OctobEr 2025
Few oil and gas companies talk more about their “net zero” ambitions than Texas-based giant Occidental Petroleum (“Oxy”). Last month, Oxy released its new corporate climate and sustainability report for 2025, and continues to claim that it is “leading the way to a cleaner, more sustainable energy future”.
But despite all the leadership talk, signs of new or ongoing pollution events keep emerging. Just over the course of July, satellite data shows several super-emitter incidents appearing at Oxy drill sites, each of which was observed spewing methane at a rate of hundreds of kilograms per hour, while site inspections and state reporting reveals additional signs of ongoing air pollution events. Hey Occidental, let’s clean up the operations first, and only advertise the emission leadership after the job is actually done.
Stats
- Pollution events large enough to be visible from space. Four separate methane plumes captured by Carbon Mapper’s Tanager-1 Satellite just since the start of July appear adjacent to Occidental well sites:
— On July 9th, a methane plume dumping methane into the air at a rate of 293 kilograms per hour appears to emanate from company subsidiary Oxyrock’s Willis 40 Well Pad near Midland, Texas.
— Then on July 23rd, imagery of an even larger emissions event venting at a rate of 627 kilograms per hour was captured next to another Oxyrock site near Midland (FR Barium Well Pad).
— And on July 30th – and again on August 13th – plumes emitting methane at rates of 746 kilograms per hour and then 490 kilograms per hour were identified in the vicinity of Oxyrock wells and gas gathering lines near Garden City, Texas (adjacent to the company’s Jones -A- well site).
— Every hour of pollution at the rate of these combined events has roughly the same climate impact as the emissions of driving nearly 180 cars for an entire year (based on a typical passenger vehicle that gets 22.2 miles per gallon and drives 11,500 miles per year). - Evidence filmed on-the-ground. Since the start of the year, Earthworks thermographers have documented 5 pollution events from Oxy (and its corporate subsidiaries Anadarko and Kerr McGee) well sites in Colorado, resulting in submitting 3 complaints to state regulatory authorities.
- Multiple fines, hundreds of thousands in penalties. Just since the start of 2023, Oxy and its subsidiaries have racked up $8,863,515 in penalties for 19 environment-related offenses, according to Violation Tracker data.
- The methane waste continues. In New Mexico alone, Oxy and its subsidiaries report losing over 3195,000 mcf of methane gas to venting or flaring since the start of 2025 (data as of September 18th; and note this data is self-reported) – this is roughly equivalent to the amount of gas consumed annually by about 5,800 U.S. households.
