Dozens of Oklahoma landowners are still locked in a years-long fight with a natural gas pipeline company, claiming construction debris left behind during installation is damaging their farmland and stalling operations.
More than 40 property owners along the Midship Pipeline route say they continue to find buried debris—from small wood fragments to large planks and boulders—left over from the project installed in 2019.
“Instead of loading it up and hauling it off, they decided, ‘Well, we’ll just bury it right here,’” said Mark Smith, who owns a 420-acre farm in Grady County with his brother Randy.
What was once thriving prairie and Bermuda grass is now overtaken by weeds and bare soil.
“It’s no longer sustainable,” Smith said.
Nate Laps, with Central Land Consulting, has been digging along the pipeline path and documenting every piece of debris he finds.
“You can see this is a big piece of wood, a plank that goes across,” he said. “It impacts the ground; it impacts the farmer. It’s a huge noncompliance and a huge violation.”
Laps says he’s filed between five and six reports per day to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), documenting buried materials across 82 tracts of land spanning 233 miles.
“There’s a pattern,” he said. “You can see they’re trying to do as minimal as possible. But it’s kind of hard to ignore what we’re finding here.”
Landowners say inspectors from both the company and FERC have seen the damage firsthand, but little has been done to clean it up. More than 160 reports of discovered debris have been submitted to FERC in just the past three months. Still, no formal restoration plan has been announced.
“They have been across those holes, they’ve seen those holes, yet they continue to ignore those holes,” Laps said. “That’s what’s most aggravating.”
The discovery has sparked renewed efforts to pressure the company and urge FERC to enforce cleanup.
“At some point in time, hopefully we’ll see some sort of restoration,” Randy Smith said. “When that may occur—your guess is as good as mine.”
Last year, a group of landowners filed a federal lawsuit seeking to force Midship to clean up the debris. But the case was dismissed after a judge ruled that FERC was still actively addressing restoration concerns and had not failed to act.
Howard Energy Partners, the parent company of Midship Pipeline, released a statement Friday addressing the ongoing land restoration concerns.
“We understand that there have historically been landowner issues associated with the Midship pipeline. Since we assumed operatorship of this asset in February, we have made strenuous efforts to meet with CLC and affected landowners, listen to their concerns, and develop productive relationships.
Additionally, after thorough inspections, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the agency governing Midship, has issued specific directives related to restoration. We are supportive of these directives and are actively working towards completing the final steps of the process as mandated.
We are experts in this business and are committed to safely operating and maintaining this critical infrastructure that connects natural gas production from Oklahoma to growing demand markets across the South. -Spokesperson, Howard Energy Partners