Strolling amid the vast library of oil and gas drilling logs, Ortuño, the collection’s manager for 35 years, plucked another sheet, dated 1938, from a drawer. “Dry and abandoned,” the sheet said of the well.
Few people outside the oil and gas world care about such records, which fill a corner of the university’s Bureau of Economic Geology building that Ortuño calls his “kingdom.” But those looking to shore up the state’s water supplies are deeply interested. As drought grips most of Texas, researchers are combing the records to map brackish water in the state’s 30 aquifers — hidden resources that could help quench the state’s long-term thirst.