Five years ago, Oklahoma oil regulators undertook a project with the catchy name “Source of Truth.” State officials wanted a comprehensive database containing all the important information about Oklahoma’s more than 11,000 wells that pump toxic byproducts of oil production underground.
I had heard about this project from several people during the 18 months I was reporting on the growing number of cases of oil field wastewater spewing out of old wells, known as purges, after being injected underground at high pressure. State officials also mentioned the project in internal communications I received after filing more than a dozen public records requests with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry.
Just before the new year, the Source of Truth itself arrived in my inbox in response to an unrelated records request. And it was explosive, revealing a pattern of rule violations by oil and gas companies that state regulators had allowed to continue.
The project was to clean up or correct condition data regarding the amount of wastewater being injected and the pressure being forced underground. The agency’s database, much of it based on decades-old paper records, was full of contradictory or missing information. In many cases, authorities were unable to update records. Over 1,300 errors were identified.
But Source of Truth uncovered more than just messy data. Regulators were also able to identify about 600 wells that were operating illegally, including injecting wastewater at higher pressures and volumes than permitted.
Too high injection pressure and injection volume can lead to purging and groundwater contamination.
That wasn’t all. The report also showed that regulators have allowed more than 1,400 other older injection wells to operate for decades without any limits on injection pressure or volume.
In the course of reporting on oil and gas pollution in Oklahoma, I uncovered systemic underregulation by the state. It also revealed several critical crossroads moments where state regulators could have taken action to bring the industry into compliance with their own rules.
The completion of the source of truth was one of them.
With this report, the agency had on hand an extensive list of potentially problematic wells that were injecting above legal limits or lacking limits altogether. These wells accounted for nearly one-fifth of the injection wells currently in use in the state. People at my agency told me they needed due diligence.
However, after the report was completed in 2021, regulators did not act on its findings. Officials said the government did not force oil and gas operators to comply with permit injection limits or set limits to bring older wells up to modern standards. My agency sources and internal documents say they did not make this report accessible to the agency’s broader staff.
Meanwhile, the number of well purges has steadily increased, from about 12 in 2020 to more than 150 over the next five years, according to a Frontier and ProPublica analysis of pollution complaints filed with the agency.
When agency officials investigated these contamination incidents, they identified many problematic wells that had already been reported in Sources of Truth, many without the knowledge of the agency.
“The Oklahoma Corporation Commission has considered using a truthful source database in the past, but has chosen not to use this form of data collection,” agency spokesman Jack Money said, without saying why.
Mr. Money did not say why regulators did not force oil companies to comply with agreed-upon limits, why officials did not place limits on older wells, or why they did not share sources of truth more widely. He did not respond to subsequent questions.
unlimited injections
The core problem identified by the Truth Source dates back to 1981, when Oklahoma applied to take over regulation of oil and gas injection operations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Purges frequently occur in wells that have been abandoned and unplugged as a result of high-pressure injection. Obtained by ProPublica and Frontier
Before the federal government agreed to hand over control, the state had to prove its regulations would protect groundwater, as required by the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. The 1974 law created basic standards for regulating underground injection.
This meant big changes for Oklahoma State. For decades, the state has routinely approved parcels of land for drilling, along with clusters of injection wells that help produce oil. This type of injection well pumps wastewater that is separated from the oil back underground, forcing more oil to the surface. This is a technique known as flooding.
Oklahoma proposed approving each injection well individually and setting maximum pressures and volumes to “prevent freshwater contamination,” according to Oklahoma’s application to the EPA. Setting such limits helps ensure that injected wastewater does not fracture the rock surrounding the well and contaminate the groundwater.
Oklahoma has won EPA approval, making it one of the first states to have direct control over underground oil and gas injection. Currently, more than 30 states have authority over the regulation of underground oil and gas injection.
Oklahoma did not apply the new standard retroactively. And the EPA never forced it. Thousands of existing wells were able to continue injection without capacity or pressure restrictions.
Joseph Robredo, a spokesman for the EPA’s regional office in Oklahoma, said federal regulators appear to be bound by the language of the Safe Drinking Water Act, which allows unlimited injections to continue “for the life of the well.”
“EPA recognizes that oil and gas activity began in Oklahoma long before the federal government was established.” [underground injection] “Due to regulations, many wells in Oklahoma do not meet modern standards,” Robredo wrote in an email.
He said Oklahoma is taking steps to modernize its oil and gas inventory and regularly submits reports to the EPA.
However, according to my report, state regulators have not directly addressed the issue of uninjected wells.
I consulted more than half a dozen oil and gas injection experts, including attorneys, about these wells operating to outdated standards. No one could have imagined that so many injection wells in Oklahoma were aging and not adhering to volume and pressure limits. However, several noted that federal law is unclear what state regulators are allowed or required to do. The Safe Drinking Water Act prohibited states from interfering with oil and gas operations that existed before the act’s passage, unless those operations would endanger drinking water.
The state has never inspected these wells, so no one can say for sure whether they actually pose a threat to drinking water. However, according to my report, excessively high injection pressures and volumes are causing large-scale contamination in Oklahoma.
According to the latest state data, 88% of the 1,400 wells found by sources of truth to have no pressure or capacity limitations are listed as active and injected more than 100 million gallons of wastewater into the ground last year.
Setting pressure and volume limits for each of these wells would have been a daunting task, and would have required regulators to approve a new permit for each well.
Nevertheless, experts say that responsible regulation of underground injection requires knowing, at a fundamental level, how much water is being forced into the ground, and with what force.
“Pressure and volume limits are important first and foremost to ensure that injection wells do not endanger groundwater, but also to prevent negative outcomes such as earthquakes and cleanup,” Adam Peltz, an attorney who heads the energy office of the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy nonprofit, told me.
Problematic well near purge
In the years since Source of Truth was completed, purges increased across the state, causing toxic wastewater to bubble up to the surface and contaminate farmland and water sources.
A particularly bad series of purges occurred in rural Carter County in south-central Oklahoma. For months at a time starting in 2021, large amounts of wastewater were poured from the ground.
In an internal email chain from August 2022 discussing the response to the ongoing wastewater blowout, one environmental supervisor noted that a source of truth could have been a “tremendous help” to the team when evaluating injection wells near the purge, but they did not have access to it.
After obtaining the truth source documentation, I determined whether the wells I had reported as having problems were later identified by authorities to be located in the vicinity where purges had taken place in recent years. There were at least 30 games. If government agencies had proactively investigated the wells in question to see if the wastewater was widely spread underground, they might have identified several wells that would later be purged by overpressure injections.
In theory, if federal authorities found that Oklahoma’s wells were systematically threatening groundwater, the EPA could force Oklahoma to improve its oil and gas injection regulations. There is some precedent for this, but it is rare.
In California, federal authorities helped conduct an audit of the state’s oilfield wastewater injection policy in 2011, finding that it did not adequately protect aquifers. State and federal officials have since developed a plan to overhaul California’s underground injection regulations. No state has ever had oversight of oil and gas injection revoked.
Similar oversight is unlikely in Oklahoma under President Donald Trump, as the EPA has significantly eased regulations on the industry.
Robredo, the EPA spokeswoman, noted in an email that Oklahoma needs to place limits on these old wells in some circumstances, such as if they are contaminating drinking water or violating other state regulations.
But state regulators won’t know whether these wells are contaminating drinking water until they investigate.
I asked state regulators whether they intended to address a situation in which many wells are still being injected under outdated regulations, a situation created 40 years ago and highlighted by sources of truth.
they didn’t answer.
Toxic wastewater from oil fields continues to overflow from the ground in Oklahoma. For years, residents have complained and struggled to find solutions. We need your help to understand the big picture of the problem.
