My journey documenting New Mexico’s abandoned well issues

This isn’t a new story. But it’s one that needs to repeatedly be told.

I’ve been working for a couple of months on a series on abandoned oil and gas wells in New Mexico. The series is rolling out this week.

Before, or as, you read it, I thought I’d give you a look into how it came to be.

A couple of months ago, I ran into a source at an energy conference who I’ve interviewed a few times before. I mentioned in passing that I was interested in looking into the state’s abandoned oil and gas wells issue, and he invited me up to the Farmington area for a tour of some wells.

Naturally, I said yes before even confirming my editors would let me take the time to drive halfway across the state for a story idea I hadn’t even panned out.

Once I had an actual OK on the trip, I wasn’t quite sure what it would turn out to be. Maybe an update of how things were looking in the San Juan Basin?

The things I saw weren’t good. Two Farmington residents showed up around what’s known as the Horseshoe Gallup oil field, where oil spurted out of pipes with the twist of a wrench, hissing in the air indicated leaks. Bullet casings lay next to piping and other infrastructure used to transport the valuable resources.

It was difficult to listen to the pain in the residents’ voices as they described what used to be a beautiful landscape, especially knowing how many times they had told this story to other reporters.

That was something else that created a challenge for me in writing the series. Many great oil and gas reporters had already taken the exact tour, yet I wanted to craft an original story others haven’t already done.

As I dealt with my extremely sunburnt skin in the aftermath of a tour with Farmington residents around the Horseshoe Gallup oil field in the northwestern part of the state, I sat on the content for a while, unsure of what to do with it.

I decided to wrap it together with a few interviews I had done beforehand with state agencies on abandoned well cleanup efforts.

While I got started on the story, the State Land Office reached out and asked if I wanted to see the “worst of the worst” abandoned oil and gas sites in the Permian Basin.

This time, I accidentally looped my editor into saying yes to the trip because I told other sources I would be in Hobbs at that time so I could meet up for other coverage while in town. Whoops.

Once I got a more official OK again , I made the even longer drive to Hobbs.

Again, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Surely this trip had to wrap into the other work I had done, but how was I to articulate the enormous topic and do justice to it?

As an increase of Texas license plates filled my vision, one of the first things that hit me driving into Hobbs was the smell of the oil fields. It’s a very pungent one. The photographer that accompanied me worried about the smell sticking around in his wife’s care.

I’ve reported for years on the booming oil industry, but it was something else entirely to see the pump jacks littered across the landscape like cotton flowing around Albuquerque in the springtime.

The state employees did indeed show me some of the very worst abandoned well sites, with dark puddles of oil causing worry for groundwater resources and contaminated dirt covered up with clean top layers.

The desert isn’t a green haven, but the natural shrubbery that populated other untouched environments was absent from the oil and gas well sites.

After that tour, I made another stop the next day. Sitting in a lush office, I listened to the starkly different perspective of an oil and gas producer talking about harm done through over-regulation of an industry that majorly fuels New Mexico’s budget.

“We are education,” he said at one point.

And he wasn’t wrong — despite attempts to diversify New Mexico’s income sources, oil and gas is the industry sitting at the top.

When I spoke with the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, it was a similar conversation, albeit more solutions-focused on state policies legislators could enact to help with the abandoned wells issue.

Post-Permian Basin tour, as I dealt with another sunburn despite more sunscreen application this time, I sat in a dark hotel room thinking for a long time.

This would not all fit into one article.

So, over the past couple of months, I’ve taken time to sneak away from the office to many coffee shops around Albuquerque to get to work on what became a four-part series on abandoned oil and gas wells in New Mexico.

I didn’t grow up in New Mexico, and I still have a lot to learn about the state, including the oil and gas industry. So this series doesn’t hit everything, nor should it. It’s my start to scratching the surface of a topic that requires a constant, watchful eye.

In the end, I don’t think I wrote a story that hasn’t already been told. Other reporters’ writing from the same tours they’ve taken tells the same story.

The difference is time. I can compare my story from 2024 to other stories written years earlier, and there’s the same problem contaminating the landscape that was there when another reporter looked at it in the past.

We as reporters need to hold entities — the state, industry, whomever — accountable to change what is or isn’t happening over time.

So my series may sound similar to things you’ve already read. That’s okay, and I’m all the more glad you’re seeing the connection of how things stay the same, even though they shouldn’t.

I crafted the series hoping it’s got a little bit of everything — input from people affected by the oil and gas industry, thoughts from producers themselves and comments from the state on cleanup work that’s being done.

I talked to more sources than I could end up fitting in the series, but every person helped me understand more about the daunting issues New Mexico faces and how it materializes in different people’s lives.

But the conversations are not done, yet, are they?

More need to be had, every day, raising awareness for issues like the crisis of abandoned oil and gas wells.

But for now, this was a start. Leaving Hobbs, I packed up my things from another hotel room and started the five-hour drive back to Albuquerque.

As pump jacks disappeared behind me, I couldn’t notice a difference in that Permian Basin oil smell. I had become accustomed to it.

Four-part oil and gas series

Photos from the abandoned oil and gas wells in New Mexico series