Chevron has purchased a 22K-acre West Texas ranch at the center of a yearslong “zombie wells” legal battle. (Bloomberg)
Ranch owner Ashley Watt spent years arguing that Chevron negligently allowed decades-old oil Permian Basin wells to leak toxic water and crude oil onto her land. In December, Chevron and Watt reached a confidential settlement just a month before the case was scheduled for trial.
Big picture: The culprit of these leaky wells that now pepper properties across America’s biggest oil field? Oil companies like Chevron over-injecting fracking wastewater underground. With this case settled and the property in Chevron’s hands, the oil major avoided a potentially precedent-setting court ruling that could have forced the entire industry to own up to the negative impacts of fracking tech.