Oklahoma Oil Regulators Didn’t Cease Unfold of Poisonous Wastewater — ProPublica

In January 2020, Danny Ray began a sophisticated job with the Oklahoma company that regulates oil and gasoline. The petroleum engineer who’d spent greater than 40 years within the oil fields had been employed to assist tackle a spreading drawback, one which state regulators didn’t totally perceive. 

The yr prior, poisonous water had poured out of the bottom — 1000’s of gallons per day — for months close to the small city of Kingfisher, spreading throughout acres of farmland, killing crops and timber. 

Such air pollution occasions weren’t new, however they have been occurring with rising frequency throughout the state. By the point Ray joined the Oklahoma Company Fee, the incidents had grown widespread sufficient to earn a nickname — purges. 

When oil and gasoline are pumped from the bottom, they give you briny fluid referred to as “produced water,” many occasions saltier than the ocean and laden with chemical substances, together with some that trigger most cancers. Most of this poisonous water is shot again underground utilizing what are generally known as injection wells.

Wastewater injection had been taking place in Oklahoma for 80 years, however one thing was driving the rising variety of purges. Ray and his colleagues within the oil division got down to discover the trigger. As they scoured properly information and years of information, they zeroed in on a big clue: The purges have been occurring close to wells the place corporations have been injecting oil area wastewater at excessively excessive strain, excessive sufficient to crack rock deep underground and permit the waste to journey uncontrolled for miles. 

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By November 2020, no less than 10 websites have been expelling polluted water, in accordance with inside company emails obtained by way of public information requests.

The variety of purges has grown steadily since. A Frontier and ProPublica evaluation of air pollution complaints submitted to the company discovered greater than 150 experiences of purges prior to now 5 years. All through that point, state officers have been conscious of the environmental and public well being disaster as Ray and others on the company investigated the proliferating purges and uncovered a fancy stew of causes. 

Ray typically likens his house state, the place oil has been drilled for greater than a century and is a serious trade, to a block of Swiss cheese, punctured with the nation’s second-highest variety of “orphan” wells — inactive wells whose homeowners have deserted them with out correctly plugging them with cement. The state has catalogued about 20,000 orphan wells, however federal researchers consider the true quantity could also be over 300,000, primarily based on historic trade information and airborne imaging strategies that establish outdated wells underground. These outdated wells present simple pathways for the injected wastewater to zoom up 1000’s of toes to the floor, contaminating consuming water sources alongside the way in which. 

Ray notably frightened in regards to the quantity of wastewater being crammed underground by high-pressure injection — tens of billions of gallons every year, sufficient to fill the Empire State Constructing over 300 occasions. Oklahoma’s huge panorama of unplugged holes mixed with its massive variety of injection wells working at excessive pressures creates situations ripe for purges.

However Ray would come to be taught that on the fee, figuring out the causes of the purges was one factor. Stopping them — and stopping new ones — was a really completely different matter. 

“I don’t know if we’re ever going to repair it or not,” mentioned Ray, 72, who resigned in frustration three years later. “They don’t need to hear.”

A yearlong investigation by The Frontier and ProPublica reveals that the Oklahoma Company Fee didn’t mandate that accountable corporations clear up the air pollution belowground, as state regulation requires “when possible.” Regulators say that when tainted by oil area brine, polluted groundwater is nearly unattainable to deal with. That makes stopping purges all of the extra essential — one thing the fee additionally didn’t do, in accordance with present and former staff. At occasions, information present, company management sidelined staff who criticized the company’s response. 

Subject experiences from company employees referred to particular person incidents as “a risk to the surroundings and the protection of individuals” or “a hazard to the bottom water.” These notes describe orphan wells spewing poisonous water close to houses or into streams, leaving scars of salt residue. A house owner reported that his grandchildren typically play close to a purging properly. Ranchers have misplaced calves, which, drawn to the salty water, died after consuming it. However the full scale of Oklahoma’s purge drawback — and state regulators’ consciousness of it — has by no means beforehand been reported.

Officers with the company’s oil division acknowledged in an interview with The Frontier and ProPublica that overpressurized wells are contributing to the purges. They are saying a few of these incidents are a results of historic air pollution in a state the place oil and gasoline was extracted lengthy earlier than fashionable rules, starting within the Sixties, required corporations to guard the surroundings and plug inactive wells with cement. They famous that the state has taken steps to cut back injection pressures on new wells in recent times and is dedicated to “doing the best factor, holding operators accountable, defending Oklahoma and its sources, and offering honest and balanced regulation.”

“I’m additionally assured that each worker and each view is heard and thought of,” mentioned Brandy Wreath, who as director of administration for the fee is liable for the company’s operations, in a follow-up assertion. “We’ll proceed to be dedicated to defending Oklahoma and supporting the state’s largest trade to carry out its position in a protected and financial method. These objectives should not mutually unique.”

To Ray, these efforts weren’t sufficient within the face of a a lot larger drawback. If 1000’s of gallons of water was reaching the floor, he reasoned, that meant an incalculably better quantity was dispersing beneath floor. The thought scared him. Oklahoma depends on groundwater for over half of its annual water use. 

“We’ve got a lot injury underground that we don’t even find out about,” Ray mentioned.

State Regulatory Failures

State regulators have direct authority over the strain at which corporations inject oil area wastewater.

However whereas investigating purges during the last 5 years, oil division staff have discovered lots of of wells that have been injecting extra fluid than their permits allowed or at pressures above the authorized restrict, as indicated by the strain gauge on every properly and common experiences from corporations to the state. Throughout his tenure, Ray and others additionally found purges attributable to wells working inside the strain boundaries famous on the properly permits. Oklahoma’s guidelines, they concluded, have been a part of the issue. 

In a November 2020 electronic mail to a handful of staff, Mike McGinnis, deputy director of the oil division, described an abundance of overpressurized wells close to a purge as “self-inflicted.” 

“It appears like among the accepted injection pressures have been set excessive within the allow,” he wrote. “Could also be laborious to place that genie again within the bottle.” 

Lowering permitted injection pressures was precisely the answer Ray felt was obligatory.

The state approves the strain at which corporations can inject oil area wastewater primarily based on whether or not injection would fracture a tough layer of rock meant to comprise the fluid. Ray believed purges might be prevented by reducing strain limits to the purpose the place injection wouldn’t crack the softer sandy layers the place most oil and gasoline is discovered.

Quickly after beginning his job, Ray started distributing lengthy memos and dizzying equations calculating the strain at which completely different rock formations break. 

Ray’s efforts helped yield some short-term success. As new purges emerged and present ones continued to stream, oil division officers in 2020 lowered injection pressures on a case-by-case foundation. Regulators added layers of scrutiny for proposed injection wells and extra ceaselessly requested for maps exhibiting wells that the pressurized water may collide with in addition to information on the strain at which rocks crack, in accordance with company officers.

However reducing injection pressures throughout the state proved unattainable. In conferences, oil and gasoline trade representatives pushed again on proposed rule modifications that Ray thought of incremental. That very same yr, he had proposed a rule that will considerably scale back injection pressures statewide to Robyn Strickland, the oil division director on the time. Ray mentioned Strickland lower him out of subsequent rule conferences.

“I by no means acquired an invite to return,” he mentioned. 

Strickland didn’t reply to requests for remark.

As 2020 got here to an in depth, a number of purges in oil fields roughly 2 miles outdoors the small city of Velma in southwestern Oklahoma made the strain drawback unattainable to disregard. Previous wells have been repeatedly expelling poisonous salt water, one at a price of 12,600 gallons per day, roughly sufficient to fill a yard swimming pool.

Ray and different members of the oil division found that some close by wells had been injecting at pressures that have been too excessive or have been capturing extra wastewater into the earth than legally allowed, in accordance with company emails. 

The proprietor of the injection wells, Quotation Oil and Fuel Corp., one of many largest operators in Oklahoma, agreed to plug among the purging wells. Ray likened this strategy to “Whac-A-Mole”: With a lot injected water underground, plugging a couple of outdated wells wouldn’t scale back the probability of purges; the water would merely discover a new outlet.

Quotation didn’t reply questions in regards to the Velma purge. 

The company decreased injection pressures for a few of Quotation’s wells and quickly shut down others, however Ray believed that to completely cease the purge, all injection close to Velma wanted to be halted indefinitely so the quantity of fluid and strain that had constructed up underground might be lowered over time. However he mentioned his bosses didn’t agree and, within the Velma case and subsequent purges, allowed corporations to proceed injecting — or to restart after a brief pause — at occasions close to lively purges.

“They’d say issues in our conferences, like, ‘Properly, the operators may not go for that,’” Ray mentioned. 

“Hell, you’re alleged to be regulators.” 

Wreath denied that the company was overly lenient with oil corporations and mentioned that Ray advocated for modifications that the oil division couldn’t implement by itself.

“Danny might not have gotten issues as quick as he wished to, however he was heard,” Wreath mentioned. “Individuals have been engaged on it and doing what they wanted to do to do it correctly and legally. We simply don’t have the massive stick of presidency to stroll out and say, ‘Increase, you’ve acquired to begin doing this.’”

Charles Teacle III, regulatory affairs chairman for the Oklahoma Power Producers Alliance, an trade group, mentioned most purges “are inclined to happen in areas which have a really lengthy historical past of historic practices that don’t characterize how the trade operates in the present day.” He didn’t specify which practices corporations not interact in. Teacle mentioned that when purges will be related to a selected firm, regulators work with the corporate to “develop a plan to handle it and permit the operator to renew operations if attainable.” 

A number of of the latest purges threatened to violate federal clear water legal guidelines, in accordance with Environmental Safety Company experiences, so federal officers started conducting area inspections alongside state oil division staff. The EPA regional workplace in Dallas famous in a 2020 overview of Oklahoma’s injection rules that “inappropriate” injection appeared so as to add “strain to an already over-pressurized system.”

The next yr, Ray took his complaints about his company’s injection strain rules to the EPA.

“I’ve been making an attempt for greater than a yr to persuade everybody that this can be a main drawback in Oklahoma,” he wrote in a memo to the top of the EPA’s regional workplace.

The EPA didn’t reply to questions.

In August 2022, the Velma purge exploded to the floor once more, greater than a yr after the company’s preliminary investigation started. 1000’s of gallons of oil area wastewater poured down a forested hillside, forming a “area” of water and flowing right into a creek, in accordance with an electronic mail from an company worker. The company found the fluid was 56 occasions extra concentrated with salts and chemical substances than the EPA’s commonplace for consuming water. 

This time, oil division officers shut down all close by injection. However every week later, wastewater flowed out of the bottom at an excellent quicker price, a results of the strain that had constructed up over time. Per week after that, a mile away, one other purge started. 

As earlier than, Ray chafed at what he noticed because the company’s reactive stance. 

If an across-the-board strain discount was unattainable, Ray hoped that the oil division would wield certainly one of its obtainable instruments: authorized motion towards corporations creating the air pollution. The oil division might take corporations to the Oklahoma Company Fee’s administrative regulation courts, the place judges might situation rulings that high quality corporations or implement cleanups, so long as the three elected commissioners accepted.

Company management appeared to help this technique. In an October 2022 electronic mail, area operations supervisor Brad Ice wrote that if air pollution have been discovered, the company would order the corporate to halt injection and take steps to scrub the world. And if the corporate disagreed or air pollution continued, the company would “file contempt for failure to stop air pollution” towards the corporate. 

However no contempt circumstances have been filed for purges within the final 5 years, in accordance with fee spokesperson Trey Davis. Nor has the company fined any corporations for purges throughout that point, he mentioned. 

Davis recognized two circumstances in administrative regulation court docket throughout that point during which the company formally ordered corporations to cease injection after a purge and to scrub up the air pollution — although he mentioned the fee prefers “to steer with a handshake as a substitute of a hammer.” 

Regardless of creating purges, corporations didn’t face punishment in the event that they subsequently complied with company requests to close down injection wells, pump wastewater off the floor and restore the panorama, Davis and different company officers mentioned. 

“We’re not a fine-driven company,” mentioned Wreath, including that prolonged injection properly shutdowns lower into oil firm earnings, making further fines pointless. He famous that pursuing enforcement can take longer and price taxpayers greater than getting corporations to cooperate voluntarily. 

That cooperation, nonetheless, virtually by no means includes cleanup of water sources tainted by purges. Oil division officers have been capable of establish only one time since 2020 that their company accepted a plan to scrub up groundwater air pollution attributable to a purge. Eradicating air pollution from underground water sources is extremely troublesome and really costly, McGinnis, the company’s deputy director, mentioned.

By the autumn of 2022, different company employees had begun voicing frustration at what they perceived because the fee’s lack of motion. 

“I consider it’s unconscionably reckless on our half as a regulatory company to not act swiftly, whereas knowingly and willingly permitting the continued operation of actions below our jurisdictional management which might be contaminating groundwater and presenting a possible endangerment to the well being and security of individuals and the surroundings,” wrote Everett Plummer, on the time a supervisor on the company’s oil division, in an October 2022 electronic mail to a different supervisor that was forwarded to Ray and company leaders, together with Strickland.

“We aren’t addressing the basis reason behind the issue,” Plummer went on in the identical electronic mail. “That root trigger is overpressure.”

Lower than a yr later, Plummer despatched one other electronic mail, this time to Ray and one other colleague, lamenting that Strickland and different company leaders “received’t supply any assist or technical enter or options.” 

Neither Strickland nor an company spokesperson responded to requests for touch upon Plummer’s electronic mail. Plummer declined to be interviewed for this story.

Some oil and gasoline corporations know when their injection wells are working at extra strain and fracturing rock, permitting poisonous water to disperse beneath floor, in violation of state requirements, in accordance with a hydrogeologist who labored in saltwater disposal for a big Oklahoma oil firm. He pointed to wells he had labored on that have been injecting 10,000 barrels of wastewater a day — greater than the rock layer ought to be capable to take up. “You’re pondering, ‘Rattling, the place is all of it going?’” he mentioned. 

The hydrogeologist, who spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of he nonetheless works within the trade and fears repercussions, mentioned he worries the result’s air pollution the state doesn’t find out about — till it breaks the floor. 

“It was so disheartening to me,” he mentioned, “since you ought to be capable to go to OCC to really tackle these items.” 

Poisonous Ingesting Water 

As Ray pushed his company to reply extra urgently to the purges, oil area wastewater was seeping into aquifers and consuming water sources scattered throughout the state.

In 2021, John Roberts, who works as an oil area pump truck driver, and his spouse, Misty, requested the state to check their water. They dwell close to the 500-person city of Cement in southwestern Oklahoma, the place a sequence of purges encircled the city for practically 4 years. One gushed a couple of hundred toes from the highschool, simply past the softball diamond. 

For residents whose personal water wells pulled from the native groundwater, these purges posed extreme well being dangers along with killing grass and different vegetation on their land. When the state examined water from the Roberts’ properly, samples confirmed ranges of salts properly above the EPA’s beneficial most. Their properly water additionally contained benzene, a infamous carcinogen linked to leukemia and different blood cell cancers, at six occasions the EPA’s restrict for consuming water.

Subsequent company investigations close to Cement discovered a tangle of issues. A number of wells have been injecting at pressures far past the fracture level of the rock. A research commissioned by the state discovered that, inside a couple of sq. miles, 22 of 28 injection wells have been working at pressures outdoors authorized limits, have been injecting into the flawed geologic formation and probably inflicting cracks, or had an incomplete allow. 

These wells have been additionally injecting close to greater than 100 outdated wells that had been plugged with mud. Not like a correct cement plug, mud isn’t robust sufficient to stop the pressurized fluid from bursting out of the properly. 

Lots of the injection wells have been once more owned by Quotation, whose high-pressure injection had been shut down by the company close to the Velma purge about 60 miles away. Firm representatives downplayed the variety of purges, referring to them as “alleged” in emails to the company. They maintained that the air pollution was a remnant of historic oil and gasoline exercise. However company engineers pulled properly information and area employees tracked oil area wastewater flowing lower than a half mile from a church and a Greenback Common on the sting of city. The state report analyzed water samples and injection information and located that the trigger was overpressurized injection.

In 2023, the Robertses sued Quotation in federal district court docket, alleging that the corporate’s injection was inflicting “new air pollution and contamination every day.” Quotation denied the allegations and argued that the case should first be determined by the fee’s administrative regulation court docket. The federal lawsuit is on maintain till the executive case with the Oklahoma Company Fee concludes.

Misty Roberts informed The Frontier and ProPublica that the couple has put in filtration methods, which require repairs to maintain poisonous chemical substances out of their consuming water. “It’s a headache simply figuring out that if our filters get dangerous, it might come by way of if we don’t get them modified in time,” she mentioned. 

She mentioned that Quotation beneficial that they pay to hook as much as metropolis water, however their neighbor refused to supply them an easement to dig a water line. 

The corporate didn’t reply questions in regards to the lawsuit. 

“Quotation Oil & Fuel Corp. continues to work cooperatively with the OCC to additional examine the sources and causes of those alleged purges,” Bob Redweik, the corporate’s vice chairman of environmental well being and security and regulatory affairs, mentioned in an announcement.

The oil and gasoline trade’s poisonous legacy can endure lengthy after manufacturing has ceased. 

For rancher Tim Ramsey, the pastures the place he runs cattle in northeastern Oklahoma are plagued by orphan oil and gasoline wells. Hiding within the tall grass or shaded by stands of oak and elm, lots of the wells are leaking oil. Others repeatedly purged oil area brine. One, in accordance with Ramsey, periodically blasted salt water and oil 40 toes into the air with a loud “SHHHH” sound. Ramsey has been submitting cleanup requests to the state for years. The state plugged the purging properly final winter, however many extra unplugged wells stay, in accordance with state information. 

The 67-year-old spent a long time as a coal miner. The oil trade’s air pollution angers him. Regulators’ failure to stop that air pollution angers him much more. He described the state as “so sluggish at doing something.” 

“My largest beef,” he mentioned, “is why did you allow them to get away with it to start with?”

Comparable disappointment ate at Ray in his last months on the Oklahoma Company Fee. Regardless of his urging, the oil division didn’t pursue court docket circumstances towards corporations, even because the disaster appeared to be worsening. In spring 2023, he mentioned he reviewed an inside spreadsheet figuring out 42 purges, most of which have been nonetheless actively flowing. 

By August 2023, Ray had had sufficient and resigned. 

An Enduring Disaster

Across the time of Ray’s departure from the company, the oil division employed a outstanding environmental consulting agency, Halff, to assist settle disputes amongst its staff on how the state ought to reply to the purges. 

The Frontier and ProPublica reviewed experiences ready by the agency about main purges. In each, they’d drawn the identical conclusion as Ray: Overpressurized injection wells have been inflicting purges, a dynamic intensified by the variety of orphan wells and years of lax regulation, in accordance with the experiences. 

However tensions remained. Shawn Coslett, supervisor of the air pollution abatement division, grew to become more and more vocal about what he referred to as a “tradition drawback” inside the fee when it got here to holding corporations accountable for air pollution, in accordance with emails he despatched to his managers and different colleagues. 

Since 2023, Coslett had been pushing the company to pursue Quotation in court docket for its position in a serious purge outdoors Ardmore that gushed wastewater on and off for years. In Could 2024, Quotation’s vice chairman of environmental well being and security emailed his staff to allow them to know that Ice, the company’s area operations director, agreed to carry a gathering between the corporate and the company’s oil division with “restricted attendance.” 

“Shawn Coslett and his staff wouldn’t be invited,” Redweik wrote. 

The position of Coslett’s staff within the purge investigation was subsequently decreased, in accordance with inside paperwork. The company marked the purge as “resolved” in April 2025.

Coslett declined to be interviewed for this story. Neither Ice nor Redweik responded to questions on Coslett’s work on the Ardmore purge.

Final December, Coslett additionally urged the company in a number of emails to take motion on a purge expelling 1,300 gallons of salt water each day on Choctaw Nation land in southeastern Oklahoma. It had been flowing intermittently for 4 years.

Coslett wished the company to create a sampling plan for barium, which had been discovered within the purging water at excessive ranges, in addition to different metals. In a December electronic mail to an oil division supervisor, he wrote that runoff from the positioning might finally make its method into the headwaters of Lake Wister, a public water provide that serves tens of 1000’s of individuals. 

The oil division did try to make some modifications. In closed conferences with trade representatives final yr, company officers steered requiring corporations to check the fracture level for every injection properly — precisely what Ray had beneficial years earlier than. However trade teams vigorously opposed the concept, company officers informed The Frontier and ProPublica, and it was not included within the formal proposal to alter state guidelines for injection strain that the company submitted to the commissioners final September.

In January, the fee in the end accepted a revised components to calculate most injection pressures. However the brand new guidelines, efficient this month, solely apply to new wells. Retroactively lowering pressures would require motion by the state Legislature. The upper pressures for Oklahoma’s greater than 10,400 present injection wells stay unchanged, permitting the issue that Ray recognized to persist. 

Coslett left the company in March. Two weeks later, a brand new director arrived to steer the oil division: Jeremy Hodges, a former monetary analyst and mission supervisor for Continental Sources, the Oklahoma Metropolis-based oil and gasoline big. He changed Strickland, who not too long ago took a job as chief tasks officer for the Interstate Oil and Fuel Compact Fee, a quasi-governmental group that always advocates for trade pursuits.

Within the weeks instantly earlier than and after Hodges took over the oil division, the company marked practically 20 purge circumstances as “resolved,” together with among the most damaging and protracted air pollution occasions, in accordance with the company’s database of air pollution complaints. 

In a September public assembly, Hodges sought to reassure the company’s commissioners: Purges have been below management, he mentioned.

However interviews with present and former company employees and oil and gasoline officers counsel that Oklahoma continues to be coping with dozens of purges. One among these incidents killed about two dozen cattle in September after poisonous salt water stuffed a creek resulting in Fort Cobb Lake, a public water provide. That month, the state elevated testing on the lake and mentioned the general public provide has not been impacted. However, in October Gov. Kevin Stitt declared a state of emergency and referred to as it “a critical risk to public well being and security” as 1000’s of gallons of wastewater continued to stream every day.

Company officers mentioned area employees periodically test for indicators of latest exercise at purge websites that they thought of resolved. They didn’t touch upon the purges close to Lake Wister or Fort Cobb Lake. Hodges, who participated in an interview with The Frontier and ProPublica, didn’t present remark past what different company officers mentioned. 

In late August, Ray, who has returned to consulting for oil and gasoline corporations, took a reporter to go to a purge web site on a ranch in southern Oklahoma the place the company had closed a air pollution grievance across the time Hodges took workplace. 

That afternoon, in an in any other case dry streambed flanked by steep red-dirt partitions, puddles sat baking within the solar, although it hadn’t rained in weeks. A movie of oil shone on the water’s floor, bands of inexperienced blended with purple and brilliant blue. On the banks, white salt scars confirmed the define of outdated wastewater spills. 

“It’s laborious to consider that anybody would flip their again on this drawback and simply faux it merely doesn’t exist,” Ray mentioned as he surveyed the scene.

Farther up the gulch, the water fashioned a pool, which gave off a rank chemical scent. The oily floor appeared calm at first look. However on nearer inspection, bubbles have been breaking the floor in a number of locations. The water was arising from beneath the bottom.