2025 Spills Across the West

Oil and gas companies in Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico are required to report spills and leaks to state regulators, regardless of whether the incident occurs on private, state, federal, or Tribal land. The Center for Western Priorities analyzes this data each year for these three states, as they are the top oil and gas producing states in the Intermountain West. This year’s report also includes an analysis of historical spills discovered at well sites in Colorado during decommissioning activity over the past decade. The number of these historical spills has grown sharply over the past several years. This is the first year this data is included in this report.

This report has analyzed methane waste in New Mexico since 2022, the first full year of data following the state’s 2021 implementation of reporting requirements for venting and flaring. The state also has a ban on routine venting and flaring and a requirement that operators capture at least 98 percent of their methane emissions by the end of 2026. This report finds that while the reporting requirement is a good step toward lowering unnecessary methane waste, it’s likely severely undercounting the amount of methane that is released into the environment as part of the oil and gas production process.

All spill counts and volumes in this report are minimums. Spills, methane releases, and leaks are self-reported by operators to the state, and many reports list unknown volumes. The actual toll of oil and gas pollution is likely much higher than this dataset captures. The Colorado historical spills report further emphasizes the scale of underreporting, as it shows hundreds of spills go unreported each year, only to be found when wells are reclaimed. This is likely also happening in New Mexico and Wyoming, but operators in those states are not held to the same reporting requirements as those in Colorado. Finally, the methane waste reporting out of New Mexico shows that even a ban on venting and flaring cannot stop methane pollution due to oil and gas production. While this data does not exist for Colorado and Wyoming, it’s logical to assume methane waste due to oil and gas production is also occurring in those states.

Taken together, the results of this report make one thing clear: operators cannot produce oil and gas without leaks, spills, and methane waste. This report does not seek to quantify exactly how much spilled and leaked, nor to definitively determine whether or not regulations are having their intended effect, but rather to provide minimum estimates of how much air and ground pollution is occurring due to oil and gas production in each state.

Colorado

Oil and gas companies in Colorado reported 338 spills to state regulators in 2025, the lowest annual count since 2017, and an 11 percent drop from 2024. Despite the decline in spills, the total volume spilled nearly doubled, from 436,000 gallons in 2024 to 794,000 gallons in 2025. A small number of large spills drove that increase. The majority of reported spills occurred in Weld County in the Denver-Julesburg Basin, as they have in every year on record. Since 2017, spill counts in Colorado have fluctuated without a clear long-term trend, peaking at 457 in 2022 before declining to the current low. Volume has been more volatile, reaching a high of 2.3 million gallons in 2019 and spiking again to 1.5 million gallons in 2022, before falling sharply and then growing again in 2025.

Colorado: Historical Spills

Operators in Colorado reported 6,084 historical spills, discovered at well sites during plugging, decommissioning, and construction activity since 2016. These are not new spills; they are legacy contamination detected when aging wells are taken out of service. The count has risen sharply since 2021, driven by a wave of plugging and abandonment activity across the Denver-Julesburg Basin. Noble Energy (now Chevron), Kerr McGee (now Occidental), and PDC Energy (also now Chevron) together account for roughly three-quarters of all historical spill reports, a reflection of how consolidation has transferred historical liabilities to a handful of large operators. Almost 90 percent of all historical spills reported in 2025 were found in Weld County. Taken together, these 6,084 discoveries represent an environmental disaster hiding in plain sight: contamination that has likely existed for decades, only coming to light because Colorado requires operators to look for it during decommissioning as Colorado’s top-producing oil region dries up. Most other oil-producing states have no equivalent requirement, which means the same legacy contamination almost certainly exists elsewhere but goes undetected and unreported.

Wyoming

Oil and gas companies in Wyoming reported 786 spills in 2025, down from 825 in 2024. Converse and Campbell counties, both in the Powder River Basin, led the state with 172 and 137 spills respectively. The total volume reported spilled fell 21 percent, from 1.81 million gallons in 2024 to 1.43 million gallons in 2025. Produced water was the top material by volume spilled at 1.19 million gallons. Merit Energy reported the highest volume spilled of any operator at 304,000 gallons, despite ranking seventh in total spill count, reflecting a few high-volume spills. Since 2017, spill counts have fluctuated without a clear long-term trend, ranging from a low of 487 in 2022 to a high of 825 in both 2019 and 2024. Volume has also varied, peaking at 4.41 million gallons in 2017 and reaching a low of 1.15 million gallons in 2022.

New Mexico

Companies in New Mexico reported increases in both the number of spills and leaks, as well as the volume lost. The number of spills rose 13 percent, from 1,133 in 2024 to 1,277 in 2025, while liquid volume increased 75 percent, from 2.03 million gallons to 3.56 million gallons. The volume increase is almost entirely due to a single event: an OXY USA water storage tank failure that released 1.66 million gallons of produced water, roughly 39,600 barrels, accounting for nearly half of all liquid volume spilled statewide. Removing that spill would bring the total volume spilled in 2025 below 2024 levels.

New Mexico also requires companies to report venting and flaring of methane. These gas releases make up the vast majority of New Mexico’s “spill” count. They fell roughly 8 percent, from 40,467 in 2024 to 37,207 in 2025. Lea and Eddy counties in the Permian Basin accounted for almost all gas releases.

Since 2016, liquid spill counts in New Mexico have been relatively stable, averaging roughly 1,160 per year and ranging from a low of 984 in 2020 to a high of 1,393 in 2022. Gas releases spiked to nearly 52,000 in 2023, likely reflecting expanded reporting requirements, before declining to 37,207 in 2025—a drop of more than 28 percent in two years. These numbers are all minimums and likely severely underrepresent the true amount of methane wasted each year. New Mexico’s overall incident totals are substantially higher than Colorado’s or Wyoming’s, reflecting both the scale of Permian Basin production and reporting thresholds that differ from those in Colorado and Wyoming, making direct comparisons across states difficult.