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.
Factsheet: Global Methane Pledge 2025
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”.
TIM DOTY
Tim retired from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) in 2018, after +31 years of state service, including serving as the Agency’s mobile air monitoring manager and optical gas imaging (OGI) and technical air expert for 17 years during a time when he managed all of TCEQ's large-scale mobile air monitoring projects from 1992 - 2015. He performed and managed many ambient air monitoring projects both inside and outside of many hundreds of industrial facilities in Texas, totaling several thousand environmental assessments conducted throughout the state. Tim also served as an expert witness on legal matters, participated on criminal investigations, and provided technical assistance on legislative bills and in formulating environmental rule and permitting language. Tim was an early TCEQ OGI user starting in 2005 helping to establish the Agency's related OGI policies and procedures for the State of Texas. Tim served as the Chairperson of the TCEQ's Infrared Technical Workgroup charged with developing the Agency's OGI certification training program prior to becoming the TCEQ's OGI Program Manager and certification instructor from 2015 - 2018. Tim also served as a technical assistant to the TCEQ Director of the Office of Compliance and Enforcement during his Agency tenure.
Tim Doty is the current President of TCHD Consulting LLC (TCHD) in Driftwood, Texas. TCHD provides technical, environmental, safety, and thermography consulting services to customers in the U.S., Canada, South America, and Europe including but not limited to those associated with municipalities, affected communities, environmental causes, safety, and the Public Interest which includes but is not limited to Oilfield Witness' OGI program that documents air emissions and polluters from around the world. Tim is a current ITC-certified Level III Master Thermographer that provides OGI instruction for the oil and gas industry, regulators, and non-profit organizations, amongst others. His professional expertise continues to be sought after by journalists on OGI and technical matters including but not limited to those associated with the Associated Press, New York Times, PBS Newshour, BBC News, CBS News, NBC News, Reuters, Bloomberg News, Inside Climate News, Texas Tribune, amongst many others in the U.S and from around the globe.