Apr 3, 2025

News from March

In 2024, an oil pipeline leaked and contaminated rivers of the Ojital Viejo community, in Papantla, Veracruz. Miguel visits the indigenous totonaca community in March. They fight to keep the state-run oil company PEMEX (Petroleros Mexianos) accountable.

Howdy y’all! We were in Mexico and New Mexico in March doing fieldwork and sharing information with frontline organizations. We also were in the media, on the radio and took part in an educational webinar.

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Our Work in the Media

Charlie was quoted in an article in E&E

“You can’t vent or flare in New Mexico, but I see it constantly. Dozens of times a day,” Barrett said in an interview. “I’m far more likely than not to find emissions anywhere I go. It’s pretty easy. They’re just not in compliance, and the state does such a poor job of enforcing any regulation, in part because they don’t have capacity.”

Oilfield Witness and Sharon were mentioned in two articles in a series about the Permian basin in The Hill.

For Wilson, Oilfield Witness’s campaign is personal. In the early 2000s, she was living in Wise County on the outskirts of Dallas-Fort Worth, when the water from her well — which she and her son relied on — turned dark and foul-smelling.

After a lifetime believing that if something went wrong, someone would come help, “what I learned when my water turned black is that, if it’s oil and gas, nobody is coming. And that was a huge paradigm shift for me,” Wilson said. “Because then I realized that … America is not like that thing that I believed when I grew up.”

Justin did a radio interview for a German station and discussed clean energy and LNG and Das Permian.

Fieldwork

Charlie was in the field in New Mexico and gave this update.

We gathered in Carlsbad, NM for an immersion retreat with local community members. This included folks from New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light, Citizens Caring for the Future, and the Sisters of Mercy. We provided a field tour to folks in Carlsbad so they could see emissions through the lens of an OGI camera. We also met with members of Somos Un Pueblo Unido in Hobbs, New Mexico, where they shared with us the challenges families face working in the oilfields as undocumented workers.

Frontline community members from around New Mexico and Texas looking at OGI in Carlsbad, NM.

Frontline community members from around New Mexico and Texas looking at OGI in Carlsbad, NM.

Education

Miguel joined a convening in Mexico organized by the Latin American Alliance Against Fracking. The gathering consisted of environmental organizations and researchers from Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and Brazil. The alliance participated in a toxic tour of Veracruz, Mexico–a top producing region of the country. Here, the state-run oil company PEMEX has contaminated the water wells and rivers of indigenous communities and farmers.

Oil and gas companies–many American–want to use Latin America as their playground for a buildout of fracking and LNG export terminals. The convening concluded with a press conference. Miguel shared OGI footage, warning a Latin American audience about the health and environmental impacts of fracking that are already manifested in US oilfields like the Permian Basin.

Sharon was part of an excellent and well-attended webinar on Japan and LNG.

Our Writing

Charlie wrote about soil vapor extraction after visiting a site using the technology.

“Soil vapor extraction is sometimes touted as a solution to oil and gas spills that contaminate soil. However, like with any technology designed to remediate pollution, the success of the remediation is dependent on proper operation of the technology. In cases like we observed, where the operator is bypassing the GAC filter, pollutants are being pumped into the atmosphere and causing more pollution. The problems at the sites were due to the operator’s failures to maintain them properly.”

Justin wrote about how the current optimistic predictions from the oil and gas industry are hiding their intentions to leave the public with the clean up bill after the profits are gone.

“The reality is there would be few dividends for most oil and gas investors if the companies were paying to clean up the mess they made and setting aside the money to clean up the mess they are currently making instead of just deciding to “keep dancing.” This is one of the reasons the industry is bluffing right now — to be better positioned to walk away from these liabilities when the profits are gone from the oil and gas business. The industry is systematically doing this in the U.S. It appears they will get away with it.”

Video Work

Wondering what is this OGI stuff we always talk about? Sharon explains in this video.

– Till the end of oil

The Oilfield Witness Team