A 70-foot geyser of produced water from a site operated by NGL Energy Partners near Loving, New Mexico, triggered emergency calls, a fast shutdown by company representatives, and fears for nearby acequias and the Pecos River. The visible spill comes as New Mex
When Jackie Onsurez first saw it on a busy highway between Loving and Carlsbad, he thought it was smoke.
Only as he pulled closer did he realize the “smoke” was a 70-foot plume—an oilfield wastewater geyser spewing from a pipe at a site operated by NGL Energy Partners in southeast New Mexico last Tuesday evening. The water, commonly called produced water, was roaring into the air before anything could stop it.
Onsurez—who until recently had been running for the state’s lieutenant governor position—didn’t turn away. He called NGL, 911, the New Mexico Environment Department and others. He was at the site for a few minutes when an oilfield roughneck arrived in a pickup truck and tried to stop the spraying water.
The effort didn’t work. Onsurez said the man then “started to haul ass out of there.” He added that the roughneck shouted, “Get out of here. There’s gas coming out. I don’t know what’s there. Get out, get out!”
Onsurez stayed anyway. He is an engineer and serves on the New Mexico State Emergency Response Commission, and the timing of what he was seeing wasn’t lost on him. The day before, he had attended a commission meeting on hazardous materials spills.
“I was able to observe firsthand the equipment and the training and everything else that’s needed for here [in the oilfield],” Onsurez said. “The only people that had protective gear was the fire department when they arrived.”
A few minutes after the roughneck fled, the fire department cordoned off the area. NGL representatives arrived soon after and shut off the shooting water. By then, Onsurez had been at the site for about a half hour, and he said he didn’t know how long the spill had been spewing before he arrived.
The contaminated water flowed across the road and ran into a nearby drainage ditch. Onsurez also called Alisa Ogden, a farmer and rancher and a member of the Carlsbad Soil and Water Conservation District, to alert the group.
“I said, ‘Ms. Ogden, I hate to bother you, but it looks like this might be getting into your acequias,’” Onsurez said, using the common Spanish term for the traditional Southwest water system.
Ogden later said that the urgency mattered because of where that water could go. “If you don’t know what happens, you can’t do anything about it,” she said. “Gratefully. Jackie let us know immediately when he saw it. and we got right on it and were able to keep the produced water … from flowing down towards the Pecos River. ” Ogden said.
“It doesn’t keep us up at night, but with the oilfields out here, it’s always a hazard that it could happen,” she added.
A report filed by NGL with the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division describes how the blowout happened. It said a one-inch nipple broke on a high-pressure water injection line, leading to the release. The report said 40 barrels of produced water escaped, 10 of which were recovered; the remaining 30 flowed into the nearby ditch.
Sidney Hill—public information officer at the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, which oversees the Oil Conservation Division—said NGL collected samples from the ditch and, “We expect to receive them sometime this week.”
“Accidents do happen,” Ogden said. “We’ve all had accidents occur. It’s how you react to ’em.”
She said NGL is responsible and has agreed to do the cleanup. “They did everything they could at the time,” Ogden said. “Once we get all the samples back and everything, then we’ll come up with a plan on what they need to do.”
NGL did not respond to phone and email requests for comment.
The incident also comes against a backdrop of inspection activity. In December 2024. an inspector from the state’s Oil Conservation Division found a pump leaking wastewater on the wellsite’s cement slab. Hill said that when asked by Capital & Main about a scheduled three-month follow-up visit that didn’t appear in the well files. “Thank you for pointing out the past due compliance. We will investigate why it isn’t closed out, but it does not seem associated with the current release.”.
NGL transports oil, gas, and wastewater around oil basins from the Gulf Coast, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico. It also has a growing business disposing of produced water in deep injection wells like the one just north of Loving. In its annual report. the company claimed to be the largest independent wastewater transporter and disposal company in the U.S. handling nearly a billion barrels of the toxic water across its operations last year.
In the wider pattern of wastewater spills across New Mexico. NGL’s accident stood out for being visible rather than massive. Between Jan. 1 and May 19, 48 companies reported 356 spills, losing 15,335 barrels of wastewater across the state. The biggest was a 2,000-barrel spill in January by Hilcorp Energy Company, just 1,300 feet from a neighborhood in north Farmington. Devon Energy Corporation reported the most wastewater spills so far with 93, compared to three for NGL.
But last week’s briny geyser also underscores how quickly New Mexico’s produced-water problem is turning into a political and scientific fight about what to do with it.
In 2025, oil producers brought up more than 800 million barrels of oil and 2.7 billion barrels of wastewater in the state. The wastewater totals increase as oil and gas production grows, and the total has doubled since 2020. For all that volume, there is little agreement on what to do with it.
The water occurs naturally in oil and gas formations and is highly saline, laced with petroleum-based chemicals. It is often radioactive and can include chemical cocktails that companies inject into wells during the fracking and production processes. The recipes for those cocktails are often protected trade secrets and can differ radically from well to well. Basically, the water is toxic, and its use outside the oilfield for anything but testing is forbidden in New Mexico.
Wastewater can be used to drill new wells, but the most common disposal method is underground disposal wells—like the one near Loving—where the water is reinjected into rock formations under extreme pressure.
The NGL report said the broken nipple was on a pipeline charged to 2,600 pounds per square inch. But the state is running out of injection locations as the rock formations fill and shift under the intense pressure of the injections. resulting in swarms of earthquakes across the Permian Basin in both Texas and New Mexico. In addition, high-pressure wastewater deposits have breached old oil and gas wells, leading to brine leaks and geysers.
That pressure has fueled renewed debate over a proposed rule allowing some wastewater to be treated and used outside the petroleum industry. A proposal put forward by the industry group Water. Access. Treatment and Reuse Alliance to allow wastewater to be treated and used outside the petroleum industry is once again before the state’s Water Quality Control Commission. It was knocked down last year following a fracas where Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham appeared to pressure the commission to overturn a recently instituted ban on using the wastewater outside the oilfield.
Earlier proposals argued that treated water could be used by other industries or possibly discharged into lakes and streams—highly controversial in a state that continues to suffer from a decades-long drought.
In separate interviews, lead lawyers from each side of the debate tackled each other’s arguments.
Matthias Sayer. co-founder of the alliance. said he views treated water as “a new source of water supply and as a reduced burden on the current management system.” Sayer also said. “Spills happen because oilfield [waste]water management is massive. constant. and operationally complex … That does not excuse spills. but it explains why a system built around moving very large volumes of high-salinity water will continue to experience [spills] unless the state improves infrastructure and creates better incentives for treatment. recycling. and beneficial reuse.”.
Tannis Fox. senior attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center and a lead attorney against the reanimated wastewater proposal. said. “The main argument that industry is making is that reuse of produced water is one solution to the water scarcity problem. And with that, we disagree. It’s not a silver bullet.”.
Sayer said a “robust body of science” shows that oilfield wastewater can be treated and safely reused. “The question is not whether it can be done, but how to craft a rule that appropriately manages the risk,” Sayer said. “That question is answered by engaging the science and the experts behind it.”
Fox said, “There is, of course, a significant debate about what the science is telling us.” She and others are skeptical that new water treatment processes can reliably clean what’s coming out of the ground.
Fox said water testing generally starts with looking for known, likely contaminants in the water. But. she said. “We don’t know all the constituents in produced water because the hydraulic fracturing fluids that industry uses are protected by trade secret rules.” She added that. in addition. basic water chemistry and salinity vary widely across the state. The lack of clarity about what’s in the water “is a problem for emergency response workers if you don’t know what’s in those fluids. ” she said. with a nod toward the Loving spill.
Fox also said there hasn’t been large-scale testing. “There have not been studies at scale. There has not been discharge at scale. There has not been treatment at scale. Reuse of produced water at an industrial scale is not there yet. So it is not a solution to water scarcity tomorrow,” Fox said.
“If the [Water Quality Control Commission] approves a rule, the system will necessarily ramp up organically,” Sayer said. “This is a runway, not a light switch.”
Fox said, “It is by its nature a dirty industry, and obviously the world needs energy, and the sooner we get to clean energy, the better.”
Back on the highway last Tuesday evening, the visible problem was immediate: a pipe failure that sent produced water roaring 70 feet into the air, then racing across a road and into a drainage ditch before anyone could fully respond. And for people like Ogden, the concern wasn’t abstract.
“What happens” isn’t a slogan in that landscape—it’s the difference between a spill that stays in the ditch and a spill that reaches acequias and runs toward the Pecos River.
New Mexico produced water NGL Energy Partners wastewater geyser Loving Carlsbad acequias Pecos River Oil Conservation Division injection wells Water Quality Control Commission produced-water reuse Western Environmental Law Center Water Access Treatment and Reuse Alliance
How is this even legal? 70 feet is wild.
Produced water sounds like something they can just dump? Like it’s already “waste” so who cares right. But if it hits acequias then yeah that’s messed up. Also why was it going that long before shutdown?
Wait so it was an “oilfield wastewater geyser” but they shut it down fast? I’m not buying it—sounds like PR. If it can spray 70 feet, then it probably contaminated everything along the Pecos already. Next they’ll say it evaporated.
So this is why the air smells weird sometimes out there, like it was smoke from a fire? I saw something similar years ago and thought it was a flare. And acequias… are those like canals? If the company was there, why didn’t they catch it sooner? Maybe the pipe was “misconnected” or whatever, idk, but this feels like the same old problem with fracking stuff.