HB49

HB49 expands protection against certain civil damage claims for people who produce, transport, treat or beneficially reuse fluid oil-and-gas waste, while preserving specified claims and protections for landowners. It changes who may be held financially responsible; it is not a blanket approval to discharge wastewater or a finding that a particular reuse is safe. Signed June 20, 2025, it took effect September 1, 2025 and applies only to legal claims that accrue on or after that date. Earlier claims remain governed by the former law. Final law; official history.

The existing statutory definition of fluid oil-and-gas waste includes brine, hydraulic-fracturing fluid, flowback, produced water and other fluids arising from drilling or production. Before HB49, the liability protection focused on treated products transferred for use in drilling or oil-and-gas production. The new language covers treated waste put to a beneficial use, either by the treating person or by someone receiving it under a contractual understanding that it will be beneficially used. It expressly includes surface-property owners who perform the covered activity. The law does not itself certify that a proposed use meets environmental requirements. Final law, Section 122.003(a); Natural Resources Code Chapter 122.

A separate provision protects people who produce the waste or supply or convey it to a treatment facility from specified claims involving subsequent treatment, later use, or exposure to waste components or treatment byproducts. Another provision protects surface-property owners from exposure-related injury, death or property-damage claims where the waste is produced, conveyed, transported or treated by others on or under their property. The law distinguishes ownership of the land from personally performing a covered operation. Final law, Section 122.003(a-1)–(a-2).

Important exceptions remain. Subsection (b) preserves liability for exposure-related personal injury, death or property damage resulting from gross negligence or an intentional wrongful act or omission. It also preserves claims involving negligence together with failure to conform to the listed Railroad Commission rules, state water-discharge permits or Railroad Commission hauling/handling permits. Ordinary negligence by itself is not the same as the negligence-plus-regulatory-noncompliance exception. Final law, Section 122.003(b).

Subsection (b-1) separately preserves a producer’s or subsequent recipient’s liability under common, statutory, regulatory or other law to surface owners and holders of interests in the surface estate where waste is produced, transported or treated. For claims based solely on negligence and regulatory noncompliance under subsection (b)(2), punitive damages—extra damages intended to punish—cannot be awarded. That provision does not say all compensatory damages are barred or that punitive damages can never be available on another legal basis. These protections and exceptions must be read together; the briefing does not promise how a court will resolve a particular dispute. Final law, Section 122.003(b-1)–(c).

The Railroad Commission’s rulemaking duty is extended to treated waste and treatment byproducts as well as fluid oil-and-gas waste. Existing permitting and other regulatory requirements are not replaced with a general exemption. HB49 does not amend the chapter’s ownership-transfer section. Final law, bill Section 2; Chapter 122.