Colorado regulators identify hundreds of oil and gas sites where contamination data was falsified
Colorado regulators Friday released more information about the alleged falsification of contamination data for hundreds of oil and gas sites by a pair of consulting firms, including a map of the locations in question.
Staff from the Energy and Carbon Management Commission disclosed last month that employees of two firms, Eagle Environmental Consulting and Tasman Geosciences, had manipulated laboratory data relating to soil and groundwater contamination at 344 locations in Weld County. The falsified reports were submitted to the ECMC as part of spill cleanup and site remediation procedures between 2021 and summer 2024, the agency said.
ECMC director Julie Murphy updated the agency’s five-member board of commissioners on its investigation in a Friday hearing, reiterating that the alleged data falsification — which the agency first became aware of in July — does not pose “new risks to public health.”
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“The investigation is important, and the act of submitting falsified data is abhorrent. The actual environmental impact is not an emergency, in our estimation,” Murphy told commissioners.
Eagle Environmental and Tasman Geosciences were contracted by Chevron and Occidental Petroleum, respectively, to perform sampling and analysis work at the sites in question, pursuant to ECMC rules regarding the cleanup of decommissioned oil and gas sites. Agency officials say the alleged fraud could result in regulatory enforcement action and fines, and has also been referred to law enforcement for a criminal investigation.
The ECMC, formerly known as the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, regulates all oil and gas operations within the state. Its health, safety and environmental rules have undergone a comprehensive update in the wake of a 2019 reform law passed by Colorado lawmakers.
Murphy said Friday that the agency’s ongoing investigation is complex, and the data manipulation “appears right now to be erratic and somewhat patternless to us.”
About half of the 344 locations are active remediation sites where cleanup operations are ongoing, while the rest are considered closed by the agency after such work was deemed completed.
“ECMC has prioritized investigating the degree to which the falsified data impacted decisions to determine that no further investigation or remediation action was necessary for these projects,” the ECMC said in a press release Friday. “Based on the findings of the investigation, ECMC may determine that the remediation projects need to be reopened for additional remediation.”
According to data released by the ECMC on Friday, the vast majority of the affected sites are located in unincorporated Weld County, in the heart of northeastern Colorado’s oil-rich Denver-Julesburg Basin. Forty-eight of the locations are within the boundaries of municipalities, including eight in Greeley, three in Windsor, three in Firestone and two in Erie.
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Officials in Weld County were critical of the agency’s handling of the alleged falsification following the issue’s disclosure just before the Thanksgiving holiday. The ECMC has said that its “awareness of the scale of the issue grew over time,” and officials “determined that urgent notification was not warranted.”
In a December 2 letter to the ECMC, Weld County commissioners expressed their “severe disappointment in the withholding of information regarding falsified data relating to oil and gas well remediation.”
Jeff Robbins, the ECMC’s board chair, asked Murphy to address those concerns during Friday’s hearing.
“Frankly, I was a little disappointed with (Weld County oil and gas director) Jason Maxey and Weld County, and some of the things that were in the paper about not being told, and the ramifications of that,” Robbins said.
“It was very abrupt,” Murphy said of the ECMC’s notification process. “We were moving quickly to get this information to the public, and that crunched our time to have some earlier conversations.”
In addition to assessing conditions at the affected remediation sites, Murphy said the agency is “concurrently investigating the broader implications and scope of the falsified data,” an effort led by a new quality assurance team. The next update on the investigation will come no later than March 2025, she said.
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