{"id":473572,"date":"2026-06-03T05:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T05:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/473572\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T05:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T05:12:09","slug":"there-are-thousands-of-dirty-old-drill-sites-in-colorado-the-state-gave-oil-firms-a-1bn-pass-fossil-fuels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/473572\/","title":{"rendered":"There are thousands of dirty old drill sites in Colorado. The state gave oil firms a $1bn pass | Fossil fuels"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Christiaan van Woudenberg moved to Erie, Colorado<\/a>, in 2007, he never imagined he would become an anti-fracking activist. He simply thought he was buying his dream home \u2013 a four-bedroom with a panoramic mountain view, 30 minutes north of downtown Denver<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then, in 2014, the drilling started. Oil and gas rigs sprang up, some just 800ft (240m) from his bedroom window. The dream turned to nightmare: loud noises rumbled all night long, and the air stank like exhaust. Neighbors started getting headaches and nosebleeds<\/a>, and Van Woudenberg developed new respiratory issues. He kept his windows shut and worried about his daughters going outside.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I got mad,\u201d he said. \u201cLike, \u2018Oh, if they can do this to me in my fancy house as an upper-middle-class white guy, they can do it to anybody.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Van Woudenberg looked for ways to visualize the scale of the industry\u2019s pollution. A software developer, he sorted through vast data published by the state energy and carbon management commission (ECMC), Colorado\u2019s oil and gas regulator. What he discovered shocked him. Chemical spills were turning up daily in Weld county, where he lives \u2013 sometimes at new drilling projects, but more often at old, defunct sites where contamination had gone undetected for years.<\/p>\n

Christiaan van Woudenberg stands near a drilling site operated by a Civitas subsidiary in Weld county, Colorado, on 9 August 2026. Photograph: Matthew Jonas\/Boulder Daily Camera\/MediaNews Group\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

He started charting locations where wells, storage tanks and underground flow lines had leaked toxic material into the environment, bringing his detailed maps<\/a> to anti-fracking protests and community meetings. Without highly specialized skills, the toll was nearly impossible to see.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to show the oil and gas infrastructure burden<\/a> on this state,\u201d he told the Denver Post in 2018<\/a>, a year when more than 11 spills a week<\/a> were uncovered on average in Colorado. \u201cThere\u2019s heaps and heaps of it. It is everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

An investigation by the Guardian and DeSmog<\/a> examined thousands of state documents to create an unprecedented picture of that invisible public toll, as an ageing oil industry struggles to clean up \u2013 and pay for \u2013 its own decommissioning.<\/p>\n

Major reforms gave the ECMC an opportunity to solve the problem in 2019. But rather than use those powers to hold the biggest companies accountable, the agency found new ways to let them off the hook.<\/p>\n

Drilling sites in Weld county, Colorado<\/p>\n

The damage stems in particular from Chevron, Oxy (Occidental Petroleum) and Civitas Resources, collectively the Big Three. Together, they produce the vast majority of Colorado\u2019s oil<\/a> and natural gas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But as this investigation found, they also own more than 14,600 dead oil and gas sites, where production has ended but pollution or other impacts remain. These sites overlap heavily with their more than 6,000 open spills, locations where toxic chemicals may be contaminating soil and groundwater.<\/p>\n

By law, the companies must remediate pollution and restore the land. But reports pulled<\/a> from the Colorado Oil and Gas Information System database<\/a> reveal that the Big Three have allowed many of these dirty and environmentally damaged sites to languish for years \u2013 or, in some cases, decades.<\/p>\n

Since 2019, the ECMC has had broad power to ensure compliance. Had the agency simply followed its own protocols, it could have forced Chevron<\/a>, Oxy and Civitas to hand over as much as $1.3bn in financial collateral \u2013 funds in the form of bonds the state could hold in trust to incentivize cleanup, or deploy itself if necessary.<\/p>\n

double quotation markIt is unambiguous that these obligations are owed to the people of ColoradoPetroleum engineering consultant Dwayne Purvis<\/p>\n

Instead, the agency twisted its own rules, allowing all three companies to provide just a sliver of what they might have owed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is unambiguous that these obligations are owed to the people of Colorado,\u201d said Dwayne Purvis, a petroleum engineering consultant who has co-authored a report on Colorado\u2019s looming fossil fuel liabilities<\/a>. \u201cI don\u2019t see any reason that the work should not be done promptly, and I don\u2019t see any reason that it shouldn\u2019t be fully bonded.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2024, the regulator said <\/a>contractors for all three companies had falsified environmental paperwork at hundreds of sites including over pollution levels in water and soil \u2013 a situation the companies and the commission say they are investigating.<\/p>\n

But even then, the ECMC still didn\u2019t use its power to increase the Big Three\u2019s financial assurance totals.<\/p>\n

And the agency has continued to forfeit that crucial source of leverage at a time when it needs every tool at its disposal. If the current pace of cleanup continues, this investigation found, it will take Chevron, Oxy and Civitas decades to clean up their existing backlog of dead and dirty sites.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, rates of remediation and reclamation still lag far behind plugging \u2013 and as those final, costly steps drag out, the toll continues to rise.<\/p>\n

Across the US, more than 2m oilwells will require plugging and cleanup in the coming years, an undertaking that could cost more than $150bn<\/a>, according to an analysis of state data by ProPublica and Capital & Main. But rather than foot the bill, industry has routinely found ways to avoid financial assurance, \u201corphan\u201d<\/a> their dead wells and finally dump decommissioning expenses on the public<\/a> \u2013 a tactic so widespread some experts call it \u201cthe playbook\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Colorado, where a Carbon Tracker report co-authored by Purvis estimates oil and gas decommissioning costs could exceed $8bn<\/a>, experts and politicians said new regulations offered a fresh model for reining in the problem<\/a>. Instead, this investigation found that regulators took actions that allowed companies to pile up cleanup costs while the public wasn\u2019t looking \u2013 undermining a cornerstone of its celebrated rules.<\/p>\n

In a statement, the ECMC acknowledged slow implementation of tightened rules but defended its performance as a regulator including its handling of financial assurances. It said there were \u201cmultiple layers\u201d of financial protections for the public and that it used a \u201crisk-based system\u201d to determine the levels.<\/p>\n

\u201cECMC stands behind the policy and practical considerations that underscore the development and implementation of its financial assurance protocol, which is one of the strongest financial assurance regulatory regimes in the nation,\u201d John Brown, a commission spokesperson, told DeSmog and the Guardian, in an emailed statement. \u201cWe believe Colorado\u2019s framework strikes an important balance between protecting communities today and reducing long-term environmental risk for the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur approach to financial assurance and site management is consistent with the options and processes established by regulators, which are designed to account for operational complexity and portfolio characteristics,\u201d Allison Cook, a Chevron spokesperson, wrote by email. \u201cAssertions that Chevron is out of compliance or avoiding its financial assurance responsibilities are false.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oxy and Civitas did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this investigation\u2019s findings. (Civitas merged with SM Energy<\/a> in January.)<\/p>\n

A \u2018model for the nation\u2019<\/p>\n

In 2019, the Colorado legislature passed SB-181<\/a>, a sweeping law intended to forever change the ECMC\u2019s relationship with industry. Until then, the commission\u2019s stated purpose had always been to \u201cfoster\u201d oil and gas development, according to its formal charter. But the new rules flipped that dynamic on its head: by law, the commission would instead \u201cregulate\u201d industry while acting to ensure that the environment, public health and the public purse would always be protected.<\/p>\n

Phil Doe, a former US Bureau of Reclamation policy specialist, says he helped make suggestions to the bill\u2019s language in sessions convened by lawmakers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe requirement is simple,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re supposed to eliminate the cost to the public wherever possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Media outlets hailed a \u201cmajor shift\u201d<\/a>. The state\u2019s governor, Jared Polis, called SB-181 an opportunity to \u201cuplift Colorado as a model for the nation\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2020, the ECMC \u2013 then the \u201cColorado oil and gas conservation commission\u201d \u2013 began the epic process of translating SB-181\u2019s broad mandate into nitty-gritty ground rules. In hearings stretching late into the night, community members, environmental groups and industry representatives debated what oil and gas governance in the public interest should look like.<\/p>\n

That included the state\u2019s new approach to financial assurance, its process of requiring operators to provide upfront cleanup money \u2013 like a security deposit \u2013 in the form of bonds. According to state records, Colorado already held $132m in bonding before the law\u2019s passage<\/a>, but that only averaged out to about $3,000 per well \u2013 nowhere near enough to cover liabilities that could exceed $8bn.<\/p>\n

Crucially, the new law mandated that the ECMC collect enough bonding to nullify the public\u2019s risk.<\/p>\n

It was an opportunity to solve a huge structural dilemma faced by the oil and gas industry. As old wells run dry, dwindling profits can no longer cover the expense of their own cleanup. Based on its own data, the ECMC found that $140,000 would cover the cost in most instances<\/a> \u2013 a huge price tag for restoring an individual well. Unless companies are forced to set that money aside in advance, they have little incentive to do the work when that enormous bill comes due.<\/p>\n

Until their boreholes are stopped up with enormous concrete plugs, old wells can continue to leak methane, a potent, combustible greenhouse gas. They can also continue to leach dangerous chemicals such as benzene, a component of crude oil with well-established links to blood cancers<\/a>. Even after plugging, extensive remediation efforts are often needed before operators can begin reclamation, the final stage of land and habitat restoration.<\/p>\n

But while plugging gets by far the most attention \u2013 thanks to acute climate impacts and dangerous accidents<\/a> linked to unplugged wells \u2013 the work doesn\u2019t stop there. On-site remediation and reclamation are actually the most expensive and demanding part of the job.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe restoration activities can be two times your plugging cost depending on the impact,\u201d said Curtis Shuck, a longtime oil and gas industry veteran who today works on orphan well cleanup through his non-profit, the Well Done Foundation. \u201cIt\u2019s a whole other thing to remediate the site. If there\u2019s contamination found, good grief.\u201d<\/p>\n

Historically, the biggest, most financially secure operators have found ways to offload these mounting liabilities at the last moment \u2013 reaping lucrative fossil profits for years, then dodging costs on the back end. Before SB-181, Colorado oil and gas companies now owned by Chevron<\/a>, Oxy and Civitas all transferred dying wells to smaller operators. While the transfers were lawful, those wells ended up in the hands of companies that declared bankruptcy<\/a> or otherwise threatened to saddle taxpayers<\/a> with the expense.<\/p>\n

SB-181 gave the ECMC an opportunity to make industry pay part of its bill upfront. Susan Speece, a biologist and former Penn State chancellor who moved to Broomfield, Colorado, in retirement \u2013 and whose home sits just feet from a Civitas well pad \u2013 was among those who advocated for strong financial protections during the rulemaking process.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a community surrounded by literally hundreds of wells \u2026 we are critically aware of the health risks we face,\u201d she said in February 2022 testimony<\/a> before the commission. \u201cWhile the state currently has some bonded money from operators, there is significantly less than the estimated $8bn it would cost to clean up all wells.\u201d<\/p>\n

double quotation markIn our view, there is no real crisis. Virtually all operators in Colorado are acting responsiblyAn attorney for the American Petroleum Institute<\/p>\n

The ECMC\u2019s initial draft rules attached a large bond to each and every well, which could have raised $3bn in cleanup funding for the state. But industry fought that approach intensely.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn our view, there is no real crisis,\u201d an attorney representing the American Petroleum Institute<\/a> (API) told commissioners in one 2021 hearing<\/a>. \u201cVirtually all operators in Colorado are acting responsibly.\u201d The API represents Chevron and its subsidiary Noble Energy, as well as Oxy, according to its current members page<\/a>. Chevron also employed a lobbyist specifically focused on well cleanup rules in July 2020, just as it was working to buy Noble \u2013 an acquisition that would bring thousands of plugged wells with unfinished cleanup work on to its books.<\/p>\n

The ECMC\u2019s Brown said the agency routinely consults stakeholders, including corporations, who seek clarity on rule changes, though he said removing plugged wells from the financial assurance process \u201cwas not the result of special treatment provided to any individual operator or company\u201d.<\/p>\n

A Chevron spokesperson declined to say whether the company discussed bonding for its many plugged wells with the ECMC.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the ECMC settled for an approach based on overall production levels. Companies with healthy, high-producing wells can skate by with generous bonding terms, securing their wells for as little as $1,500 apiece<\/a>. But as production falls across an operator\u2019s portfolio, the amount of bonding owed quickly rises. A company can only have so many low-producing wells before serious penalties kick in, and wells over the allowable threshold, state rules dictate<\/a>, are bonded for as much as $140,000 each<\/a> \u2013 enough, on average, to cover the entire cost of cleanup.<\/p>\n

In theory, this prevents the public from ever needing to foot the bill. And some advocates were satisfied. \u201cColorado has pretty much solved its orphan well problem, and kudos to them,\u201d Adam Peltz, an Environmental Defense Fund researcher, told the Washington Post in 2022<\/a>. \u201cThe rest of the country needs to do it now, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

A disappearing act<\/p>\n

In the wake of the hearings, Colorado\u2019s hundreds of oil and gas operators began tallying their new financial assurance bills. Then, in a virtual meeting with industry on 30 August 2022<\/a>, ECMC staff proposed something unusual: if a well had been plugged already, companies could simply remove it from their calculations, even though cleanup requirements still hadn\u2019t been met.<\/p>\n

This seemed to directly contradict the ECMC\u2019s final rules<\/a>, which state that \u201call wells\u201d \u2013 plugged or unplugged, without exception \u2013 must be covered by financial assurance until remediation and reclamation are complete.<\/p>\n

In one fell swoop, the ECMC removed a critical incentive to tackle the dirtiest, most expensive part of the process. And that primarily benefited Chevron, Oxy and Civitas. Factoring those companies\u2019 14,611 dead wells into the process could have resulted in bonds totaling over $1.3bn, our analysis found.<\/p>\n

Instead, the ECMC has collected just $146m in bonds to plug wells from the Big Three since SB-181\u2019s 2022 enactment. That amount, which also covers the companies\u2019 roughly 12,000 actively producing wells, only represents 7% of their total cleanup costs, according to our conservative estimate.<\/p>\n

Oil companies are required to remove storage tanks and other surface infrastructure from old oil and gas sites, allowing conversion to other uses. November 2025, Weld county, Colorado. Photograph: Joe Fassler\/DeSmog<\/p>\n

\u201cNo state requires operators to fully pre-fund every possible future cleanup cost all at once,\u201d the ECMC\u2019s Brown said by email, emphasizing the need to maintain flexibility for operators. But this investigation arrived at the $1.3bn figure simply by following the ECMC\u2019s own bonding rules for the riskiest sites, an approach that still includes numerous discounts and exceptions for industry.<\/p>\n

Brown wrote that at that 2022 meeting, agency staff were \u201cnot creating a separate exemption from reclamation obligations or ongoing regulatory oversight\u201d.<\/p>\n

Nearly four years later, however, that seems to be the practical effect of splitting cleanup from plugging. Purvis said Chevron especially used to \u201cbrag\u201d about its pace of plugging \u2013 but the slow cleanup rate now is telling.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were doing that plugging because it was required in order to drill new horizontal wells in the vicinity,\u201d he said, \u201cand the fact that they\u2019re not doing the cleanup work corroborates that the plugging efforts in the past are not strictly a matter of being a good citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n

double quotation markThe people in charge of performing the law and seeing that it\u2019s faithfully employed are breaking it. To me, that\u2019s criminal.Former Bureau of Reclamation policy specialist Phil Doe<\/p>\n

When DeSmog and the Guardian shared these findings with Dan Leftwich, an environmental lawyer who helped draft the language in SB-181 and participated actively in the rulemaking process, he was outraged.<\/p>\n

\u201cExempting plugged wells that haven\u2019t passed final reclamation from full bonding requirements subverts the entire financial assurance process and explicitly violates the statute,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Phil Doe, too, expressed disbelief.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people that are in charge of performing the law and seeing that it\u2019s faithfully employed are breaking it,\u201d he said. \u201cTo me, that\u2019s criminal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cProtecting the public is paramount in the ECMC\u2019s mission, and it seems pretty clear that operators failing to remediate and reclaim thousands of well sites is not protecting the public,\u201d said Mike Foote, an attorney and former Colorado state legislator who co-sponsored SB-181.<\/p>\n

Chevron\u2019s spokesperson maintained the company was following cleanup processes and timelines according to state rules. \u201cWe continue to make measurable progress advancing remediation and closure activity,\u201d Cook said.<\/p>\n

At times, the ECMC itself acknowledged that plugged wells and remediation projects needed additional bonding. Public documents reference a plan to factor those sites in as part of the director\u2019s annual review \u2013 a critical, legally mandated assessment intended to act as a key check on the bonding process. According to state rules<\/a>, the director may consider a variety of factors for every operator \u2013 including inflation and the pace of cleanup \u2013 and request more bonding if necessary to protect the public.<\/p>\n

Chevron\u2019s earliest approved financial assurance forms reference \u201ca number of plugged wells that have not passed final reclamation that may require additional financial assurance\u201d. The final total, the forms said, would be determined during the director\u2019s annual review.<\/p>\n

The ECMC leadership set up the annual review to be a crucial check on the entire financial assurance process. Yet after three years of legally required reviews came and went, the ECMC\u2019s director, Julie Murphy, still hasn\u2019t completed her review for a single company. When I requested them through a public records inquiry, I instead received a call from the then ECMC communications director, Kristin Kemp. The reports, she acknowledged, didn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

Brown, the current ECMC spokesperson, cited a complex and \u201cresource-intensive\u201d overhaul of the agency as part of the reason for the slow implementation. \u201cWhile a finalized annual review document has not yet been completed for every operator,\u201d he said, \u201coperators remain subject to existing financial assurance obligations, plugging and reclamation requirements, inspections, enforcement authorities, and ongoing ECMC review under the adopted rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

SB-181 requires the commission<\/a> to adequately fund itself to support operations.<\/p>\n

\u2018Subterranean toxic spaghetti\u2019<\/p>\n

The vast majority of the sites awaiting cleanup are in Weld county, just 25 miles (40km) north of Denver. Weld is known for its jampacked fossil fuel infrastructure; some locals call it \u201cWelled county\u201d, a nod to its thousands of pumpjacks.<\/p>\n

But more than 350,000 residents, including Van Woudenberg, live there, too, some with open spills literally in their back yards. The unbonded, damaged and dirty sites also spread west and south into a densely residential corridor along I-25, the highway connecting Denver and Fort Collins. Some sites lie feet from schools and homes. Others sit close to rivers, streams and domestic water wells.<\/p>\n

A property in Weld County, Colorado, in November 2025. Photograph: Joe Fassler\/DeSmog<\/p>\n

\u201cAny of the contamination could potentially impact domestic water supplies and agricultural water supplies,\u201d said Lisa McKenzie, a leading oil and gas pollution expert who recently retired from the Colorado School of Public Health.<\/p>\n

This pollution is the result of inadvertent spills, common in fossil fuel extraction. As oil and gas liquids bubble up from mile-deep well boreholes, they are shunted into a maze of processing and storage equipment through a network of underground flow lines \u2013 what one lawyer calls \u201csubterranean toxic spaghetti<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Lines and storage tanks often breach, spewing carcinogens such as benzene, toxic hydrocarbons and industrial extraction fluids into the environment. Colorado oil and gas companies reported six spills a day on average in 2025, according to a DeSmog and Guardian analysis of ECMC data.<\/p>\n

Chevron, Oxy and Civitas are together responsible for more than 6,000 spill sites that still need remediation, according to our review of state incident inspection reports<\/a>. These sites overlap to a great degree with the dead wells that the ECMC exempted from bonding: over 25% of those plugged wells also have confirmed active spills at their locations. Many thousands more still appear to be awaiting chemical testing, suggesting the total number of spills could be much higher. The ECMC\u2019s spill log shows the vast majority of spills are discovered during the decommissioning process, not during active production.<\/p>\n

Murphy, the ECMC\u2019s director, also has broad discretion to require additional bonding at spill sites \u2013 not just at well locations. But those spills should have had bonds attached in the first place as part of each company\u2019s initial plan. They didn\u2019t because Scott Cuthbertson, then ECMC\u2019s deputy director, also shunted remediation-specific bonding into the annual review process instead in a move that prompted questions.<\/p>\n

In a tense moment during an 16 August 2023 public hearing<\/a>, the then ECMC commissioner, Karin McGowan, expressed disbelief that the agency had not yet assigned any bonding for remediation projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m trying to wrap my brain around how that can work or should work,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Cuthbertson said he\u2019d had no choice but to leave remediation out of the process due to tight timelines and limited staff resources.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe compartmentalized it,\u201d he said. \u201cWe did not look at remediation, large issues of remediation, for any operator.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMr Deputy Director Cuthbertson, that\u2019s different than what the rules anticipated,\u201d a second commissioner, John Messner, followed up later. \u201cI\u2019m struggling to see the discretion allowed by the director to not apply the rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cuthbertson insisted that the remediation bonds would be assessed at a later date by the ECMC\u2019s director. \u201cWe\u2019re not not doing it,\u201d he said at one point.<\/p>\n

Currently, Murphy still hasn\u2019t assigned bonds for Chevron\u2019s, Oxy\u2019s and Civitas\u2019s 6,000 active spills. Cuthbertson retired shortly after completing his review of each company\u2019s financial assurance.<\/p>\n

Cuthbertson did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

In an interview, Murphy acknowledged that the commission had failed to require bonding for thousands of wells with cleanup work outstanding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to be looking at how we can continue to improve our internal processes to accelerate review and approval of appropriate reclamation and remediation projects,\u201d she said, citing the importance of returning clean land to surface owners. \u201cIt is top of mind for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a sign of progress, she pointed to the fact that Colorado\u2019s oil and gas industry has plugged more than 6,500 wells statewide since 2020. All those sites will still require additional cleanup.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan we do more? Should we do more?\u201d she said. \u201cThese are questions I think we can continue to look at. I\u2019m really proud of what we\u2019ve done. Is it perfect? Nothing\u2019s perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018The elephant in the room\u2019<\/p>\n

In 2021, rules adopted thanks to SB-181 finally required Colorado oil and gas companies to test surrounding soil and groundwater for toxins each time they plugged a well \u2013 and then share those results with the ECMC. But contractors for Chevron, Civitas and Oxy began to falsify the lab testing submitted to the state, according to state regulators, as the Guardian has previously reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At times, these actions served to obscure egregious levels of pollution. One 2017 spill at a Chevron-owned site near LaSalle, Colorado, released huge quantities of benzene \u2013 4,000 times the safe drinking water limit \u2013 into nearby soil and groundwater. The breach was within a quarter mile of 12 different domestic water wells, meaning the chemicals could end up in a glass on a family\u2019s dinner table. One home\u2019s well was just 175ft from the spill.<\/p>\n

In the years that followed, Chevron contractors falsified required lab reports, the regulator said, to make the benzene levels look as though they met critical safety thresholds. Between 2021 and 2024, the ECMC unwittingly closed more than 200 remediation projects under similar false pretenses.<\/p>\n

The falsification only came to light because legal representation for one of the contractors involved, Eagle Environmental Consulting, came forward to the Colorado attorney general\u2019s office. This forced the ECMC to investigate further, an effort which has so far turned up thousands of instances of falsified data at more than 400 sites.<\/p>\n

Many of the tampered-with documents related to plugged well locations that quietly were exempted from bonding, despite their unmet obligations. After the data falsifications were identified, the ECMC improved its policies and issued enforcement actions<\/a> to Chevron, Oxy and Civitas \u2013 but still didn\u2019t fine them or raise their bonding totals. In 2024, the ECMC\u2019s Kemp told<\/a> the Guardian that the Big Three were responsible for the false documents filed on their behalf, even if the data was forged by contractors without their knowledge.<\/p>\n

DeSmog and the Guardian examined thousands of ECMC environmental filings for this story, both manually and through large-scale analysis of scraped public data. The results paint an alarming portrait. The two contractors implicated in the falsification scandal, Eagle Environmental and Tasman Geosciences, were the go-to environmental contractors for Chevron, Oxy and Civitas between 2021 and 2024.<\/p>\n

Even after the ECMC alerted the public to the problem in 2024, all three oil companies have continued to file environmental reports with incomplete data or other methodological problems, our review of public documents found. Since May 2025, the ECMC has rejected thousands of environmental filings that staff have deemed inadequate.<\/p>\n

In comments during a July 2025 public hearing, the ECMC\u2019s compliance manager, Mike Leonard, floated a stark possibility: that the commission\u2019s entire system of oversight can no longer be trusted. The ECMC cannot rule out the possibility that other filings were manipulated beyond what has been confirmed so far.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrankly,\u201d Leonard said, \u201cthat is the elephant in the room.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither Eagle Environmental nor Tasman Geosciences responded to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

A hidden cost<\/p>\n

Tracie Crites, mayor of Frederick, Colorado, said the slow pace of oil and gas cleanup had hindered her town\u2019s development.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor many, plugging a well sounds like the final step,\u201d she wrote by email. \u201cIn reality, the industry\u2019s work does not end there.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Chevron said the company\u2019s approach to financial assurance for drill site cleanup is consistent with processes established by regulators. Photograph: Joe Fassler\/DeSmog<\/p>\n

That land remains unusable for housing, business and recreation until cleanup is finished. \u201cWhat is the opportunity cost of not protecting the environment?\u201d said Cole Ruiz, a Texas-based water attorney. \u201cThere is a business case to be made for protecting our water \u2026 our soils. And we need to be taking that very seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

But without bonds in place, companies lack a critical incentive to do the work \u2013 and it is unclear who will ultimately foot the bill. Data shared with DeSmog and the Guardian by the ECMC shows that Chevron, Oxy and Civitas have only passed final environmental review on about 2,500 drilled well sites in Colorado in the past four decades.<\/p>\n

Cleaning up the unbonded well sites would be \u201cdecades and decades of work\u201d, said Shuck, the expert on orphan wells.<\/p>\n

Van Woudenberg, the software engineer turned activist, expressed dismay at this investigation\u2019s findings.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than any other industry, fossil fuels get away with doing far less than the bare minimum,\u201d he said. \u201cWe all pay the consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

After closely studying the fossil fuel industry and its liabilities, Purvis warned that the state\u2019s oil and gas production had peaked years ago \u2013 and there would be less money to pay for cleanup with every passing year. Plus, today\u2019s extremely high oil prices, he emphasized, means these companies have cash.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe easiest time to pay for the cleanup of Colorado, for the benefit of future generations, is right now,\u201d he said. \u201cIt only gets harder the longer you wait.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story is a collaboration between the Guardian and DeSmog<\/a>, a global climate investigations outlet that reports on the companies and organizations blocking action to protect climate and nature<\/p>\n

Quick GuideMethodologyShow<\/p>\n

Total number of wells with environmental issues outstanding\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ECMC\u2019s Reclamation Status Inspection<\/a>\u00a0webpage keeps track of the environmental status of every well in Colorado. This database lists a unique API number for every well, and is searchable by operator.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Using this master database, we generated a list of all the wells Chevron, Civitas and Oxy (and their subsidiaries) have ever operated in Colorado. If the inspection page marked a well as having \u201cpassed\u201d reclamation, we removed it from the list. We also removed wells that don\u2019t require financial assurance, such as wells that have APIs but were never actually drilled.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As an additional layer of verification, we asked the ECMC to provide its own list of all the Chevron, Civitas and Oxy wells that have ever met cleanup obligations. The agency provided a list of roughly 2,550 drilled wells that it can confirm have ever met those requirements. We removed any of those wells from our list, resulting in a master file of wells that still haven\u2019t passed environmental muster.\u00a0<\/p>\n

14,611 plugged wells without bonding\u00a0<\/p>\n

For this number, we consulted each company\u2019s Form 3 financial assurance application<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When applying for financial assurance, Colorado oil and gas companies must provide a list of all API numbers for wells that require bonding, to be approved by the ECMC\u2019s director. The bonding amount is then calculated using that list. If a well isn\u2019t on a company\u2019s Form 3 list, it cannot have been bonded under the state\u2019s new rules.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The companies\u2019 own filings provided a list of bonded wells by API number, which we then used to determine which wells had bonding attached and which didn\u2019t. The ECMC directed companies not to include plugged wells on their lists, even if they still needed remediation or reclamation \u2013 a move that disproportionately benefited Chevron, Civitas and Oxy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

About 4,000 of these wells are \u201cOut of Service Wells\u201d, where bond requirements are waived in return for timely plugging. But the ECMC\u2019s director can still issue bonds for these wells if work isn\u2019t proceeding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More than 6,200 open remediation projects\u00a0<\/p>\n

To arrive at a picture of the companies\u2019 overall pollution footprint, we used the\u00a0ECMC\u2019s Inspection\/Incident Inquiry database<\/a>, which lists all spills ever reported by a company \u2013 and notes whether or not they\u2019ve been resolved. We searched by company and tallied the spills that had still not been marked \u201cclosed\u201d. The 6,200 figure is current as of February 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

$1.3bn in bonding owed\u00a0<\/p>\n

To arrive at the total amount of bonding owed by Chevron, Civitas and Oxy, we used the same process outlined by the ECMC. The only difference was that we included all wells with cleanup work still outstanding, not just wells that are actively producing. Colorado\u2019s 700 Series Financial Assurance rules<\/a> say \u201call\u201d wells should be included in the calculation, and in its own documents the ECMC has acknowledged that plugged wells do require bonding until all requirements are met.<\/p>\n

Today, Chevron, Civitas and Oxy have provided just $146m in bonding under the new rules. Adding the plugged \u2013\u00a0but not reclaimed \u2013\u00a0wells back into the process increased the bonding estimate in two ways.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First, it dramatically lowered each company\u2019s estimate of average monthly production, which Colorado uses as a proxy for overall risk. Companies that have many healthy, producing wells can secure much more favorable bonding terms, since those locations can still generate enough cash to fund cleanup. By ignoring more than 14,000 plugged wells where cleanup is still ongoing, the ECMC helped Chevron, Civitas and Oxy make their portfolios look much more productive on a per-site basis. All three fell under the ECMC\u2019s Financial Assurance Plan Option 2, a middle-of-the-road plan with fewer carveouts and a higher per-well bond.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Second, adding the plugged wells into the process also greatly increased the overall total of wells that needed bonding. Under an Option 2 plan, companies can only exempt 5% of their low-producing sites from bonding requirements (not including \u201cOut of Service Wells\u201d). After that threshold is reached, every well that produces less than two barrels of oil equivalent per day must be bonded at $10,000, $30,000 or $40,000 per well, depending on depth, plus a $100,000 surface bond geared for remediation and reclamation. (We used a lower $30,000 figure in our calculation.) Some oil and gas locations have more than one well on site, so we reduced the $100,000 bond proportionately based on each company\u2019s ratio of wells per location.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In April 2026, we calculated each company\u2019s well totals using the real-time numbers from the ECMC\u2019s operator database. We then added in the many plugged wells that were removed from the bonding calculation at the ECMC\u2019s direction, and tallied the bond required for each company under the Option 2 plan as specified in the\u00a0ECMC\u2019s 700 Series rules<\/a>. The result was more than $1.3bn \u2013 roughly nine times what Chevron, Civitas and Oxy have collectively posted as of today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Christiaan van Woudenberg moved to Erie, Colorado, in 2007, he never imagined he would become an anti-fracking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-473572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}