What you see bubbling out of the road here is natural gas condensate. It's about the same chemical make up as aviation fuel. Not really the kind of thing you like to see just bubbling out of a road on your ranch.
The condensate is coming out of a 4 inch pipeline that moves natural gas from a ranch next door to it's sales point. The line is under 10-20 lbs of pressure. The gas belongs to the State of Texas which has leased the land to ExxonMobil to produce. All of the revenue from state lands goes to the Texas School Fund.

I noticed this issue in March of 2008 and promptly reported it to ExxonMobil. No one in the field can fix anything without the approval of the head office. So, Exxon field staff made a "notification" and waited for the o.k. to commence repairs. The o.k. finally came several months later. The leak was clamped. Hooray.

I don't know how much a 4 inch pipe at 20 pounds of pressure dumps over a 9 month period -- but Exxon calculated this to be 11 bbls TOTAL and reported this volume as the actual lost product from the pipe. Sounds a little on the low side to me. Now we have a huge groundwater contamination at the site. ExxonMobil is "monitoring it" and the Texas Railroad Commission is overseeing it. So, you know -- not much is going to happen. ExxonMobil does all the tests - it's the honor system with the Texas Railroad Commission.