Oklahoma state oil regulators completed an internal database project in 2021 that identified nearly 600 wells injecting wastewater underground above their permitted pressure or volume limits, along with more than 1,400 additional wells operating without any injection limits for decades. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry, did not act on these findings or force operators to comply with their permit requirements.
The project, known as the Source of Truth, was designed to clean up decades of contradictory and missing data in the agency's records regarding the state's 11,000-plus injection wells. These wells inject toxic wastewater produced during oil extraction back underground. The database identified more than 1,300 errors in the agency's existing records.
What the Left Is Saying
Environmental advocates and progressive policy groups say the Oklahoma Corporation Commission's failure to act on its own findings represents a fundamental betrayal of public trust and regulatory responsibility. They argue that the agency's inaction enabled ongoing groundwater contamination risks and emboldened industry actors to operate outside legal boundaries.
Progressives have called for stronger federal oversight of state-level oil and gas regulation, arguing that Oklahoma's self-policing model has proven inadequate. Democratic legislators have proposed requiring the EPA to assume direct supervision of injection well operations in states where regulators fail to enforce their own standards.
The growth in so-called purges — incidents where wastewater blasts out of old wells due to excessive underground pressure — from approximately a dozen in 2020 to over 150 in the following five years demonstrates the real-world consequences of regulatory neglect, progressive critics say.
What the Right Is Saying
Industry supporters and conservative commentators defend the Oklahoma regulatory framework, noting that the state took over injection well oversight from the federal government in 1981 and has maintained primary jurisdiction since. They argue that the Source of Truth project represents an internal quality-control effort, not evidence of systemic failure.
Conservative defenders of the oil and gas industry note that Oklahoma's regulatory system has enabled billions of dollars in economic activity and thousands of jobs. They argue that retroactive enforcement against grandfathered wells could destabilize legitimate operations and discourage investment in the sector.
Some conservative voices have also questioned whether the database findings accurately reflect current conditions, noting that the 2021 report was never widely distributed within the agency and may not represent the latest operational status of individual wells.
What the Numbers Show
The Source of Truth database identified 596 wells operating in violation of their permit conditions by injecting wastewater above legal pressure or volume limits. These violating wells represented approximately 5% of the state's more than 11,000 active injection wells.
An additional 1,412 older injection wells were found to operate without any limits on injection pressure or volume — a legacy of pre-1981 regulatory practices that were grandfathered when Oklahoma assumed federal oversight responsibilities. These wells accounted for roughly 12% of active injection wells.
Frontier and ProPublica analysis of pollution complaints submitted to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission documented approximately 150 purge incidents over the five years following completion of the Source of Truth report, compared to about a dozen in 2020.
The agency databases contained more than 1,300 identified data errors related to injection volumes, pressure readings and well permit information, many stemming from decades-old paper records that had never been digitized or reconciled.
The Bottom Line
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission possessed detailed documentation of potential regulatory violations in 2021 but chose not to pursue enforcement actions against operators who exceeded their permit limits or to establish modern standards for older wells operating without restrictions. Agency spokesperson Jack Money declined to explain why no action was taken.
The regulatory gap coincided with a sharp increase in wastewater purge incidents, where injected fluids escape through old wells and can contaminate groundwater or surface land. The agency has not indicated whether it plans to revisit the Source of Truth findings or implement enforcement measures.
The EPA, which originally delegated injection well oversight to Oklahoma, could theoretically reclaim jurisdiction if state regulation is found to violate federal Safe Drinking Water Act requirements. No such action has been announced. The agency faces questions about whether its self-reported compliance data can be relied upon given the internal database's findings of widespread record-keeping problems.