\n<\/p>\n
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.<\/p>\n
In January 2020, Danny Ray started a complicated job with the Oklahoma agency that regulates oil and gas. The petroleum engineer who\u2019d spent more than 40 years in the oil fields had been hired to help address a spreading problem, one that state regulators did not fully understand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The year prior, toxic water had poured out of the ground \u2014 thousands of gallons per day \u2014 for months near the small town of Kingfisher, spreading across acres of farmland, killing crops and trees.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Such pollution events were not new, but they were occurring with increasing frequency across the state. By the time Ray joined the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the incidents had grown common enough to earn a nickname \u2014 purges.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When oil and gas are pumped from the ground, they come up with briny fluid called \u201cproduced water,\u201d many times saltier than the sea and laden with chemicals, including some that cause cancer. Most of this toxic water is shot back underground using what are known as injection wells.<\/p>\n
Wastewater injection had been happening in Oklahoma for 80 years, but something was driving the growing number of purges. Ray and his colleagues in the oil division set out to find the cause. As they scoured well records and years of data, they zeroed in on a significant clue: The purges were occurring near wells where companies were injecting oil field wastewater at excessively high pressure, high enough to crack rock deep underground and allow the waste to travel uncontrolled for miles.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Injection wells shoot oil field wastewater back underground at high pressure. This can fracture a hard layer of rock meant to contain the fluid. It can also push wastewater up through Oklahoma\u2019s large number of inactive wells that have not been properly plugged with cement.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHaisam Hussein for ProPublica<\/span><\/p>\n By November 2020, at least 10 sites were expelling polluted water, according to internal agency emails obtained through public records requests.<\/p>\n The number of purges has grown steadily since. A Frontier and ProPublica analysis of pollution complaints submitted to the agency found more than 150 reports of purges in the past five years. Throughout that time, state officials were aware of the environmental and public health crisis as Ray and others at the agency investigated the proliferating purges and uncovered a complex stew of causes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ray often likens his home state, where oil has been drilled for more than a century and is a major industry, to a block of Swiss cheese, punctured with the nation\u2019s second-highest number of \u201corphan\u201d wells \u2014 inactive wells whose owners have abandoned them without properly plugging them with cement. The state has catalogued about 20,000 orphan wells, but federal researchers believe the true number may be over 300,000, based on historic industry data and airborne imaging techniques that identify old wells underground. These old wells provide easy pathways for the injected wastewater to zoom up thousands of feet to the surface, contaminating drinking water sources along the way.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ray particularly worried about the volume of wastewater being crammed underground by high-pressure injection \u2014 tens of billions of gallons each year, enough to fill the Empire State Building over 300 times. Oklahoma\u2019s vast landscape of unplugged holes combined with its large number of injection wells operating at high pressures creates conditions ripe for purges.<\/p>\n Oklahoma has the third-largest number of injection wells in the country, much more than other prolific oil states, because of its long history of oil and gas extraction and distinct geology.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tSources: Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Information Administration<\/span><\/p>\n But Ray would come to learn that at the commission, identifying the causes of the purges was one thing. Stopping them \u2014 and preventing new ones \u2014 was a very different matter.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if we\u2019re ever going to fix it or not,\u201d said Ray, 72, who resigned in frustration three years later. \u201cThey don\u2019t want to listen.\u201d<\/p>\n A yearlong investigation by The Frontier and ProPublica reveals that the Oklahoma Corporation Commission did not mandate that responsible companies clean up the pollution belowground, as state law requires \u201cwhen feasible.\u201d Regulators say that once tainted by oil field brine, polluted groundwater is virtually impossible to treat. That makes preventing purges all the more critical \u2014 something the commission also failed to do, according to current and former employees. At times, records show, agency leadership sidelined employees who criticized the agency\u2019s response.\u00a0<\/p>\n Field reports from agency staff referred to individual incidents as \u201ca threat to the environment and the safety of persons\u201d or \u201ca hazard to the ground water.\u201d These notes describe orphan wells spewing toxic water near homes or into streams, leaving scars of salt residue. A homeowner reported that his grandchildren often play near a purging well. Ranchers have lost calves, which, drawn to the salty water, died after drinking it. But the full scale of Oklahoma\u2019s purge problem \u2014 and state regulators\u2019 awareness of it \u2014 has never previously been reported.<\/p>\n Officials with the agency\u2019s oil division acknowledged in an interview with The Frontier and ProPublica that overpressurized wells are contributing to the purges. They say some of these incidents are a result of historic pollution in a state where oil and gas was extracted long before modern regulations, beginning in the 1960s, required companies to protect the environment and plug inactive wells with cement. They noted that the state has taken steps to reduce injection pressures on new wells in recent years and is committed to \u201cdoing the right thing, holding operators accountable, protecting Oklahoma and its resources, and providing fair and balanced regulation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI am also confident that every employee and every view is heard and considered,\u201d said Brandy Wreath, who as director of administration for the commission is responsible for the agency\u2019s operations, in a follow-up statement. \u201cWe will continue to be committed to protecting Oklahoma and supporting the state\u2019s largest industry to perform its role in a safe and economic manner. These goals are not mutually exclusive.\u201d<\/p>\n Purges often occur at abandoned, unplugged oil wells as a result of high-pressure injection.<\/span> Obtained by ProPublica and The Frontier<\/span><\/p>\n To Ray, those efforts were not enough in the face of a much bigger problem. If thousands of gallons of water was reaching the surface, he reasoned, that meant an incalculably greater amount was dispersing below ground. The thought scared him. Oklahoma relies on groundwater for over half of its annual water use.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have so much damage underground that we don\u2019t even know about,\u201d Ray said.<\/p>\n State regulators have direct authority over the pressure at which companies inject oil field wastewater.<\/p>\n But while investigating purges over the last five years, oil division employees have found hundreds of wells that were injecting more fluid than their permits allowed or at pressures above the legal limit, as indicated by the pressure gauge on each well and regular reports from companies to the state. During his tenure, Ray and others also discovered purges caused by wells operating within the pressure boundaries noted on the well permits. Oklahoma\u2019s rules, they concluded, were part of the problem.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a November 2020 email to a handful of employees, Mike McGinnis, deputy director of the oil division, described an abundance of overpressurized wells near a purge as \u201cself-inflicted.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt looks like some of the approved injection pressures were set high in the permit,\u201d he wrote. \u201cMay be hard to put that genie back in the bottle.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Reducing permitted injection pressures was exactly the solution Ray felt was necessary.<\/p>\n The state approves the pressure at which companies can inject oil field wastewater based on whether injection would fracture a hard layer of rock meant to contain the fluid. Ray believed purges could be prevented by lowering pressure limits to the point where injection would not crack the softer sandy layers where most oil and gas is found.<\/p>\n Soon after starting his job, Ray began distributing long memos and dizzying equations calculating the pressure at which different rock formations break.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ray\u2019s efforts helped yield some short-term success. As new purges emerged and existing ones continued to flow, oil division officials in 2020 lowered injection pressures on a case-by-case basis. Regulators added layers of scrutiny for proposed injection wells and more frequently asked for maps showing wells that the pressurized water might collide with as well as data on the pressure at which rocks crack, according to agency officials.<\/p>\n But lowering injection pressures across the state proved impossible. In meetings, oil and gas industry representatives pushed back on proposed rule changes that Ray considered incremental. That same year, he had proposed a rule that would significantly reduce injection pressures statewide to Robyn Strickland, the oil division director at the time. Ray said Strickland cut him out of subsequent rule meetings.<\/p>\n \u201cI never got an invitation to go back,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Strickland did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n Oil field wastewater flows up from the ground on a farm near Enid, Oklahoma.<\/span> Abigail Harrison<\/span><\/p>\n As 2020 came to a close, several purges in oil fields roughly 2 miles outside the small town of Velma in southwestern Oklahoma made the pressure problem impossible to ignore. Old wells were regularly expelling toxic salt water, one at a rate of 12,600 gallons per day, roughly enough to fill a backyard swimming pool.<\/p>\n Ray and other members of the oil division discovered that some nearby wells had been injecting at pressures that were too high or were shooting more wastewater into the earth than legally allowed, <\/strong>according to agency emails.\u00a0<\/p>\n The owner of the injection wells, Citation Oil and Gas Corp., one of the largest operators in Oklahoma, agreed to plug some of the purging wells. Ray likened this approach to \u201cWhac-A-Mole\u201d: With so much injected water underground, plugging a few old wells wouldn\u2019t reduce the likelihood of purges; the water would simply find a new outlet.<\/p>\n Citation did not answer questions about the Velma purge.\u00a0<\/p>\n The agency reduced injection pressures for some of Citation\u2019s wells and temporarily shut down others, but Ray believed that to permanently stop the purge, all injection near Velma needed to be halted indefinitely so the amount of fluid and pressure that had built up underground could be lowered over time. But he said his bosses didn\u2019t agree and, in the Velma case and subsequent purges, allowed companies to continue injecting \u2014 or to restart after a short pause \u2014 at times near active purges.<\/p>\n \u201cThey would say things in our meetings, like, \u2018Well, the operators might not go for that,\u2019\u201d Ray said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHell, you\u2019re supposed to be regulators.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Wreath denied that the agency was overly lenient with oil companies and said that Ray advocated for changes that the oil division could not implement on its own.<\/p>\n \u201cDanny may not have gotten things as fast as he wanted to, but he was heard,\u201d Wreath said. \u201cPeople were working on it and doing what they needed to do to do it properly and legally. We just don\u2019t have the big stick of government to walk out and say, \u2018Boom, you\u2019ve got to start doing this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Charles Teacle III, regulatory affairs chairman for the Oklahoma Energy Producers Alliance, an industry group, said most purges \u201ctend to occur in areas that have a very long history of historical practices that do not represent how the industry operates today.\u201d He did not specify which practices companies no longer engage in. Teacle said that when purges can be connected to a particular company, regulators work with the company to \u201cdevelop a plan to address it and allow the operator to resume operations if possible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Several of the recent purges threatened to violate federal clean water laws, according to Environmental Protection Agency reports, so federal officials began conducting field inspections alongside state oil division employees. The EPA regional office in Dallas noted in a 2020 review of Oklahoma\u2019s injection regulations that \u201cinappropriate\u201d injection appeared to add \u201cpressure to an already over-pressurized system.\u201d<\/p>\n The following year, Ray took his complaints about his agency\u2019s injection pressure regulations to the EPA.<\/p>\n \u201cI have been trying for more than a year to convince everyone that this is a major problem in Oklahoma,\u201d he wrote in a memo to the head of the EPA\u2019s regional office.<\/p>\n The EPA did not respond to questions.<\/p>\n In August 2022, the Velma purge exploded to the surface again, more than a year after the agency\u2019s initial investigation began. Thousands of gallons of oil field wastewater poured down a forested hillside, forming a \u201cfield\u201d of water and flowing into a creek, according to an email from an agency employee. The agency discovered the fluid was 56 times more concentrated with salts and chemicals than the EPA\u2019s standard for drinking water.\u00a0<\/p>\n Contaminated water erupts from the ground during a purge in Velma, Oklahoma, in 2022.<\/span> Oklahoma Corporation Commission, obtained by ProPublica and The Frontier<\/span><\/p>\n This time, oil division officials shut down all nearby injection. But a week later, wastewater flowed out of the ground at an even faster rate, a result of the pressure that had built up over time. A week after that, a mile away, another purge began.\u00a0<\/p>\n As before, Ray chafed at what he saw as the agency\u2019s reactive stance.\u00a0<\/p>\n If an across-the-board pressure reduction was impossible, Ray hoped that the oil division would wield one of its available tools: legal action against companies creating the pollution. The oil division could take companies to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission\u2019s administrative law courts, where judges could issue rulings that fine companies or enforce cleanups, as long as the three elected commissioners approved.<\/p>\n Agency leadership appeared to support this strategy. In an October 2022 email, field operations manager Brad Ice wrote that if pollution were found, the agency would order the company to halt injection and take steps to clean the area. And if the company disagreed or pollution continued, the agency would \u201cfile contempt for failure to prevent pollution\u201d against the company.\u00a0<\/p>\n But no contempt cases have been filed for purges in the last five years, according to commission spokesperson Trey Davis. Nor has the agency fined any companies for purges during that time, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Davis identified two cases in administrative law court during that time in which the agency formally ordered companies to stop injection after a purge and to clean up the pollution \u2014 though he said the commission prefers \u201cto lead with a handshake instead of a hammer.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite creating purges, companies did not face punishment if they subsequently complied with agency requests to shut down injection wells, pump wastewater off the surface and restore the landscape, Davis and other agency officials said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not a fine-driven agency,\u201d said Wreath, adding that extended injection well shutdowns cut into oil company profits, making additional fines unnecessary. He noted that pursuing enforcement can take longer and cost taxpayers more than getting companies to cooperate voluntarily.\u00a0<\/p>\n That cooperation, however, almost never involves cleanup of water resources tainted by purges. Oil division officials were able to identify just one time since 2020 that their agency approved a plan to clean up groundwater pollution caused by a purge. Removing pollution from underground water sources is incredibly difficult and very expensive, McGinnis, the agency\u2019s deputy director, said.<\/p>\n By the fall of 2022, other agency staff had begun voicing frustration at what they perceived as the commission\u2019s lack of action.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI believe it is unconscionably reckless on our part as a regulatory agency not to act swiftly, while knowingly and willingly allowing the continued operation of activities under our jurisdictional control that are contaminating groundwater and presenting a potential endangerment to the health and safety of persons and the environment,\u201d wrote Everett Plummer, at the time a supervisor at the agency\u2019s oil division, in an October 2022 email to another supervisor that was forwarded to Ray and agency leaders, including Strickland.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are not addressing the root cause of the problem,\u201d Plummer went on in the same email. \u201cThat root cause is overpressure.\u201d<\/p>\n Less than a year later, Plummer sent another email, this time to Ray and another colleague, lamenting that Strickland and other agency leaders \u201cwon\u2019t offer any help or technical input or solutions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Neither Strickland nor an agency spokesperson responded to requests for comment on Plummer\u2019s email. Plummer declined to be interviewed for this story.<\/p>\n Some oil and gas companies know when their injection wells are operating at excess pressure and fracturing rock, allowing toxic water to disperse below ground, in violation of state standards, according to a hydrogeologist who worked in saltwater disposal for a large Oklahoma oil company. He pointed to wells he had worked on that were injecting 10,000 barrels of wastewater a day \u2014 more than the rock layer should be able to absorb. \u201cYou\u2019re thinking, \u2018Damn, where is it all going?\u2019\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The hydrogeologist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he still works in the industry and fears repercussions, said he worries the result is pollution the state doesn\u2019t know about \u2014 until it breaks the surface.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt was so disheartening to me,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause you should be able to go to OCC to actually address this stuff.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n As Ray pushed his agency to respond more urgently to the purges, oil field wastewater was seeping into aquifers and drinking water sources scattered across the state.<\/p>\n In 2021, John Roberts, who works as an oil field pump truck driver, and his wife, Misty, asked the state to test their water. They live near the 500-person town of Cement in southwestern Oklahoma, where a series of purges encircled the town for nearly four years. One gushed a few hundred feet from the high school, just beyond the softball diamond.\u00a0<\/p>\n For residents whose private water wells pulled from the local groundwater, these purges posed severe health risks in addition to killing grass and other vegetation on their land. When the state tested water from the Roberts\u2019 well, samples showed levels of salts well above the EPA\u2019s recommended maximum. Their well water also contained benzene, a notorious carcinogen linked to leukemia and other blood cell cancers, at six times the EPA\u2019s limit for drinking water.<\/p>\n In these images taken by staff of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, salt residue covers the ground after a purge.<\/span> Oklahoma Corporation Commission, obtained by ProPublica and The Frontier<\/span><\/p>\n In these images taken by staff of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, salt residue covers the ground after a purge.<\/span> Oklahoma Corporation Commission, obtained by ProPublica and The Frontier<\/span><\/p>\n Subsequent agency investigations near Cement found a tangle of problems. Several wells were injecting at pressures far beyond the fracture point of the rock. A study commissioned by the state found that, within a few square miles, 22 of 28 injection wells were operating at pressures outside legal limits, were injecting into the wrong geologic formation and potentially causing cracks, or had an incomplete permit.\u00a0<\/p>\n These wells were also injecting near more than 100 old wells that had been plugged with mud. Unlike a proper cement plug, mud is not strong enough to prevent the pressurized fluid from bursting out of the well.\u00a0<\/p>\n Many of the injection wells were again owned by Citation, whose high-pressure injection had been shut down by the agency near the Velma purge about 60 miles away. Company representatives downplayed the number of purges, referring to them as \u201calleged\u201d in emails to the agency. They maintained that the pollution was a remnant of historic oil and gas activity. But agency engineers pulled well records and field staff tracked oil field wastewater flowing less than a half mile from a church and a Dollar General on the edge of town. The state report analyzed water samples and injection data and found that the cause was overpressurized injection.<\/p>\n In 2023, the Robertses sued Citation in federal district court, alleging that the company\u2019s injection was causing \u201cnew pollution and contamination on a daily basis.\u201d Citation denied the allegations and argued that the case ought to first be decided by the commission\u2019s administrative law court. The federal lawsuit is on hold until the administrative case with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission concludes.<\/p>\n Misty Roberts told The Frontier and ProPublica that the couple has installed filtration systems, which require upkeep to keep toxic chemicals out of their drinking water. \u201cIt\u2019s a headache just knowing that if our filters get bad, it could come through if we don\u2019t get them changed in time,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n She said that Citation recommended that they pay to hook up to city water, but their neighbor refused to offer them an easement to dig a water line.\u00a0<\/p>\n The company did not answer questions about the lawsuit.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCitation Oil & Gas Corp. continues to work cooperatively with the OCC to further investigate the sources and causes of these alleged purges,\u201d Bob Redweik, the company\u2019s vice president of environmental health and safety and regulatory affairs, said in a statement.<\/p>\n The oil and gas industry\u2019s toxic legacy can endure long after production has ceased.\u00a0<\/p>\n For rancher Tim Ramsey, the pastures where he runs cattle in northeastern Oklahoma are littered with orphan oil and gas wells. Hiding in the tall grass or shaded by stands of oak and elm, many of the wells are leaking oil. Others regularly purged oil field brine. One, according to Ramsey, periodically blasted salt water and oil 40 feet into the air with a loud \u201cSHHHH\u201d sound. Ramsey has been submitting cleanup requests to the state for years. The state plugged the purging well last winter, but many more unplugged wells remain, according to state data.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The 67-year-old spent decades as a coal miner. The oil industry\u2019s pollution angers him. Regulators\u2019 failure to prevent that pollution angers him even more. He described the state as \u201cso slow at doing anything.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMy biggest beef,\u201d he said, \u201cis why did you let them get away with it to begin with?\u201d<\/p>\n Tim Ramsey\u2019s ranch land is littered with orphan oil and gas wells.<\/span> September Dawn Bottoms for ProPublica<\/span><\/p>\n Similar disappointment ate at Ray in his final months at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. Despite his urging, the oil division did not pursue court cases against companies, even as the crisis seemed to be worsening. In spring 2023, he said he reviewed an internal spreadsheet identifying 42 purges, most of which were still actively flowing.\u00a0<\/p>\n By August 2023, Ray had had enough and resigned.\u00a0<\/p>\n Around the time of Ray\u2019s departure from the agency, the oil division hired a prominent environmental consulting firm, Halff, to help settle disputes among its employees on how the state should respond to the purges.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Frontier and ProPublica reviewed reports prepared by the firm about major purges. In each one, they had drawn the same conclusion as Ray: Overpressurized injection wells were causing purges, a dynamic intensified by the number of orphan wells and years of lax regulation, according to the reports.\u00a0<\/p>\n But tensions remained. Shawn Coslett, manager of the pollution abatement division, became increasingly vocal about what he called a \u201cculture problem\u201d within the commission when it came to holding companies accountable for pollution, according to emails he sent to his managers and other colleagues.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since 2023, Coslett had been pushing the agency to pursue Citation in court for its role in a major purge outside Ardmore that gushed wastewater on and off for years. In May 2024, Citation\u2019s vice president of environmental health and safety emailed his team to let them know that Ice, the agency\u2019s field operations director, agreed to hold a meeting between the company and the agency\u2019s oil division with \u201climited attendance.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cShawn Coslett and his team would not be invited,\u201d Redweik wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n The role of Coslett\u2019s team in the purge investigation was subsequently reduced, according to internal documents. The agency marked the purge as \u201cresolved\u201d in April 2025.<\/p>\n Coslett declined to be interviewed for this story. Neither Ice nor Redweik responded to questions about Coslett\u2019s work on the Ardmore purge.<\/p>\n Last December, Coslett also urged the agency in several emails to take action on a purge expelling 1,300 gallons of salt water daily on Choctaw Nation land in southeastern Oklahoma. It had been flowing intermittently for four years.<\/p>\n Coslett wanted the agency to create a sampling plan for barium, which had been found in the purging water at high levels, as well as other metals. In a December email to an oil division manager, he wrote that runoff from the site could eventually make its way into the headwaters of Lake Wister, a public water supply that serves tens of thousands of people.\u00a0<\/p>\n The oil division did attempt to make some changes. In closed meetings with industry representatives last year, agency officials suggested requiring companies to test the fracture point for each injection well \u2014 exactly what Ray had recommended years before. But industry groups vigorously opposed the idea, agency officials told The Frontier and ProPublica, and it was not included in the formal proposal to change state rules for injection pressure that the agency submitted to the commissioners last September.<\/p>\n Wastewater from an orphan well shoots into the air.<\/span> Obtained by ProPublica and The Frontier<\/span><\/p>\n In January, the commission ultimately approved a revised formula to calculate maximum injection pressures. But the new rules, effective this month, only apply to new wells. Retroactively reducing pressures would require action by the state Legislature. The higher pressures for Oklahoma\u2019s more than 10,400 existing injection wells remain unchanged, allowing the problem that Ray identified to persist.\u00a0<\/p>\n Coslett left the agency in March. Two weeks later, a new director arrived to lead the oil division: Jeremy Hodges, a former financial analyst and project manager for Continental Resources, the Oklahoma City-based oil and gas giant. He replaced Strickland, who recently took a job as chief projects officer for the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, a quasi-governmental organization that often advocates for industry interests.<\/p>\n In the weeks immediately before and after Hodges took over the oil division, the agency marked nearly 20 purge cases as \u201cresolved,\u201d including some of the most damaging and persistent pollution events, according to the agency\u2019s database of pollution complaints.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a September public meeting, Hodges sought to reassure the agency\u2019s commissioners: Purges were under control, he said.<\/p>\n But interviews with current and former agency staff and oil and gas officials suggest that Oklahoma is still dealing with dozens of purges. One of these incidents killed about two dozen cattle in September after toxic salt water filled a creek leading to Fort Cobb Lake, a public water supply. That month, the state increased testing at the lake and said the public supply has not been impacted. Nevertheless, in October Gov. Kevin Stitt declared a state of emergency and called it \u201ca serious threat to public health and safety\u201d as thousands of gallons of wastewater continued to flow each day.<\/p>\n Toxic water from a purge killed about two dozen cattle on a ranch near Fort Cobb Lake in September.<\/span> Screenshot of News9.com by ProPublica<\/span><\/p>\n Agency officials said field staff periodically check for signs of new activity at purge sites that they considered resolved. They did not comment on the purges near Lake Wister or Fort Cobb Lake. Hodges, who participated in an interview with The Frontier and ProPublica, did not provide comment beyond what other agency officials said.\u00a0<\/p>\n In late August, Ray, who has returned to consulting for oil and gas companies, took a reporter to visit a purge site on a ranch in southern Oklahoma where the agency had closed a pollution complaint around the time Hodges took office.\u00a0<\/p>\n That afternoon, in an otherwise dry streambed flanked by steep red-dirt walls, puddles sat baking in the sun, though it hadn\u2019t rained in weeks. A film of oil shone on the water\u2019s surface, bands of green mixed with purple and bright blue. On the banks, white salt scars showed the outline of old wastewater spills.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt is hard to believe that anyone would turn their back on this problem and just pretend it simply does not exist,\u201d Ray said as he surveyed the scene.<\/p>\n Farther up the gulch, the water formed a pool, which gave off a rank chemical smell. The oily surface appeared calm at first glance. But on closer inspection, bubbles were breaking the surface in several places. The water was coming up from beneath the ground.\u00a0<\/p>\n Oil field wastewater bubbles into Wildhorse Creek in February 2025.<\/span> Abigail Harrison<\/span><\/p>\n The Frontier and ProPublica reviewed thousands of documents, obtained through public records requests, that include communications about the purges from the regulatory agency\u2019s oil division leadership, elected commissioners, state legislators and the Environmental Protection Agency. The news organizations interviewed more than 30 people, including current and former state employees, Oklahoma oil and gas industry employees, and citizens whose water and land was damaged by injected oil field waste.<\/p>\n \n\tToxic wastewater from oil fields keeps pouring out of the ground in Oklahoma. For years, residents have filed complaints and struggled to find solutions. We need your help to understand the full scale of the problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reporting Highlights Under Pressure: Oil companies have polluted groundwater and the environment by injecting oil field waste deep into the earth at pressures high enough to violate Oklahoma law. Warnings From Within: For years, people working for the state agency charged with regulating Oklahoma\u2019s oil and gas industry have warned about the dangers of high-pressure<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[4051,268,192,247,1866,5994,415,1577,16110],"class_list":{"0":"post-31284","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-failed","9":"tag-oil","10":"tag-oklahoma","11":"tag-propublica","12":"tag-regulators","13":"tag-spread","14":"tag-stop","15":"tag-toxic","16":"tag-wastewater"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Number of Injection Wells in Top Oil-Producing States<\/h3>\n
State Regulatory Failures<\/h3>\n
Toxic Drinking Water\u00a0<\/h3>\n
An Enduring Crisis<\/h3>\n
How We Reported This Story<\/h3>\n