Sacrificed in frac zones: “Something just blew up!” Again and again and again. Another frac harmed family settles ‘n gags, enabling plenty more harms to come for many more.

Carlsbad family settles with company in fracking spill by Scott Wyland email hidden; JavaScript is required, Jan 9, 2021, Santa Fe New Mexican

A Carlsbad family has settled with an energy company over a burst pipeline that rained contaminated “produced water” from hydraulic fracturing onto them and their property last year.

The family reached a settlement last week with WPX Energy Permian LLC for an undisclosed sum over the incident, which occurred in January 2020.

Marlene “Penny” Aucoin, one of the complainants, said she was pleased with the settlement but concerned that the hazards that produced water poses to the environment and human health often get brushed aside by regulators.

“What scares me now is people are blissfully unaware of the dangers that come with fracking, including the enormous amount of flowback waste produced during the fracking process,” Aucoin said during a Zoom conference Wednesday.

Produced water is a euphemism for the byproduct containing radioactive materials, salts, heavy metals and chemicals, said Aucoin, who filed a notice of a possible claim with her husband, Carl George; his parents, who own the property; and other family members

With fracking, companies like WPX put chemicals into the liquid — most of them undisclosed for proprietary reasons — and then shoot it deep into the earth to break through rock and tap pockets of oil and gas. The liquid byproduct that flows back out of the ground is toxic and not closely regulated in New Mexico, Aucoin argued.

On Jan. 21, 2020, Aucoin and George were awakened by their barking dog at about 2:30 a.m., the complaint said. When they went outside, they encountered dirty water and oil from a burst pipeline raining down on their property as well as two neighbors’ properties. The contaminated liquid doused them, their house, their animals, their yard and their trees, the complaint said.

Aucoin said they plan to move from that area. Having to leave their home is unfortunate but necessary, she said.

“I live in a fracking war zone,” she said.

The conference also gave Aucoin and her attorney Mariel Nanasi, a clean energy advocate, a forum to criticize what they call weak industry oversight.

Nanasi called toxic spills from fracking “an ongoing environmental disaster in Carlsbad,” saying most incidents are either not reported or not penalized.

“The oil and gas industry has really had a nefarious impact on our land, our air and our water in New Mexico,” Nanasi said. “It’s really all for short-term profit.”

In response to the fracking incident, state Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, D-Albuquerque, has proposed an amendment to the 2019 Oil and Gas Act.

It would make the discharge or release of produced water illegal and slap penalties on violators. And it would require the state Oil Conservation Division to use “the best available science” for fracking rules. Pffft, little good that will do the harmed. “Rule of law” in the frac patch applies when it suits the frac’ers and their enabling authorities.

“Of course we should be using the best available science, but we haven’t been,” Nanasi said as she read the bill’s key provisions.

Aucoin said these reforms and others are needed. State agents seem to act as allies for the fracking operator, she said.

“There should be someone standing up for the victims,” Aucoin said. Indeed, but there rarely is when it comes to the oil and gas industry. That is why I chose to speak out about Encana-Ovintiv/AER/Alberta gov’t crimes and publicly began warning people about hydraulic fracturing even though doing so destroyed my career and business. And, it’s the reason for my lawsuit (sacrificing my lifelong savings) – to stand up for the frac harmed in my community. And why I endured the many speaking tours (they caused me incredible harms and stress and took up masses of my time) – to educate people with the truth, and help communities keep frac’ing out.

Carolyn DM Jan 10, 2021:

Unfortunately Southern NM is now controlled by Radical Republican goons such as Yvette Harre, who is more concerned about her kickbacks from big oil than she is about the citizens of her district.

Carlsbad, New Mexico: Oil patch produced water line bursts, sprays family, animals, home and road with potentially radioactive toxic fluids

Frac’er WPX made it rain toxic water upon New Mexico, sickens family, kills livestock, birds fell dead from the poisoned sky. As everywhere, the “regulator” did nothing but protect the company, issued no penalty. WPX does not have to disclose details on the toxic chemicals that rained on the family for proprietary reasons. Penny Aucoin: “This has ruined our lives in so many different ways. Our health, family relations, financial problems, literally all aspects of our lives. It has become a living nightmare.”

“Klippenstein, admittedly, ‘would not be the person’ he is ‘without freedom of thought and expression,’ so where’s his outrage at the legal suppressing of those freedoms – aka gag orders? And who would he be then, with his mouth legally taped shut?” Comment to Andrew Nikiforuk’s article in The Tyee on Klippenstein & Wanless quitting the Ernst vs Encana lawsuit

AER’s outside counsel, Glenn Solomon, lays it all out for us, how gag orders let oil companies pollute again “down the street.” For more gory details, read award-winning Andrew Nikiforuk’s Slick Water.

Complete clip

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New Mexico Families in Oil and Gas ‘Waste Zone’ Seek Help, Oilfield dangers aren’t confined to the drilling pad – many Permian Basin homes have pipes carrying gas, oil and contaminated water running right through their yards by Jerry Redfern, Jan 28, 2021, Capital and Main

“Something just blew up!”

Cora Gonzales was in her room on Jan. 4 when she heard her father yell. In the evenings he watches TV while sitting by the living room window, and that’s where she found him, looking outside and not at the tube. The rest of the family quickly joined them and they stared through the picture window as flames shot into the night sky from a nearby well pad.

This particular fire was uncommon. That’s because it was quiet. “Usually whenever things blow up,” she says, “we can feel the house shake and also hear a boom.”

Above: Video of gas field explosion from security camera footage from the Gonzales home, courtesy of Cora Gonzales.

Gonzales and her family live on a 160-acre ranch outside Loving, New Mexico. Their land is dotted with drilling pads and tank batteries that hold and pump oil and natural gas. A couple of times a year, she says, the whole house shakes when one of those pumps or batteries catches fire and goes “boom.”

“It’s just the normal thing around here … just another day,” Gonzales says. “We look and watch and we get tired of watching it and then go back to our normal program.”

It’s unclear how common these explosions are here in the Permian Basin in southeastern New Mexico. About 129,000 people live amid more than 20,000 wells actively churning out oil and gas in this panthecake-flat stretch of the Chihuahuan Desert. Despite state regulations that require operators to report accidents, what triggered them, and how much oil, gas and water were lost or spilled, it’s not clear operators always file those reports. Furthermore, the state of New Mexico still lacks comprehensive regulations covering leaks, spills and other accidents in the oil and gas production process. That leaves families like the Gonzaleses scratching their heads.

A security camera on the front of the Gonzales home caught the explosion and subsequent fire. In stark black and white it shows the darkness explode into a burning white light. Caza Petroleum of Texas operates the facility and filed an incident report with New Mexico’s Oil Conservation Division (OCD).

In a phone call, Tony Sam, vice president of operations at the company, says that he doesn’t know exactly what happened that night or why, but he thinks it was a stack fire – when a flare that burns off natural gas and impurities from a well malfunctions and burns out of control. According to the OCD report, the fire was considered a “major release” since it included a fire or explosion. It also spilled 47 Mcf of natural gas, two barrels of oil and two barrels of produced water. Sam did not respond to follow-up questions about the accident.

There are approximately 80 large-scale wells, as defined by OCD, within a two-mile radius of the Gonzales family ranch. In the past five years, operators have reported 20 facility fires in the surrounding OCD district, which covers thousands of wells across half of New Mexico’s portion of the Permian Basin. The Jan. 4 fire was the only one listed close to their home, even though Gonzales says they see fires at nearby drilling and tank sites a couple of times a year.

When they see these fires, she says they call 911. “We usually see the emergency lights head (out) but then they always get lost and turn around” in the local maze of country roads winding across the desert. She tries to find out what happened from the local newspaper or by searching online “but we never hear anything of it.”

Not only that, but OCD’s regulators may not be hearing about explosions and leaks either.

It’s up to operators to file emergency reports. Susan Torres, public information officer at OCD, notes that major releases must be reported within 24 hours. If OCD finds out they didn’t, the operator risks daily penalties of several thousand dollars, up to a maximum possible fine of $200,000. Sometimes, she says, first responders notify OCD, but the obligation still rests with the operators. 

Oilfield work is inherently dangerous. Extraction, heavy construction and transportation all play integral parts in the oil and gas industry, and all rank among the country’s most dangerous jobs according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In March 2020, two men were electrocuted and died while working with a forklift in the rain on a pad site south of Malaga. COG, a subsidiary of Concho Resources – which was recently purchased by ConocoPhillips for $13.3 billion – operates the site.

But the dangers don’t end at the edge of the drilling pad.

Throughout the Permian Basin, there are many families like the Gonzaleses, whose homes and ranches are surrounded by drilling operations. Sometimes the pipes carrying gas and oil and contaminated water run right through people’s yards.

Gonzales says that her family no longer runs cattle on their ranch. Instead they charge producers to run pipes across the land. But that brings other problems, like broken water lines from the heavy trenching machinery. And in another instance, a contract company digging a trench was fired mid-job and left behind a “big, gaping hole.”

“In the oilfield, it’s your property,” she says, “but they do as they please.”

When oilfield workers enter a wellsite, drilling pad or tank farm, they know and expect the serious risks involved with bringing toxic and highly flammable oil and gas up from the bowels of the earth. But they often don’t live there. Families like the Gonzaleses live among the dangers year after year, and they are often closest when things go wrong.

In January 2020, for example, a pipe carrying so-called produced water ruptured near Carlsbad in the middle of the night. Produced water is the briny solution that comes up with oil and gas in a well. Heavy in salts, it also has varying amounts of oil and grease, chemicals from the fracking process and, often, naturally occurring radioactive minerals.

When the pipe burst, that water rained down on the Aucoin/George home. Their chickens, a dog and a goat were all drenched — and had to be euthanized. The family developed rashes and pustules from the water that soaked them as they tried to save their animals.

WPX, the company that operates the pipeline, eventually dug up and carted off 40 barrels of contaminated soil from the yard.

Penny Aucoin says she called state officials repeatedly about the incident, but says their response was slow.

Ironically, the day that Aucoin and her husband Carl Dee George announced a settlement with WPX was the same day that the well stack near Cora Gonzales caught fire. And the next day, WPX was bought by Devon Energy – another major producer in the Permian – in a deal worth about $2.6 billion. Aucoin and George wouldn’t say how much they received in their settlement, but they are using the money to move away from the area, to Clovis.

In a January press conference announcing the family’s settlement with WPX, Aucoin said, “We need our government to stand up to the big oil and gas … There should be someone standing up for the victims.” It will never happen as long as rights-violating gag orders remain the cover-up judicial tool of the day, Attorney Generals (other than Pennsylvania’s astounding Josh Shapiro) serve law-violating oil and gas companies instead of the people, and politicians remain serving themselves.

But to a certain extent, the state government’s hands are tied by New Mexico’s lack of regulations and a lack of funding. Yes, always lack of funding for enforcement and the harmed, while stealing billions from taxpayers to finance the money-losing frac industry with subsidies, ever more tax cuts, freebies, freedom to abuse and pollute, and letting companies direct authorities how the rule of law plays out. Regulations don’t help in Canada. We had excellent regulations before frac’ing began assaulting us, but when evidence of companies breaking the law was/is presented to regulators, the authorities quickly snuff those laws/regulations to make the violations legal, and threaten/bully the harmed, trying to scare them silent.

While the New Mexico Environment Department normally regulates and monitors water and air pollution across the state, produced water is different. Maddy Hayden, public information officer at NMED, explains that this type of water, while it is “under the control of owners and operators” like WPX, falls under the purview of the OCD, in accordance with the 2019 Produced Water Act, which clarified jurisdiction between the two agencies.

She continues, “We recognize the need for enforceable requirements and increased oversight of this industry.”

Torres at OCD points out that spills in and of themselves are not violations under current OCD rules. The violation occurs if the company doesn’t report the spill. So when the ruptured pipeline sprayed the Aucoin/George home with contaminated water, and WPX filed a report, there was no OCD violation. Torres adds that the authority to levy fines was only reinstated at the end of February 2020.

This lack of regulatory teeth for the OCD stems from a 2009 New Mexico Supreme Court ruling that sided in favor of oil and gas companies against the state, saying the division doesn’t have the authority to assess penalties and sanctions against companies without backing legislation.

In light of these gaps in spill regulation, state Sen. Antoinette Sedillo López (D-Albuquerque) has introduced Senate Bill 86, which adds new prohibitions and penalties for spills under the state Oil and Gas Act. It provides a penalty schedule for spills of all types, requires producers to track produced water and disclose the chemicals found in it, creates a data collection fund and controls the use of produced water outside the oil field, among many other proposals. Torres says the agency is analyzing the bill, but that “additional regulations could be difficult to enforce effectively without additional funding tied to the mandate.”

When she heard of the accident at the Aucoin/George residence, Sedillo López said, “See? I told you. There is no regulation down there and this is the kind of thing that happens.”

According to Sedillo López, a fellow legislator who owns an oil and gas company told her the chemicals used in fracking were no different from the bottles of chemicals under her sink. “And I said, you know, ‘Would you drink that stuff?’” And what about the many households that do not buy toxic products and store them under sinks?

When Sedillo López introduced a bill to pause fracking so the state could study its effects and possible legislation, “The oil and gas industry just went crazy,” she says.

But she says she also received calls at her office from people across the Permian Basin telling her stories of explosions, smoke, spills and smells. They wanted her to know what they had seen, and “It was just stunning,” she says.

“In every single case I said, ‘Would you be willing to testify on behalf of my bills?’ and in every single case they said, ‘Absolutely not.’” Sedillo López says they were afraid of angering the oil and gas companies. “They’re so scared.”

Sedillo López, whose district in Albuquerque is many hours’ drive from the Permian, says legislators from the basin have asked why she cares. She says a fellow legislator told her the area is “already a waste. All we can do is make sure it just doesn’t spread.”

She says, “We should not have any corner of the planet that is a waste zone.”

Ervie Ornelas grew up on the outskirts of Loving and has lived in the Permian Basin for all his 49 years. When he was a kid, he would run around the sage fields in the wide-open vistas surrounding his home, hunting rabbits in the gullies, watching for burrowing owls and catching fish in a nearby pond.

Then in the 1990s, oil wells started popping up. The rabbits and owls slowly disappeared. The pond was fenced in and a “KEEP OUT” sign posted. All of the open vistas were rimmed with machinery.

“We’re in a battle with our country fields and our nature,” he says today. “And the oilfields are winning.”

Ornelas says he understands people need to make a living, and oilfield work pays good money. But “Loving just isn’t Loving anymore.”

These days he works at a childrens’ day care in Carlsbad and, until November, he would visit his mother at his childhood home on weekends.

From his mother’s place, he can see four tank farms. “And from the very beginning you can smell it from the front yard,” he says. “My mother used to get dizzy, dizzy with the smells.” A search of the online OCD Oil and Gas Map shows 15 wells within a mile of the house.

Ornelas’ mother lived in that house until she died of COVID-19 in November. Pervasive air pollution – the kind produced by the oil and gas industry and monitored in the Permian – is tied to increased risks of dying from COVID-19. A peer-reviewed study published in October estimates that “about 15% of deaths worldwide from COVID-19 could be attributed to long-term exposure to air pollution.” Hearing that “made my heart drop just thinking it could have added more to her problem,” he says.

Just before his mother died, Ornelas’ 24-year-old son Zach died from brain cancer. Zach was diagnosed just after graduating from high school, and he fought off the disease for six years before succumbing in October.

For the last three months of his life, Ervie and his wife wouldn’t let him outside. “My wife is a registered nurse, and she was afraid that the (air pollution) would mess up his breathing.”

Pastor Nick King moved to Carlsbad eight years ago to preach at the Mennonite Church. In his spare time, he looks at his corner of the state from space, courtesy of Google Maps. “Miles and miles and miles,” he says, “all you see is oil wells all over the place.”

“That’s how we care for the Earth God’s given us.”

King sees the spread of oil and gas wells and the problems associated with them as the antithesis of the Christian beliefs trumpeted by people in the area. In fact, he calls the thinking “a kind of religious blasphemy.”

“We don’t worry about the environment,” he says. “We don’t worry about the future. If it’s money for me – now – then we do it.”

For his part, Ornelas still roams the country around his childhood home. Now, instead of hunting and fishing, he’s taking photos, trying to capture on silicon what remains of his memories made outdoors. But that isn’t going so well, either.

“When we were kids, we’d see maybe one or two oilfields,” he says. “Now, It’s like a blanket of them. And that’s what hurts.

“That’s what hurts.”

A few visuals of blankets of oil and gas fields:

Wells in Weld Co, Colorado where Anadarko’s leaking gas in Firestone caused a home to explode, killing two, injuring two, well count just to 2017.

FIRESTONE, CO – APRIL 27: Crews continue to investigate a fatal house explosion on April 27, 2017 in Firestone, Colorado. Anadarko Petroleum plans to shut down 3,000 wells in northeastern Colorado after the fatal explosion. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)

Map of just the leaking oil and gas wells in SK, Alberta and NEBC, only to 2014.

Just from waste injection wells in Oklahoma, just to 2016.

Some energy wells in small part of Ontario, many leaking, just to 2015

2002 Map Trident Exploration Corp presentation 2010 initial shallow frac'd CBM wells Horseshoe Canyon AB
2010 Map Trident Exploration Corp presentation 2010, shallow frac'd CBM wells Horseshoe Canyon Play AB

One frac’er’s wells in the Horseshoe Canyon formation in Alberta, 2002 to 2010. Trident went belly up, the way most frac’ers do, dumping clean-up on taxpayers.

Shallow frac’d (red) and deeper (black) wells around Rosebud, Alberta, just to April 2006. Most by Encana-Ovintiv. Many more have been drilled and frac’d since.

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