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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.

It’s the latest in a string of mysterious water features in the arid Permian Basin, the nation’s top producing oil field, that regulators have been unable to explain.

Last year, an eruption of salty water swamped several acres on Wight’s cousin’s ranch, triggering a multi-million-dollar cleanup.

Many in West Texas were drilled during World War II and 80 years underground can do major damage to steel and concrete casing.

“There’s a source of pressure there and it’s shallow,” said Hawk Dunlap, an oilfield firefighter who lives in Crane County and surveyed the recent blowout for Wight last week.

West Texas oil producers pump millions of gallons of so-called produced water, laced with chemical lubricants and numerous hazardous compounds such as arsenic, bromide, strontium, mercury, barium, and organic compounds, particularly benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes, underground every day for disposal, often into old oil and gas wells.

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