We are methane hunters and organizers. We use optical gas imaging technology to expose the dirty secrets of oil and gas. We leverage this intelligence to educate the public and policy makers to strengthen climate movements.
Our Team
SHARON WILSON
Sharon is a 5th generation Texan who worked for the oil and gas industry in Ft. Worth, but was unaware of any environmental issues. After 12 years, she left the industry and bought 42 acres in Wise County adjacent to the LBJ National Grasslands. Unknown to her at the time was that George Mitchell was experimenting in Wise County to figure out how to produce oil and gas from shale. She had a ringside seat at the sneak preview called Fracking Impacts.
As she watched her air turn brown and, eventually, her water turn black she documented it all on her blog texassharon.com. Sharon and her son moved to Denton, Texas thinking the city would provide more protection.
Sharon has briefed NATO Parliamentary Assembly, EPA regulators and even former Administrator Gina McCarthy on the impacts of oil and gas extraction. In 2014, she became a certified optical gas imaging thermographer and now travels across the U.S. making visible the invisible methane pollution from oil and gas facilities and giving tours to media, Members of Congress, state lawmakers, regulators, and investment bankers.
MIGUEL ESCOTO
Growing up in the border West Texas community of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Miguel Escoto has witnessed the oil and gas industry’s oppression of vulnerable communities for many years. Since 2020, he has conducted fieldwork in the Permian Basin alongside Sharon Wilson. As Organizer he uses this oilfield perspective to support and foster climate movements and organizations in West Texas and elsewhere. Miguel is a founder of Amanecer People’s Project (formerly Sunrise Movement El Paso)–a membership-based, power-building climate organization in El Paso, Texas. He is based in El Paso, Texas.
Justin Mikulka
Justin directs communications for Oilfield Witness. For the past decade Justin has researched and written about the U.S. shale oil and gas industry. In 2019, he started highlighting the new shale industry’s issues with methane emissions and flaring. He also has written about the ongoing issues of abandoned oil and gas wells in the U.S. and the oil industry’s large unfunded environmental liabilities related to these abandoned wells. Prior to this work, Justin worked in various roles in research, marketing, communications and project management.
Charlie Barrett
Charlie worked as a thermographer surveying oil and gas sites in the Permian and San Juan basins in New Mexico before joining Oilfield Witness. Prior to that, he worked as an ecologist for the Texas A&M University Forest Service and is a certified wildland firefighter. He leverages data collected in the field to educate policymakers and the public on the harms caused to our communities and natural ecosystems. When he isn’t working he likes traveling with his pups, Millie, Maka, and Harriet.
Jack McDonald
Jack is a Texas native who became interested in oil and gas issues while his family lived on the Barnett Shale. His family experience there informed the testimony he has given before the EPA on methane regulations going back as far as high school. His work primarily focuses on highlighting failures of environmental regulators using government generated data. He has researched and published multiple reports detailing these failures in Texas which have elicited responses from both regulators and industry insiders as well as national media coverage. While attending the University of Chicago, he received the Richard P. Taub prize for original research in public policy for his thesis, “Natural Gas Flaring in Texas: A Regulatory Capture Study”.