The Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) on Tuesday adopted rule changes that are intended to more closely regulate drilling waste disposal wells in areas of the state where there has been or could be heightened seismic activity.

The RRC is the body that permits disposal wells, and the rule changes come after the agency earlier this year was besieged by citizen complaints about mild earthquakes in communities overlying the Barnett Shale in North Texas (see Shale Daily, June 18; Jan. 21). The vote to adopt the rules was unanimous by the three-member RRC.

Deb Mamula, Texas Oil & Gas Association executive vice president, praised the RRC for “…deliberately seeking out concrete information to arrive at science-driven rule amendments related to disposal wells.”

The rule amendments take effect Nov. 17. The rules:

“These disposal rule amendments represent the fourth significant [RRC] rule amendments over the last three years,” said RRC Commissioner Barry Smitherman. “Our first-in-the-nation hydraulic fracturing chemical disclosure rule [see Shale Daily, Dec. 14, 2011], our water recycling rules [see Shale Daily, March 27, 2013], our rule amendments relating to well integrity and construction requirements [see Shale Daily, May 28, 2013], and now this seismic-related rule, maintain the commission’s commitment to best practices for the industries we oversee.”