Chevron has recovered at least 3.8 million gallons of liquid from a massive oil spill in Weld County, by far the largest amount of either oil or water recovered from any spill listed in a state database.
The oil giant said it recovered 91,272 barrels of waste fluid – a combination of oil, chemicals and contaminated water – in a document filed Wednesday with the state’s Energy and Carbon Management Commission, which oversees oil and gas operations. But that number only encompasses what the company has been able to siphon into tanks so far.
“That’s not to say that’s all that was released, but that’s all that was free-flowing and recoverable,” said Greg Deranleau, deputy director of operations at ECMC.
In early April, a Chevron well on a pad near Galeton suffered a “blowout,” and spewed water, chemicals and crude oil uncontrollably for nearly four days. The spill reached an elementary school, roadways, multiple properties and created an oily sheen in nearby waterways.
Chevron said it recovered the waste liquid from the ‘T064’ parcel, which surrounds the well pad, reaches into a nearby creek and stretches south into additional properties. But that area does not encompass all the affected homes or the school.
Deranleau said that while most of the fluid fell on the pad near the well, a mist of oily particles drifted into surrounding areas.
“They removed all of the mulch in the playground areas around the school,” Deranleau said. “This is not going to be a quick cleanup process at all.”
The company said that fully remediating the area – which involves excavating soil and testing groundwater – could stretch to April 2030.
In a statement, the company said its timeline is a “conservative estimate” that would be updated once it finalizes its clean-up plans and gets them approved by state regulators.
“The exact timeline of the remediation, monitoring and reclamation steps for each site will be updated as we get additional data and finalize plans,” Chevron spokesperson Patty Errico said in an email.
The company has also excavated and disposed of around 7,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil, mulch and gravel. Regulators expect impacts to surrounding soil to be limited to a shallow depth because of the amount of oil recovered on the pad.
Chevron has not disclosed how much oil, chemicals and water erupted from the well, though regulators said it will likely provide that information within 90 days of the spill.
The company also has not disclosed the make-up of the fluid, which could be a mix of crude oil, chemicals or “produced water,” an oil and gas waste product that is laced with toxic chemicals.
More than a dozen Galeton residents who live within a half-mile of the well remain displaced from their homes, according to Errico, the company spokesperson. The company is covering their accommodations and expenses. Errico said residents could return to their homes a few weeks after crews finish cleaning their homes, but did not say when that would be.
ECMC maintains publicly accessible digitized records of spills, going back to 2015. Spill information from prior years is only available as paper records, according to the agency.
CPR News analyzed the database, removed duplicate entries and compared previous incidents to information submitted by Chevron to state regulators. ECMC has not yet updated the database with Chevron’s estimates.
Chevron’s spill dwarfs any other spill in the state’s online database, when measured by barrels of oil, or of produced water, spilled or recovered. The company has not yet disclosed the exact proportions of oil and water in its recovered fluid, or the full extent of its spill. Even so, the sheer volume of recovered fluid is much greater than any previous incident across a few categories.
“We’re approaching a hundred-thousand combined barrels of fluid spilled,” said Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation and advocacy group. Weiss also analyzed the database, and the center publishes a yearly report on oil and gas spills on public lands in Western states.
“This would be close to an order of magnitude larger than anything reported in Colorado before,” he added.
The largest oil spill in the database occurred in 2020, when a fire burned several oil storage tanks in Lincoln County and incinerated 1,200 barrels of oil. In 2023, an equipment failure in Las Animas County spread 13,000 barrels of produced water into the ground, the largest produced water spill in state records.
The largest incident by barrels of produced water recovered occurred in 2022, when an operator recovered nearly 8,000 barrels of contaminated water. State records indicate the largest spill by barrels of oil recovered occurred in 2020, when an operator recovered 340 barrels after an "unauthorized” person opened a valve in Washington County.
Since April, Chevron has increased its estimate of fluid recovered. That number may climb again as the company releases more information.
“We have not seen an incident like this in Colorado history, as far as I can tell,” Weiss said. “But just because it hasn’t happened before doesn’t mean it can’t happen again.”
Weiss said that spills like these highlight that no oil and gas operation is completely risk-free. He said it underlines the importance of setting oil and gas operations away from homes, and ensuring that companies have the resources to clean up wells.
Chevron did not answer questions about the cost of its clean-up, but told regulators it was relying on two general liability insurance policies to help with costs.
“If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that Chevron has the resources to eventually clean all this up,” Weiss said. “But of course it’s up to state regulators, ECMC and the Colorado Department of Public Health to make sure that happens."
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