Oklahoma Oil Regulators Did not Cease Unfold of Poisonous Wastewater — ProPublica

In January 2020, Danny Ray began a sophisticated 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 downside, 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 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 compounds, together with some that trigger most cancers. Most of this poisonous water is shot again underground utilizing what are referred to 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 information, they zeroed in on a major clue: The purges have been occurring close to wells the place corporations have been injecting oil subject 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 have been expelling polluted water, based on 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 stories of purges previously 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 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 business, to a block of Swiss cheese, punctured with the nation’s second-highest variety 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 business knowledge and airborne imaging strategies that establish previous wells underground. These previous wells present simple pathways for the injected wastewater to zoom up 1000’s of ft to the floor, contaminating ingesting water sources alongside the way in which. 

Ray significantly anxious 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,” mentioned Ray, 72, who resigned in frustration three years later. “They don’t wish 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 legislation requires “when possible.” Regulators say that when tainted by oil subject brine, polluted groundwater is just about unimaginable to deal with. That makes stopping purges all of the extra essential — one thing the fee additionally didn’t do, based on present and former staff. At instances, data present, company management sidelined staff who criticized the company’s response. 

Discipline stories from company employees referred to particular person incidents as “a risk to the atmosphere 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 home-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 downside — 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 fashionable rules, starting within the Sixties, required corporations to guard the atmosphere and plug inactive wells with cement. They famous that the state has taken steps to scale back injection pressures on new wells lately and is dedicated to “doing the precise factor, holding operators accountable, defending Oklahoma and its sources, and offering truthful and balanced regulation.”

“I’m additionally assured that each worker and each view is heard and regarded,” mentioned Brandy Wreath, who as director of administration for the fee is accountable for the company’s operations, in a follow-up assertion. “We are going to proceed to be dedicated to defending Oklahoma and supporting the state’s largest business to carry out its function in a secure and financial method. These targets will not be mutually unique.”

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

“We now have a lot harm 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 subject wastewater.

However whereas investigating purges during the last 5 years, oil division staff have discovered a whole lot 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 stories 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 to be like like among the authorized injection pressures have been set excessive within the allow,” he wrote. “Could also be onerous to place that genie again within the bottle.” 

Decreasing permitted injection pressures was precisely the answer Ray felt was mandatory.

The state approves the strain at which corporations can inject oil subject wastewater based mostly on whether or not injection would fracture a tough layer of rock meant to include the fluid. Ray believed purges could possibly 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 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 move, 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 steadily requested for maps exhibiting wells that the pressurized water would possibly collide with in addition to knowledge on the strain at which rocks crack, based on company officers.

However reducing injection pressures throughout the state proved unimaginable. In conferences, oil and fuel business representatives pushed again on proposed rule modifications that Ray thought-about 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 received an invite to return,” he mentioned. 

Strickland didn’t reply to requests for remark.

As 2020 got here to a detailed, a number of purges in oil fields roughly 2 miles outdoors the small city of Velma in southwestern Oklahoma made the strain downside unimaginable to disregard. Previous wells have been recurrently expelling poisonous salt water, one at a charge 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 taking pictures extra wastewater into the earth than legally allowed, based on 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 couple of previous wells wouldn’t scale back the chance of purges; the water would merely discover a new outlet.

Quotation didn’t reply questions concerning the Velma purge. 

The company decreased injection pressures for a few of Quotation’s wells and briefly 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 could possibly 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 instances close to energetic purges.

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

“Hell, you’re purported 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 needed to, however he was heard,” Wreath mentioned. “Folks 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, ‘Growth, you’ve received to start out doing this.’”

Charles Teacle III, regulatory affairs chairman for the Oklahoma Vitality Producers Alliance, an business group, mentioned most purges “are inclined to happen in areas which have a really lengthy historical past of historic practices that don’t signify how the business operates right this moment.” He didn’t specify which practices corporations not interact in. Teacle mentioned that when purges could be related to a specific firm, regulators work with the corporate to “develop a plan to deal with it and permit the operator to renew operations if potential.” 

A number of of the current purges threatened to violate federal clear water legal guidelines, based on Environmental Safety Company stories, so federal officers started conducting subject inspections alongside state oil division staff. The EPA regional workplace in Dallas famous in a 2020 evaluation 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 attempting for greater than a yr to persuade everybody that this can be a main downside in Oklahoma,” he wrote in a memo to the pinnacle 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. Hundreds of gallons of oil subject wastewater poured down a forested hillside, forming a “subject” of water and flowing right into a creek, based on an electronic mail from an company worker. The company found the fluid was 56 instances extra concentrated with salts and chemical compounds than the EPA’s commonplace for ingesting water. 

This time, oil division officers shut down all close by injection. However per week later, wastewater flowed out of the bottom at a fair sooner charge, a results of the strain that had constructed up over time. Every 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 unimaginable, Ray hoped that the oil division would wield considered one of its out there instruments: authorized motion in opposition to corporations creating the air pollution. The oil division may take corporations to the Oklahoma Company Fee’s administrative legislation courts, the place judges may subject rulings that tremendous corporations or implement cleanups, so long as the three elected commissioners authorized.

Company management appeared to assist this technique. In an October 2022 electronic mail, subject 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 wash 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, based on fee spokesperson Trey Davis. Nor has the company fined any corporations for purges throughout that point, he mentioned. 

Davis recognized two instances in administrative legislation courtroom throughout that point wherein the company formally ordered corporations to cease injection after a purge and to wash up the air pollution — although he mentioned the fee prefers “to guide 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 income, making further fines pointless. He famous that pursuing enforcement can take longer and value taxpayers greater than getting corporations to cooperate voluntarily. 

That cooperation, nevertheless, virtually by no means entails cleanup of water sources tainted by purges. Oil division officers have been in a position to establish only one time since 2020 that their company authorized a plan to wash 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 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 atmosphere,” 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’re not addressing the foundation explanation for 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 “gained’t provide 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 fuel corporations know when their injection wells are working at extra strain and fracturing rock, permitting poisonous water to disperse under floor, in violation of state requirements, based on 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 of take in. “You’re considering, ‘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 business 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 of go to OCC to really handle these items.” 

Poisonous Consuming Water 

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

In 2021, John Roberts, who works as an oil subject pump truck driver, and his spouse, Misty, requested the state to check their water. They stay close to the 500-person city of Cement in southwestern Oklahoma, the place a collection of purges encircled the city for almost 4 years. One gushed a couple of hundred ft 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 advisable 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 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 incorrect geologic formation and doubtlessly inflicting cracks, or had an incomplete allow. 

These wells have been additionally injecting close to greater than 100 previous wells that had been plugged with mud. Not like a correct cement plug, mud will not be sturdy sufficient to forestall 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 fuel exercise. However company engineers pulled properly data and subject employees tracked oil subject wastewater flowing lower than a half mile from a church and a Greenback Normal on the sting of city. The state report analyzed water samples and injection knowledge 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 legislation courtroom. The federal lawsuit is on maintain till the executive case with the Oklahoma Company Fee concludes.

Misty Roberts advised The Frontier and ProPublica that the couple has put in filtration methods, which require maintenance to maintain poisonous chemical compounds out of their ingesting water. “It’s a headache simply understanding that if our filters get unhealthy, it may come by way of if we don’t get them modified in time,” she mentioned. 

She mentioned that Quotation advisable 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, mentioned in a press release.

The oil and fuel business’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 fuel wells. Hiding within the tall grass or shaded by stands of oak and elm, most of the wells are leaking oil. Others recurrently purged oil subject brine. One, based on Ramsey, periodically blasted salt water and oil 40 ft 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, based on state knowledge. 

The 67-year-old spent a long time as a coal miner. The oil business’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 mentioned, “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 corporations, even because the disaster gave the impression 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 stories ready by the agency about main purges. In each, that they had 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, based on the stories. 

However tensions remained. Shawn Coslett, supervisor of the air pollution abatement division, turned more and more vocal about what he known as a “tradition downside” inside the fee when it got here to holding corporations accountable for air pollution, based on emails he despatched to his managers and different colleagues. 

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

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

The function of Coslett’s group within the purge investigation was subsequently decreased, based on 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 needed 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 may finally make its means 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 business representatives final yr, company officers prompt requiring corporations to check the fracture level for every injection properly — precisely what Ray had advisable years earlier than. However business teams vigorously opposed the concept, company officers advised 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 authorized a revised formulation 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 challenge supervisor for Continental Sources, the Oklahoma Metropolis-based oil and fuel large. He changed Strickland, who just lately took a job as chief initiatives officer for the Interstate Oil and Gasoline Compact Fee, a quasi-governmental group that usually advocates for business pursuits.

Within the weeks instantly earlier than and after Hodges took over the oil division, the company marked almost 20 purge instances as “resolved,” together with among the most damaging and chronic air pollution occasions, based on the company’s database of air pollution complaints. 

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

However interviews with present and former company employees and oil and fuel officers recommend that Oklahoma continues to be coping with dozens of purges. One in all these incidents killed about two dozen cattle in September after poisonous salt water crammed 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 known as it “a critical risk to public well being and security” as 1000’s of gallons of wastewater continued to move every day.

Company officers mentioned subject employees periodically verify for indicators of recent exercise at purge websites that they thought-about 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 fuel 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 combined with purple and shiny blue. On the banks, white salt scars confirmed the define of previous wastewater spills. 

“It’s onerous to imagine that anybody would flip their again on this downside and simply fake 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 odor. 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 developing from beneath the bottom.