Salty, Oily Drinking Water Left Sores in Their Mouths. Oklahoma Refused to Find Out Why.

Despite finding evidence of oil and gas contamination in the Boarmans’ water in more than a dozen tests conducted over two years, several agency leaders developed a new theory, according to internal emails from the fall of 2024: They suggested at times that the company that had drilled the Boarmans’ water well had done a bad job and drilled into a pocket of natural salt water, unrelated to oil and gas operations.

Other staff at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission proposed elevating the Boarmans’ case to the agency’s administrative law court to further evaluate the cause of the pollution and pursue potential enforcement. But some commission staff expressed concern internally about how much it could cost to retain a consulting firm to continue investigating the case. The oil division “doesn’t have the funds for this,” wrote Jeff Kline, legal adviser to one of the three elected commissioners, in a digital message to himself in March 2025.