Oklahoma Oil Regulators Failed to Stop Spread of Toxic Wastewater — ProPublica

In January 2020, Danny Ray began an advanced job with the Oklahoma company that regulates oil and fuel. The petroleum engineer who’d spent greater than 40 years within the oil fields had been employed to assist handle a spreading drawback, one which state regulators didn’t absolutely 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 had been occurring with growing 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 fuel are pumped from the bottom, they provide you with briny fluid known as “produced water,” many instances 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 often known as injection wells.

Wastewater injection had been occurring 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 data and years of knowledge, they zeroed in on a big clue: The purges had been occurring close to wells the place firms had 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. 

By November 2020, not less than 10 websites had been expelling polluted water, in line with inside company emails obtained by way of public data 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 previously 5 years. All through that point, state officers had been conscious of the environmental and public well being disaster as Ray and others on the company investigated the proliferating purges and uncovered a posh stew of causes. 

Ray usually 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 number of “orphan” wells — inactive wells whose house owners have deserted them with out correctly plugging them with cement. The state has catalogued about 20,000 orphan wells, however federal researchers imagine the true quantity could also be over 300,000, based mostly on historic trade information and airborne imaging methods that determine previous wells underground. These previous wells present straightforward pathways for the injected wastewater to zoom up 1000’s of toes to the floor, contaminating ingesting water sources alongside the way in which. 

Ray notably fearful concerning 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 instances. 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,” stated Ray, 72, who resigned in frustration three years later. “They don’t need to pay attention.”

A yearlong investigation by The Frontier and ProPublica reveals that the Oklahoma Company Fee didn’t mandate that accountable firms clear up the air pollution belowground, as state law requires “when possible.” Regulators say that after tainted by oil area brine, polluted groundwater is just about inconceivable to deal with. That makes stopping purges all of the extra essential — one thing the fee additionally did not do, in line with present and former staff. At instances, data present, company management sidelined staff who criticized the company’s response. 

Discipline experiences from company employees referred to particular person incidents as “a menace to the setting and the protection of individuals” or “a hazard to the bottom water.” These notes describe orphan wells spewing poisonous water close to properties or into streams, leaving scars of salt residue. A house owner reported that his grandchildren usually play close to a purging properly. Ranchers have misplaced calves, which, drawn to the salty water, died after ingesting 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 fuel was extracted lengthy earlier than trendy rules, starting within the Nineteen Sixties, required firms to guard the setting and plug inactive wells with cement. They famous that the state has taken steps to cut back injection pressures on new wells lately and is dedicated to “doing the appropriate factor, holding operators accountable, defending Oklahoma and its assets, and offering truthful and balanced regulation.”

“I’m additionally assured that each worker and each view is heard and thought of,” stated Brandy Wreath, who as director of administration for the fee is chargeable 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 targets are usually 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. 

“Now we have a lot injury underground that we don’t even find out about,” Ray stated.

State Regulatory Failures

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

However whereas investigating purges during the last 5 years, oil division staff have discovered a whole lot of wells that had 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 firms to the state. Throughout his tenure, Ray and others additionally found purges attributable to wells working throughout the strain boundaries famous on the properly permits. Oklahoma’s guidelines, they concluded, had been a part of the issue. 

In a November 2020 e-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 seems to be like among the accredited injection pressures had been set excessive within the allow,” he wrote. “Could also be arduous to place that genie again within the bottle.” 

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

The state approves the strain at which firms can inject oil area wastewater based mostly on whether or not injection would fracture a tough layer of rock meant to include 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 fuel is discovered.

Quickly after beginning his job, Ray started distributing long 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 circulate, 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 incessantly requested for maps displaying wells that the pressurized water would possibly collide with in addition to information on the strain at which rocks crack, in line with company officers.

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

“I by no means obtained an invite to return,” he stated. 

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 exterior the small city of Velma in southwestern Oklahoma made the strain drawback inconceivable to disregard. Previous wells had been frequently 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 had been too excessive or had been taking pictures extra wastewater into the earth than legally allowed, in line with company emails. 

The proprietor of the injection wells, Quotation Oil and Gasoline 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 number of previous wells wouldn’t cut back the chance of purges; the water would merely discover a new outlet.

Quotation didn’t reply questions concerning the Velma purge. 

The company lowered 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 stated his bosses didn’t agree and, within the Velma case and subsequent purges, allowed firms to proceed injecting — or to restart after a brief pause — at instances close to lively purges.

“They’d say issues in our conferences, like, ‘Properly, the operators won’t go for that,’” Ray stated. 

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

Wreath denied that the company was overly lenient with oil firms and stated that Ray advocated for adjustments that the oil division couldn’t implement by itself.

“Danny could not have gotten issues as quick as he wished to, however he was heard,” Wreath stated. “Folks had 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 obtained to start out doing this.’”

Charles Teacle III, regulatory affairs chairman for the Oklahoma Power Producers Alliance, an trade group, stated 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 right now.” He didn’t specify which practices firms now not have interaction in. Teacle stated that when purges will be linked to a selected firm, regulators work with the corporate to “develop a plan to handle it and permit the operator to renew operations if doable.” 

A number of of the latest purges threatened to violate federal clear water legal guidelines, in line 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 evaluate 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 head of the EPA’s regional office.

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. Hundreds of gallons of oil area wastewater poured down a forested hillside, forming a “area” of water and flowing right into a creek, in line with an email from an agency employee. The company found the fluid was 56 instances extra concentrated with salts and chemical substances than the EPA’s customary for ingesting 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 inconceivable, Ray hoped that the oil division would wield certainly one of its out there instruments: authorized motion in opposition to firms creating the air pollution. The oil division might take firms to the Oklahoma Company Fee’s administrative regulation courts, the place judges might challenge rulings that superb firms or implement cleanups, so long as the three elected commissioners accredited.

Company management appeared to assist this technique. In an October 2022 email, area operations supervisor Brad Ice wrote that if air pollution had 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 forestall air pollution” in opposition to the corporate. 

However no contempt instances have been filed for purges within the final 5 years, in line with fee spokesperson Trey Davis. Nor has the company fined any firms for purges throughout that point, he stated. 

Davis recognized two instances in administrative regulation courtroom throughout that point through which the company formally ordered firms to cease injection after a purge and to scrub up the air pollution — although he stated the fee prefers “to guide with a handshake as an alternative of a hammer.” 

Regardless of creating purges, firms 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 stated. 

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

That cooperation, nonetheless, virtually by no means includes cleanup of water assets tainted by purges. Oil division officers had been capable of determine only one time since 2020 that their company accredited 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, stated.

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

“I imagine 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 beneath our jurisdictional management which are contaminating groundwater and presenting a possible endangerment to the well being and security of individuals and the setting,” wrote Everett Plummer, on the time a supervisor on the company’s oil division, in an October 2022 email to another supervisor that was forwarded to Ray and company leaders, together with Strickland.

“We aren’t addressing the foundation reason for the issue,” Plummer went on in the identical e-mail. “That root trigger is overpressure.”

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

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

Some oil and fuel firms 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 line with a hydrogeologist who labored in saltwater disposal for a big Oklahoma oil firm. He pointed to wells he had labored on that had been injecting 10,000 barrels of wastewater a day — greater than the rock layer ought to be capable of soak up. “You’re considering, ‘Rattling, the place is all of it going?’” he stated. 

The hydrogeologist, who spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of he nonetheless works within the trade and fears repercussions, stated 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 stated, “since you ought to be capable of go to OCC to truly handle these things.” 

Poisonous Ingesting Water 

As Ray pushed his company to reply extra urgently to the purges, oil area wastewater was seeping into aquifers and ingesting 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 collection of purges encircled the city for practically 4 years. One gushed a number of hundred toes from the highschool, simply past the softball diamond. 

For residents whose non-public 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 really helpful most. Their properly water additionally contained benzene, a infamous carcinogen linked to leukemia and different blood cell cancers, at six instances the EPA’s restrict for ingesting water.

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

These wells had been additionally injecting close to greater than 100 previous wells that had been plugged with mud. In contrast to a correct cement plug, mud shouldn’t be sturdy sufficient to forestall the pressurized fluid from bursting out of the properly. 

Most of the injection wells had been once more owned by Citation, 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 agency. They maintained that the air pollution was a remnant of historic oil and fuel exercise. However company engineers pulled properly data and area employees tracked oil area wastewater flowing lower than a half mile from a church and a Greenback Basic 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 courtroom, alleging that the corporate’s injection was inflicting “new air pollution and contamination every day.” Quotation denied the allegations and argued that the case must first be determined by the fee’s administrative regulation courtroom. 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 ingesting water. “It’s a headache simply figuring out that if our filters get unhealthy, it might come by way of if we don’t get them modified in time,” she stated. 

She stated that Quotation really helpful 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 concerning the lawsuit. 

“Quotation Oil & Gasoline Corp. continues to work cooperatively with the OCC to additional examine the sources and causes of those alleged purges,” Bob Redweik, the corporate’s vp of environmental well being and security and regulatory affairs, stated in a press release.

The oil and fuel 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 affected by orphan oil and fuel wells. Hiding within the tall grass or shaded by stands of oak and elm, most of the wells are leaking oil. Others frequently purged oil area brine. One, in line 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 line with state information. 

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

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

Related disappointment ate at Ray in his closing months on the Oklahoma Company Fee. Regardless of his urging, the oil division didn’t pursue courtroom instances in opposition to firms, even because the disaster appeared to be worsening. In spring 2023, he stated he reviewed an internal spreadsheet figuring out 42 purges, most of which had 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 reports ready by the agency about main purges. In every one, they’d drawn the identical conclusion as Ray: Overpressurized injection wells had been inflicting purges, a dynamic intensified by the variety of orphan wells and years of lax regulation, in line with the experiences. 

However tensions remained. Shawn Coslett, supervisor of the air pollution abatement division, turned more and more vocal about what he known as a “tradition drawback” throughout the fee when it got here to holding firms accountable for air pollution, in line with emails he despatched to his managers and different colleagues. 

Since 2023, Coslett had been pushing the company to pursue Quotation in courtroom for its position in a serious purge exterior Ardmore that gushed wastewater on and off for years. In Might 2024, Quotation’s vp of environmental well being and security emailed his team 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 crew wouldn’t be invited,” Redweik wrote. 

The position of Coslett’s crew within the purge investigation was subsequently lowered, in line 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 several emails to take motion on a purge expelling 1,300 gallons of salt water day by 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 email to an oil division manager, he wrote that runoff from the positioning might ultimately 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 and make some adjustments. In closed conferences with trade representatives final yr, company officers steered requiring firms to check the fracture level for every injection properly — precisely what Ray had really helpful 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 finally accredited a revised formula 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 guide the oil division: Jeremy Hodges, a former monetary analyst and undertaking supervisor for Continental Assets, the Oklahoma Metropolis-based oil and fuel large. He changed Strickland, who not too long ago took a job as chief initiatives officer for the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, 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 instances as “resolved,” together with among the most damaging and chronic air pollution occasions, in line with the agency’s database of pollution complaints. 

In a September public meeting, Hodges sought to reassure the company’s commissioners: Purges had been beneath management, he stated.

However interviews with present and former company employees and oil and fuel officers recommend that Oklahoma remains to be coping with dozens of purges. Considered one of 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 stated the general public provide has not been impacted. Nonetheless, in October Gov. Kevin Stitt declared a state of emergency and known as it “a critical menace to public well being and security” as 1000’s of gallons of wastewater continued to circulate every day.

Company officers stated area employees periodically verify for indicators of recent 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 stated. 

In late August, Ray, who has returned to consulting for oil and fuel firms, took a reporter to go to a purge website 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 combined with purple and shiny blue. On the banks, white salt scars confirmed the define of previous wastewater spills. 

“It’s arduous to imagine that anybody would flip their again on this drawback and simply faux it merely doesn’t exist,” Ray stated 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 had been breaking the floor in a number of locations. The water was arising from beneath the bottom.