Oil and gas firms operating in Colorado falsified environmental impact reports

Oil trapped in a dry ravine from a Chevron spill stopped nearly Rangely, Colorado, on 7 March 2017. Photograph: EPA via AP

Oil and gas companies operating in Colorado have submitted hundreds of environmental impact reports with “falsified” laboratory data since 2021, according to state regulators.

Colorado’s energy and carbon management commission (ECMC) said on 13 December that contractors for Chevron and Oxy had submitted reports with fraudulent data for at least 344 oil and gas wells across the state, painting a misleading picture of their pollution levels. Consultants for a third company, Civitas, had also filed forms with falsified information for an unspecified number of wells, regulators said.