Impacts of Oil and Gas Drilling on Indigenous Communities

Too often, decisions regarding oil and gas development are made without adequate Tribal consultation (see section "COVID-19 and the Navajo Nation"). 

The Greater Chaco Landscape is a vast cultural landscape in the Four Corners region of the United States. The region has been home to many Indigenous Nations for thousands of years. In New Mexico, Greater Chaco is loosely defined as an 8,000 square-mile area surrounding Chaco Canyon National Historical Park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site that protects the center of Indigenous cultures in the region. Much more than a park or archaeological site, the area, nestled in the high-desert of northwestern New Mexico, is home to living cultural practices and traditions that extend far beyond the park's boundaries. Chaco and the living landscape that surrounds it are sacred to Diné and Pueblo peoples throughout the region. These communities and their ancestors have fought for the preservation of their homelands, their culture, and their stories. Today, they continue to be burdened by the aftershocks of the growth of extractive industries -- including fracking operations.

 91% of public lands  in the Greater Chaco region are leased for oil and gas drilling. These operations are often concentrated in and around Tribal communities and major cultural sites. In 2014, the Bureau of Land Management estimated that approximately 4,000 of the over 37,000 wells in the region are used for fracking, an unconventional method of oil drilling that is associated with a number of environmental harms and public health risks.

Hydraulic fracturing or ”fracking” is distinct from conventional oil and gas drilling, although both are problematic in terms of environmental degradation and potential public health risks. In conventional oil and gas drilling, a well is drilled into a rock formation and oil or gas are pumped from the rock at depth back to the surface. However, there are some rock formations that are so tightly packed together that they must be broken up to create pathways for oil and gas to get to the well, either because the reservoir has already been depleted or because the natural geology makes extracting the oil and gas difficult.

Oil and gas drilling, including fracking operations, release toxic pollutants into the air that are associated with serious health impacts, including respiratory problems, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. Particularly, hazardous air pollutants like benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene (BTEX) are emitted during regular operation of the wells. This group of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is associated with headaches, fatigue, and, with high or long-term exposure, cancer.

VOCs are also associated with the production of ozone. When VOCs or other ozone precursors react with sunlight, ozone is formed. Nitrogen oxides (NOx) are another example of an ozone precursor that is emitted by engines used for drilling as well as by the large fleets of diesel vehicles often associated with oil and gas production activities. Ozone is known to reduce pulmonary function and exacerbate breathing problems like asthma and emphysema. Ozone is also able to travel away from its precursors’ origins, meaning that its harmful impacts can be widespread.

Fracking-related machinery also produce particulate matter, which is linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer. The New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) has reported that five counties, including San Juan county, experience concentrations of particulate matter that are higher than the concentration considered allowable under the Clean Air Act.

The closer an individual or community is to oil and gas operations, the greater the health risks of these operations become. Experts recommend that oil and gas facilities be at least 1350--2500 feet away from residences or any location of human activity. This protects individuals from exposure to dangerously high levels of toxic air pollutants, loud noise, and strong odors.

However, in San Juan County, the required setback distance is determined by each municipality, and it is often significantly smaller than recommended -- sometimes just 200-400 feet. Although uncertainty remains due to gaps in long term health and exposure data, the short setback distances in San Juan County indicate that county residents living close to oil and gas facilities may experience greater health risks and undesirable nuisances.

As discussed in the following section (“Impacts on Fracking on Indigenous Communities”), Indigenous communities may already be feeling the impacts of oil and gas development. San Juan county is one of 238 counties in the United States that are experiencing a higher risk of cancer as a result of oil and gas development. Furthermore, it is one of 32 counties at a high risk of respiratory harm, including breathing problems or respiratory diseases.

Although both conventional well drilling and fracking are harmful to human health and the environment, fracking operations are considered to be more dangerous, largely due to the water and chemical slurry. While much of this fluid ultimately remains underground (potentially causing its own set of problems), some of the slurry, mixed with water or brine from the rock formation, eventually returns to the surface. Since it can contain toxic or hazardous chemicals, disposing of this "produced water" can pose serious problems. For example, in many cases the waste product must be hauled out by trucks for proper treatment offsite, which results in increased air pollution from the vehicles. Where the fluid remains in the ground or where it is injected back into the ground for disposal, the chemicals from the slurry may leak into drinking water reserves, either through cracks in well casings -- the lining of the well that is supposed to prevent leaks -- through cracks in the rock, or through spills on the surface that leach into the ground. 87% percent of public water supply in New Mexico comes from groundwater, making groundwater contamination especially problematic.

For Indigenous communities, health risks associated with living near oil and gas facilities are exacerbated due to a lack of access to health facilities, clean drinking water, consistent housing, and sanitary sewage and waste disposal, among other risk factors. Over  30% of Navajo households  do not have clean running water at home. Only four Indian Health Services hospitals directly service the 27,000 square mile Nation, meaning that travel time to the nearest hospital can be upwards of an hour or more, exacerbated by unpaved roads.

Ultimately, the detrimental impacts of oil and gas activities on Indigenous communities are compounded by the systemic harms they have experienced throughout history. Learn more about the historical events that have and continue to impact Tribal communities and how they are affected by oil and gas development in the timeline below.

The relationship between Tribes and oil and gas development is complex, and opinions within and among Tribal communities and governments on this development varies widely. Despite the harms incurred by oil and gas activities, Tribes sometimes derive income from their development, either by owning wells or leasing land. In 2012, energy and mineral extraction  generated over $701 million  in royalties for Indigenous mineral owners. Ultimately, resource extraction is a complicated social, political, and environmental issue.

In addition to public health risks, Indigenous women of New Mexico may also be dangerously affected by oil and gas activity. New Mexico has the highest number of cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in the United States. This may be exacerbated by the presence of transient male workers -- often employed for oil and gas drilling -- near Indigenous lands. A United Nations (UN) rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous people, shows a trend of “extractive projects ... [leading] to increased incidents of sexual harassment and violence, including rape and assault” (Anaya 2010).  In North Dakota , reported sexual assaults of Indigenous women increased during a period of peak oil production that ended in 2014. Unfortunately, data on this phenomenon in New Mexico are extremely limited. Given the similarities between cases reported in North Dakota and those reported in New Mexico, it is critical that additional investigations address the potential link between New Mexico’s missing and murdered Indigenous women and extractive projects.

In New Mexico, oil and gas development is regulated through a complex network of both state and federal laws, with multiple agencies then tasked with handling various aspects of permitting for oil and gas well drilling and operations, for permitting of facilities and related infrastructure to process or store oil and gas, and for enforcement of regulatory and health requirements. This complex bureaucratic web can make it difficult to adequately assess compliance with regulatory requirements.

The primary law governing the regulation of oil and gas development in the United States is the federal Clean Air Act of 1970. The federal Clean Air Act regulates the emission of air pollutants “to protect and enhance the quality of the Nation’s air resources so as to promote the public health and welfare and the productive capacity of its population” (42 U.S.C. § 7401(b)(1)). In 1990, the Act was amended to require, among other things, that major sources of air pollution obtain and comply with an operating permit under the Act’s Title V permit program. Sources are classified as “minor” or “major” based on the amount of air pollution they emit.

Major sources include any facility or “source” that emits or has the potential to emit more than 100 tons per year of any pollutant, though that limit may be lower for some hazardous pollutants or in areas where air quality does not meet the Clean Air Act’s standards for what are known as “criteria pollutants” -- pollutants such as lead, ozone, and particulate matter that cause smog and other health hazards.

If an oil or gas facility is considered a major source of air pollution, then that facility is required to obtain and comply with a Title V operating permit before starting to operate. This permit requires that the facility monitor and limit their pollution emissions in order to meet air quality standards set by the Act. In other words, the permit program helps to monitor and control the emissions coming from oil and gas facilities.

Facilities include all of the equipment that process and treat the oil or gas pumped by wells so that it is ready to be used. Facilities associated with oil and gas development release air pollutants such as BTEX, NOx, and particulate matter that cause acute and chronic health complications, such as asthma attacks, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.

Learn more about major sources and the Clean Air Act below.

Under the Clean Air Act, if an operating permit is required, it has to be issued before ANY activity towards operation, or even construction begins. A violation of this rule means there may be more pollutants being released than is allowable under the Clean Air Act. This directly translates to increased health risks for surrounding communities.

Although the definition of what constitutes activity for purposes of an operating permit is debated, we interpret activity to cover a wide range of possible actions, such as clearing land for a well pad, constructing buildings or structures at the site, or drilling a well that will supply oil or gas to the permitted facility. Our definition, then, includes both construction of facilities, which are directly permitted by the Clean Air Act and clearly constitutes “activity”, and the construction of wells, which supply the facilities but may not be directly permitted themselves.

In New Mexico, however, even if a facility would not be considered a major source, and as a result would not need a Title V permit to operate, anyone planning to construct a new facility that has the potential to emit more than 10 tons per year of a regulated pollutant is required to submit a “Notice of Intent” (NOI) to operate the facility to the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED). Similar to the Clean Air Act, before a facility can begin ANY activity towards construction, the facility must receive either a response from NMED confirming that a permit is not required, or if a permit is required, must receive the final approved permit.

Unfortunately, it can be difficult to determine whether wells have been drilled before any permit or NOI has been issued for the facilities that will receive oil or gas from them. This is because responsibility for permitting the drilling of wells and for construction and operation of facilities are split between two entirely different state agencies -- NMED is responsible for the permitting of facilities while the Oil Conservation Division (OCD) is responsible for permitting the construction of new wells. Even more problematic is that facilities are generally supplied by multiple wells, and well fields may have clusters of several wells within relatively close proximity, making it difficult to determine which wells and facilities are related.

Because it can be so difficult to tell which facility a well will be connected to, it is often difficult or impossible to tell whether a well might have been constructed before the required permits for its associated facility were obtained, or whether state or federal permitting requirements have been violated.

To determine whether potential violations of permitting requirements may be occurring in the Greater Chaco Region, we analyzed 69 well-facility pairings, or wells drilled since 2010 that we could positively associate with a specific, permitted facility, in San Juan County, primarily focused on wells producing oil through fracking. We obtained permitting data for potentially associated facilities through both searching for documents available through the NMED website and by filing a series of requests for permitting documents to NMED under New Mexico’s Inspection of Public Records Act. We then attempted to connect the wells to the facility they supply using a combination of information obtained from the permit materials and by using mapping and geospatial information to identify wells and facilities that are in close proximity to each other, indicating they are likely associated.

We then looked at Clean Air Act permits and NOIs for facilities from NMED and compared the notice or permit approval date for a facility to the date that facility’s wells were drilled, as recorded by OCD (only 62 of the 69 wells were paired with facilities that had information available that allowed us to determine a complete permitting timeline). If a well was drilled before a Clean Air Act permit or NOI was approved for its associated facility, we considered this a potential violation.

More detailed information on our methodology can be found below and in our technical appendix.

Our analysis focused on a set of 289 oil and gas wells in San Juan County drilled by Enduring Resources or Hilcorp Energy Company, two of the region’s largest operators, since 2010. The 289 oil and gas wells were broken down into three distinct groups: Enduring oil wells, Enduring gas wells, and Hilcorp gas wells. Based on geographic proximity to the wells, we then marked off a total of 602 unique facilities for subsequent analysis.

Ultimately, we identified 41 unique facilities that we were able to pair with one or more of 69 of the 289 total wells. However, only 36 of these facilities, representing 62 of the paired wells, had enough information available to construct a complete permit timeline.  

If this is the case, that means individuals -- specifically, the Indigenous communities of the region -- are being exposed to more dangerous air pollution than they should be -- and more than regulatory agencies recognize.

Since Indigenous Nations are experiencing the most harmful impacts of oil and gas development, including potential illegal practices, it is critical that Indigenous communities have the opportunity to be included in any regulatory or decision-making processes that involve oil and gas development and are potentially allowing these violations to occur.

Both NMED and OCD make only limited data available for the public through easily accessible online portals. Most relevant permit documents from NMED must be obtained through an Inspection of Public Records Act request to the agency. This additional step, although detailed on the  NMED website , can act as a barrier to obtaining information that would benefit communities and better allow them to empower change. And while the OCD website does include multiple databases of well drilling documents, there is no available means of connecting those wells to the facilities they service or to broader permitting or regulatory schemes. Promoting the use of a database of all permitting documents on the NMED website would create a higher level of transparency that can discourage industries from failing to comply with all applicable laws and regulations. Additionally linking information available between the agencies would further assist in allowing the public to assess oil and gas activity in the State.

Ultimately, a unified database of all permitting documents for both wells and facilities would provide the most accessible tool for community activists. This database would require agency collaboration between NMED and OCD, and could potentially make it easier for the agencies themselves to begin tracking which wells supply which facilities.

Since much of New Mexico’s oil and gas development occurs on Tribal lands, a joint management of this database between state agencies and Tribal governments could allow for better management of these sites. Currently, NMED has established a Tribal liaison position within their department in accordance with New Mexico's State-Tribal Collaboration Act. The Tribal liaison serves to provide direct communication between Tribal governments and the department. This liaison could assist in the management of a joint database.

Although agencies are required by law to consult with Tribal liaisons, the definition of what constitutes a proper consultation varies. Different agencies have used the loose term to avoid meaningful consultation with tribes and take Tribes’ words into account.

While government enforcement often falls short, many Indigenous activists and community groups continue to organize and fight against the degradation of their land, natural resources, cultural centers, and community health. Grassroots organizations such as the  San Juan Citizens Alliance , the  Frack Off Chaco Coalition ,  Diné-Care , the  Red Nation  and  Tewa Women United  have been at the forefront demanding justice against the hazards imposed on them by the oil and gas industry. It is only through the recognition, protection, and inclusion of Indigenous Nations that environmental concerns can be appropriately dealt with.

The Navajo nation has been shaken by the COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2020, the nation surpassed New York and New Jersey to have the highest COVID-19 infection rate per capita in the U.S. This spread of infection is underpinned by a historical lack of adequate access to healthcare and basic amenities, like clean, reliable water. Furthermore, the close proximity of Navajo communities to oil and gas activity and its pollution may be linked to worse healthcare outcomes related to the disease -- a recent  Harvard study  has linked higher COVID-19 death rates to living in areas with higher pollution.

Throughout May 2020, the Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian Affairs held virtual meetings discussing the Mancos-Gallup Amendment. Indigenous community members expressed that these meetings were not suitable, as tribal members who will be affected by the amendment often have limited or no internet access and therefore are not able to meaningfully participate in the public process. Tribal leadership has expressed that they are unable to adequately review the Amendment and attend meetings due to time-consuming emergency relief efforts. Despite the Navajo nation’s request for a pause on a public comment period, the Bureau of Land Management has ultimately moved forward with public comments with a 120-day extension, leaving the comment period open until September 25, 2020.

As part of our research, we had intended to travel to New Mexico in March 2020 to speak directly with Navajo Tribal members to learn more about their experiences with oil and gas drilling in the region. Unfortunately, this trip was cancelled as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We have since decided to use a portion of our original travel funds to provide hand sanitizer to the Navajo nation through the  Far East Navajo COVID-19 Response Fund , organized in coordination with the Torreon Community Alliance.