The Railroad Commission of Texas meets Tuesday to take up ExxonMobil’s application to bury carbon dioxide beneath Jefferson County — the first big test of a permitting power the state took over from the federal government eight months ago. Anyone wanting to address the commission must register by noon Monday.
The company’s Rose project would gather carbon dioxide from industry around Beaumont, pipe it about eighteen miles, and inject it more than half a mile down into porous rock under roughly 13,000 acres of private land. The federal side is settled: the Environmental Protection Agency issued three permits for the wells last October, capping injection at five million metric tons a year and 53 million over a thirteen-year run. The state permit is not settled. The application drew protests, was sent to a contested hearing in October, and residents of nearby Cheek have held their own meetings about it.
Texas took control of this kind of permit only recently. The EPA handed the commission authority over carbon-storage wells effective December 15, 2025, making Texas the sixth state to hold it. The commission’s own application tracker, last updated August 7, lists twenty such projects: one approved, two withdrawn, the rest at various stages of review, on hold or at hearing. Two of them are ExxonMobil’s.
Most of the agenda is not that. It runs past two hundred numbered items, and more than fifty are moves to deny an operator’s annual registration for failing to deal with wells that have sat idle — the filing that keeps a company licensed to drill in Texas at all. Another nine are complaints by Bastrop County landowners that a single operator has no good-faith claim to the leases under their property. No findings have been made in those cases. Five more ask the commission to sign off on the first stage of restoring land strip-mined for lignite at three East Texas mines.
The commission is working under a lame-duck chairman. Jim Wright, who presides, lost the Republican primary runoff in May and leaves office January 1. His successor is on the November 3 ballot. The other two commissioners keep their seats, and they will pick the next chairman themselves.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 9:30 a.m. CT Tuesday, August 18, 2026. The notice was filed August 10.
- Where
- William B. Travis Building, 1701 N. Congress Ave., Room 12-126, twelfth floor, Austin.
- Governing body & chair
- Railroad Commission of Texas — three commissioners elected statewide to staggered six-year terms, one seat every two years. They choose their own chairman. Jim Wright holds that post.
- Format
- In person. Speakers must register by noon Monday, August 17 by email or phone; public input is limited to three minutes.
- Live video
- Live webcast · also reachable from the agency’s open meetings page.
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer · agency open meetings page
Commissioners
- Jim Wright, Orange Grove — chairman; rancher and former oilfield services owner.
- Christi Craddick — Midland native; lawyer; oil, gas, water and tax practice.
- Wayne Christian — former East Texas state representative and financial adviser.
The roster follows the agency’s own commissioners page. This is the only elected multi-member board in this series; the commission does not publish term-end dates, so none are given here. The agency’s roster page lists no hometown for any commissioner; Orange Grove comes from Jim Wright’s biography, and Wayne Christian’s biography carries no residence line, which is why none is given for him. Christi Craddick’s biography calls her a Midland native who lives in Austin, so no single city is given for her either. Wright lost the May 26, 2026 Republican primary runoff to Bo French, who faces Rep. Jon Rosenthal, a Democrat, and Libertarian Arthur DiBianca on November 3; the winner takes office January 1, 2027. Staff contact for this meeting: Office of General Counsel, (512) 463-7149.