At first, he thought it was smoke.
Jackie Onsurez was driving the bustling New Mexico freeway between his house in Loving and close by Carlsbad final Tuesday night when he thought the smoke didn’t look proper. As he pulled nearer, he noticed that the 70-foot plume was really a roaring geyser of poisonous oilfield wastewater, generally referred to as produced water, spewing from a pipe at a web site operated by NGL Vitality Companions.
Onsurez, who till just lately was working for the state’s lieutenant governor place, stated he referred to as NGL, 911, the New Mexico Atmosphere Division and others. He was on the web site for a couple of minutes when an oilfield roughneck arrived in a pickup truck and tried to cease the spraying water however couldn’t.
Courtesy of Jackie Onsurez
He stated the person then “began to haul ass out of there. He stated, ‘Get out of right here. There’s fuel popping out. I don’t know what’s there. Get out, get out!’”
Onsurez didn’t go away, although. He’s an engineer and serves on the New Mexico State Emergency Response Fee — the day earlier than, he had attended a fee assembly on hazardous supplies spills. The serendipity wasn’t misplaced on him.
“I used to be capable of observe firsthand the tools and the coaching and every little thing else that’s wanted for right here [in the oilfield],” he stated. “The one those who had protecting gear was the fireplace division after they arrived.”
The fireplace division cordoned off the realm a couple of minutes after the roughneck fled. NGL representatives arrived quickly after and shut off the taking pictures water. By that time, Onsurez had been on the web site for a few half hour. He didn’t understand how lengthy it had been spewing earlier than he arrived.
The contaminated water flowed throughout the street and bumped into a close-by drainage ditch. Onsurez had additionally referred to as Alisa Ogden, a farmer and rancher and member of the Carlsbad Soil and Water Conservation District, to let the group know of the spill.
“I stated, ‘Ms. Ogden, I hate to trouble you, but it surely seems like this may be entering into your acequias,’” Onsurez stated, utilizing the frequent Spanish time period for the normal Southwest water system.
“For those who don’t know what occurs, you possibly can’t do something about it,” Ogden stated later. “Gratefully, Jackie tell us instantly when he noticed it, and we bought proper on it and had been capable of hold the produced water … from flowing down in the direction of the Pecos River,” she stated.
“It doesn’t hold us up at evening, however with the oilfields out right here, it’s at all times a hazard that it may occur,” Ogden stated.
In line with a report filed by NGL with the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division, a one-inch nipple broke on a high-pressure water injection line, resulting in the blowout. The report stated 40 barrels of produced water escaped, 10 of which had been recovered. The remaining 30 flowed into the close by ditch.
Sidney Hill, the general public data officer on the New Mexico Vitality, Minerals and Pure Assets Division, which oversees the Oil Conservation Division, stated that NGL collected samples from the ditch, and “We anticipate to obtain them someday this week.”
“Accidents do occur,” Ogden stated. “We’ve all had accidents happen. It’s the way you react to ’em.”
She stated NGL is accountable and has agreed to do the cleanup. “They did every little thing they might on the time,” she stated. “As soon as we get all of the samples again and every little thing, then we’ll give you a plan on what they should do.”
NGL didn’t reply to cellphone and e mail requests for remark.
In December 2024, an inspector from the state’s Oil Conservation Division discovered a pump leaking wastewater on the wellsite’s cement slab. Requested by Capital & Predominant a few scheduled three-month follow-up go to that didn’t seem within the nicely recordsdata, Hill stated, “Thanks for mentioning the overdue compliance. We’ll examine why it isn’t closed out, but it surely doesn’t appear related to the present launch.”
NGL transports oil, fuel, and wastewater round oil basins from the Gulf Coast, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico. It additionally has a rising enterprise disposing of produced water in deep injection wells just like the one simply north of Loving. In its annual report, the corporate claimed to be the biggest impartial wastewater transporter and disposal firm within the U.S., dealing with almost a billion barrels of the poisonous water throughout its operations final 12 months.
Within the larger scheme of wastewater spills in New Mexico, NGL’s accident was notable for being seen, not for being massive. Between Jan. 1 and Might 19, 48 corporations reported 356 spills, shedding 15,335 barrels of wastewater throughout the state. The largest was a 2,000-barrel spill in January by Hilcorp Vitality Firm, simply 1,300 ft from a neighborhood in north Farmington. Devon Vitality Company reported probably the most wastewater spills to date with 93, in comparison with three for NGL.
However final week’s briny geyser highlights one of many fastest-growing controversies in New Mexico’s oil and fuel business: what to do with produced water. In 2025, oil producers introduced up greater than 800 million barrels of oil and a couple of.7 billion barrels of wastewater within the state. These barrels of wastewater enhance as oil and fuel manufacturing grows, and the whole has doubled since 2020. There’s little settlement on what to do with all of it.
The water happens naturally in oil and fuel formations and is extremely saline, laced with petroleum-based chemical substances. It’s typically radioactive and may embody the chemical cocktails that corporations inject into wells through the fracking and manufacturing processes. The recipes for these cocktails are sometimes protected commerce secrets and techniques and may differ radically from nicely to nicely. Mainly, the water is poisonous, and its use exterior the oilfield for something however testing is forbidden in New Mexico.
Wastewater can be utilized to drill new wells, however the commonest disposal technique is underground disposal wells — just like the one close to Loving — the place the water is reinjected into rock formations below excessive strain.
The report filed by NGL with the Oil Conservation Division stated the damaged nipple was on a pipeline charged to 2,600 kilos per sq. inch. However the state is working out of injection areas because the rock formations fill and shift below the extreme strain of the injections, leading to swarms of earthquakes throughout the Permian Basin in each Texas and New Mexico. As well as, high-pressure wastewater deposits have breached previous oil and fuel wells, resulting in brine leaks and geysers.
A proposal put ahead by the business group Water, Entry, Therapy and Reuse Alliance to permit wastewater to be handled and used exterior the petroleum business is as soon as once more earlier than the state’s Water High quality Management Fee. It was knocked down final 12 months following a fracas the place Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham appeared to strain the fee to overturn a just lately instituted ban on utilizing the wastewater exterior the oilfield. Earlier proposals argued that handled water could possibly be utilized by different industries or presumably discharged into lakes and streams, a extremely controversial use in a state that continues to endure from a decades-long drought.
In separate interviews, lead attorneys from either side of the talk tackled one another’s arguments.
Matthias Sayer, co-founder of the alliance, stated he views handled water as “a brand new supply of water provide and as a lowered burden on the present administration system.”
Sayer stated, “Spills occur as a result of oilfield [waste]water administration is huge, fixed, and operationally complicated … That doesn’t excuse spills, but it surely explains why a system constructed round shifting very giant volumes of high-salinity water will proceed to expertise [spills] except the state improves infrastructure and creates higher incentives for remedy, recycling, and helpful reuse.”
Tannis Fox, senior lawyer on the Western Environmental Legislation Middle and a lead lawyer in opposition to the reanimated wastewater proposal, stated, “The principle argument that business is making is that reuse of produced water is one resolution to the water shortage drawback. And with that, we disagree. It’s not a silver bullet.”
Sayer stated a “strong physique of science” reveals that oilfield wastewater could be handled and safely reused. “The query shouldn’t be whether or not it may be carried out, however craft a rule that appropriately manages the danger,” he stated. “That query is answered by participating the science and the specialists behind it.”
Fox stated, “There’s, in fact, a major debate about what the science is telling us.” She and others are skeptical that new water remedy processes can reliably clear what’s popping out of the bottom. Water testing usually begins with on the lookout for identified, seemingly contaminants within the water.
However, she stated, “We don’t know all of the constituents in produced water as a result of the hydraulic fracturing fluids that business makes use of are protected by commerce secret guidelines.” As well as, fundamental water chemistry and salinity range broadly throughout the state. The shortage of readability about what’s within the water “is an issue for emergency response staff in the event you don’t know what’s in these fluids,” she added, with a nod towards the Loving spill.
As well as, Fox stated there hasn’t been large-scale testing. “There haven’t been research at scale. There has not been discharge at scale. There has not been remedy at scale. Reuse of produced water at an industrial scale shouldn’t be there but. So it isn’t an answer to water shortage tomorrow,” she stated.
“If the [Water Quality Control Commission] approves a rule, the system will essentially ramp up organically,” Sayer stated. “It is a runway, not a lightweight swap.”
Fox stated, “It’s by its nature a unclean business, and clearly the world wants power, and the earlier we get to wash power, the higher.”
Copyright 2026 Capital & Predominant
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',
'
fbq('init', '542017519474115');
fbq('track', 'PageView');
Leave a Reply