Why the State Doesn’t Regulate Oil and Gas in Osage County

• Joe Wertz
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  Joe Wertz was a reporter and managing editor for StateImpact Oklahoma from 2011-2019. He reported on energy and environment issues for national NPR audiences and other national outlets. He previously worked as a managing editor, assistant editor and staff reporter at several major Oklahoma newspapers and studied journalism at the University of Central Oklahoma.

In any other county in Oklahoma, the state’s oil and gas regulator could address the dangerous hydrogen sulfide gas venting from wells.

But things are different in Osage County, the Journal Record’s Sarah Terry-Cobo reports. The Corporation Commission has authority in Oklahoma’s 76 other counties, but the Bureau of Indian Affairs regulates drilling in Osage County, and “landowners says the agency isn’t responding to their complaints.”

Osage County has been plagued with problems from crude oil spills and land scarred from highly salty oil-field wastewater for decades. In recent years, as more operators drill horizontally, more hydrogen sulfide gas rises to the surface with the petroleum. In one slide of the presentations, Henry showed a photo of a well site with a flare.