New Mexico’s Billion-Dollar Oilfield Orphans

Dave Fosdeck climbs a hill of dirt surrounding an excavation at the site of a Chuza tank battery outside Farmington, New Mexico, in June. The orange staining in the hole is the result of years of leaking oil waste from the tanks and equipment that once sat here. All photos by Jerry Redfern.

Dave Fosdeck crested a dirt berm on the Hogback, a ridge of hills west of Farmington, New Mexico, when the scent hit him. “Whoa! It stinks!” he yelped. It was June, and he was there with two others to look at the cleanup operations around a battery of massive oil tanks that sat abandoned for years in this rolling, high-desert corner of New Mexico.

The berm surrounds a hole where a semi-buried tank the size of a backyard swimming pool once sat, collecting and leaking waste sludge from surrounding oil wells. Nearby is an even bigger but much newer hole where a cleanup crew had removed contaminated soil. The void wasn’t fully excavated but already was big enough to drop a small house in. The pit’s sides were stained orange and an even stronger petroleum smell rose from it.