of Austin, the ranch gets its name from the native persimmons Chesnutt collects to make preserves.
Article continues below this ad
“One of the biggest things we have focused on out here since we’ve bought the place is water, water, water,” she said. Chesnutt, now widowed, relies on a windmill-operated well to provide water for her residence and animals.
Chesnutt’s home office displays professional mementos, including her diploma from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was an early female graduate of the engineering program. She now applies an engineer’s attention to detail to investigating the drilling operations on her property.
Chesnutt holds 50% of the mineral rights on the property, meaning she receives a share of profits from the wells. It has amounted to only a few hundred dollars in royalties every couple months in recent years. The money is hardly worth the trouble the wells have caused, she said.
While the lease was previously operated by Amor Petroleum, Well #10 had been shut down for lack of production. That left only four producing wells.
Article continues below this ad
Then, Core Petro took over the lease in 2021. Chesnutt says that’s when the problems started.
Once a well is inactive, the operator has 12 months to plug it or obtain an extension. The clock started ticking for Core Petro to get Well #10 producing again. It reported a small amount of production at the well to bring it back to active status.
Chesnutt said the company caused numerous spills in their attempts to get oil flowing.
“They made a big mess of it,” she said, showing photos of spills of oil and produced water, a hazardous byproduct of drilling. Chesnutt fears the spills could contaminate her groundwater and has paid to get her water tested multiple times.
Article continues below this ad
“We have worked our asses off to make this place wonderful and beautiful,” she said. “I refuse to accept that the next person is going to have this happen to them.”
Reporting discrepancies
The Railroad Commission cited Core Petro for unpermitted disposal of oil and gas waste, or spills, at the lease. But each time, the violation was later resolved without the company paying fines.
“RRC records indicate four pollution violations for this lease,” commission spokesperson Dubee said. “In each instance the operator was notified and upon reinspection all violations have been fixed on the lease indicating compliance.”
Article continues below this ad
Core’s Cassie Ohlhausen said that some amount of spillage is to be expected and that the company always cleaned up the spills.
But Chesnutt’s frustrations only grew.
“What has really blown my mind about this is that we have to follow one set of rules in industry,” Chesnutt said. “But the oil companies, they allow them to just come out here and do whatever the hell they want.”
By her account, only one of the wells on her property has produced oil in years. But Core Petro reports ongoing production at all the active wells. The Railroad Commission requires well testing to prove they are producing oil. Core Petro’s most recent well testing, in 2025, shows each well producing less than one barrel a day.
Article continues below this ad
Chesnutt claimed the company is falsifying production numbers to keep the wells operating. The company denies that claim.
“The operators can fill in any information they want and nobody checks them,” she said. “It’s unacceptable. I’m really sad that the Permian Basin and all these areas are like this.”
While the state rules require every well to be actively producing oil, production reports are required only for the entire lease, not individual wells. An analysis found Inconsistencies between public records of oil production and inspections at the lease.
On July 2, 2025, a truck picked up oil from the ranch and recorded the level of oil in the tank afterward, according to a commission inspection report. A Railroad Commission inspector visited the site on Sept. 16. He noted that the amount of oil in the tank hadn’t changed since July 2.
Article continues below this ad
But in the intervening months, Core Petro reported producing 10 barrels in July and another 15 barrels in August. The company was reporting production on paper, but the volume of the tank did not rise, according to the commission’s inspection.
The Railroad Commission declined to answer questions about the reporting discrepancy, and it does not appear the agency has investigated the discrepancy. Ohlhausen said the company uses an auxiliary tank to collect the oil. Once it is full, the oil is transported to the tank battery, a large metal tank that stores oil. She said this could explain why the tank battery did not rise even though oil was being produced.
“The reporting of production is accurate and is done by a third party who tracks our oil sales and inputs those numbers into the RRC system,” Ohlhausen said.
Only one of the wells on the ranch has an auxiliary tank. That means any oil produced at the other wells would have to flow directly into the tank battery.
Article continues below this ad
Commission documents reveal other inconsistencies. On February 7, 2025, the Railroad Commission issued a violation to Core Petro that said Well #9 was an “inactive unplugged well.” However, the next time the inspector visited the site, the well was determined to be compliant. The Railroad Commission declined to respond to questions about the discrepancy.
Beyond reporting such problems to the Railroad Commission, though, property owners have little recourse. Chesnutt is frustrated by the regulator’s inaction regarding the company operating on her ranch.
Broader problems
Core Petro specializes in operating aging, low-producing wells, Ohlhausen explained, saying that her husband, Kent, is called “the Oil Well Undertaker” because he works with “end of life wells.”
Article continues below this ad
“We’re the ones that end up with what they call the stripper wells that have already been stripped of all their oil,” she said. “They’re just producing a bit of oil every day to keep somebody alive.”
Kent Ohlhausen owns several other oil companies. Many of the leases he operates meet the bare minimum requirement of one barrel of oil production a month for 12 consecutive months. For example, Ohlhausen Oil Co.’s Ohlhausen W.T. lease reported one barrel of oil production for each month between April 2023 to April 2024. The company’s Barker C.P. lease reported one barrel of oil production every month from December 2023 to January 2025.
“We literally work seven days a week, producing stripper oils,” his wife said. “We just eke out a little bit of money and that’s just fine with us.”
The company paid a $50,000 bond to the state of Texas to cover plugging costs if they went out of business. But Cassie Ohlhausen said that even if they wanted to, they wouldn’t be able to plug all their wells.
Article continues below this ad
“Sometimes the money is not there,” she said. “We don’t take investors. We are just Kent and Cassie.”
Texas is dedicating more money than ever to plugging orphan wells. But the number still continues to climb. Many of the marginal wells that continue producing when their owners do not have the means to plug them eventually become orphan wells.
“Operators will often produce a de minimis amount of hydrocarbons to stay out of inactive status,” said Adam Peltz, a senior attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund. “This is widely abused.”
Peltz said that properly identifying inactive wells is important because it creates an “early warning system” for regulators.
Article continues below this ad
“Every marginal well eventually becomes an inactive well. And many inactive wells become orphan wells,” he said. “There’s no reason why the public should bear the risk.”
New Mexico is in the process of reforming its bonding system for oil and gas wells. The proposed rule changes would classify wells that produce fewer than 90 barrels of oil a year as of “no beneficial use” and require them to be plugged.
Peltz said these changes would reduce the likelihood that the state would end up paying to plug the wells.
The Railroad Commission also is developing new rules for inactive wells after last year’s passage of Senate Bill 1150. The law requires plugging wells that are more than 25 years old and have been inactive for at least 15 years unless they qualify for certain exemptions.
Article continues below this ad
The Inflation Reduction Act created a $350 million fund for plugging marginal conventional wells to reduce methane emissions. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality received the largest grant from the program, of $134 million. The methane reduction program falls under the TCEQ as the state agency that regulates air emissions from industry. The program is “currently in development” and staff are preparing to issue a request for grant applications to prioritize and select wells for plugging, according to a TCEQ spokesperson.
The program will rely on operators volunteering to plug their wells. It could help companies like Core Petro plug wells that otherwise might end up orphaned.
“If there was a grant for us to plug wells, we’d be plugging wells all day,” Ohlhausen said. “Because we know that we own holes that are not going to ever be viable.”
Article continues below this ad
This report is published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.