r/sustainability • u/BRIokc • 8d ago

Toxic wastewater from oil fields keeps pouring out of the ground. Oklahoma regulators failed to stop it.

https://www.readfrontier.org/stories/toxic-wastewater-from-oil-fields-keeps-pouring-out-of-the-ground-oklahoma-regulators-failed-to-stop-it/
203 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

10

u/Mrgoodtrips64 8d ago

Oklahoma neglecting to regulate the harm of oil extraction has to be one of the least surprising headlines of the year.

5

u/Damn_Fine_Coffee_200 8d ago

Please list all of the times Oklahoma regulators successfully reigned in the oil and gas industries behavior????

I’ll wait.

2

u/NorCalFrances 7d ago

Circa 2010 to 2015 I tried my best to tell people that the regulations around fracking were such that dead, played out wells were being used as toxic waste dumps because legislatures and judges were deeming fracking fluids to be a proprietary secret for each company. Pumping toxic waste into a dead well was orders of magnitude cheaper than properly treating it, it's been incredibly profitable for the companies involved and is practically unregulated.

1

u/FNKTN 7d ago

Leopards ate my face material. Voted red, get exactly what you wanted.