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FACES OF CHACO

ANONYMOUS #2

“There’s no one regulating anything.”

“WPX drilled behind my dad’s house right there, on the allotted land. I’ve been seeing them blowing wells into the atmosphere and they ain’t supposed to be doing that, you know? And I caught them a couple of times and I reported it over there to the [Bureau of Management (BLM)] office.”

“They put chemicals into the wellhead, [to get to oil and gas] to come out, like dissolving the slushes. They inject that into the wellhead and they release it into the atmosphere and we have a pond right there… maybe 600 feet. In time, in the long term, it accumulates and then it washes down to that pond and contaminates it.

“They stopped venting [the gas]. I told them they could go ahead and maybe set a blow tank, which where I work that’s how we operate. You put a blow tank there so if you’re ever going to blow a well you can always blow that into a tank so the fumes and everything stays isolated.”

A lot of what I see out here is that the tribe doesn’t have any kind of oil and gas inspector. That’s the issue here. On the Jicarilla they have their own oil and gas inspectors out there, on the Navajo Nation I don’t see nothing.”

“On the Jicarilla they have oil and gas inspectors. They overlook the roads, oil spills, erosion, even with muddy roads, driving, weather conditions, everything. They monitor the oil and gas companies… Everybody is on the same page.”

“But over here there’s no one regulating anything. Even the roads. For instance, over the summer we had a lot of rain. The trucks go in even when there’s snow, rain, the roads are bad. You’ve got all these water trucks that are going in 24/7, pulling water, pulling oil, to the point where I got so ticked off about it that I went ahead and emailed WPX and I made a CC to the BLM inspector…. it helped. I told him on the email that they have to operate accordingly to the weather. They really slowed down.

Will you add your voice?


Demand cancellation of the March 2018 oil and gas lease sale, and all future sales, in Greater Chaco until proper protections for the people, environment, and cultural resources are put in place.