By Jerry Redfern | Yale Climate Connections | Nov 10, 2025
Hilcorp and the Hodgsons are close neighbors because of a legal quirk called a split estate, under which the property rights to the surface land are separate from those of the minerals that lie beneath. The Hodgsons own the surface rights, and the federal government owns the underlying mineral rights, which, in this area, it leases primarily to Hilcorp. By law, landowners must allow subsurface rights owners to have access to those minerals. For the Hodgsons, that access takes shape in a spiderweb of roads and wells stitching their thousands of acres of pine-dotted mesas and valleys.
Companies used natural gas to flush out newly drilled wells, then lit the polluted mixture on fire in massive flares. “This whole country at night was orange,” Richard said. “It was so wasteful. ”Wastewater from oil production — often called produced water and laden with hydrogen sulfide — was dumped in ditches and ponds throughout the region. A few years ago, he watched a neighbor’s cow drink from a puddle of filthy water pooled beneath a pumpjack. The cow stumbled off, bellowing, then fell in a ditch and died.
