Federal Millions To Plug +/- 300 Abandoned Oil & Gas Wells In PA; 354 More Abandoned Just This Year

[hatrack]

Even as Pennsylvania prepares to tap millions in federal money to plug roughly 300 of the state’s many abandoned oil and gas wells, drillers this year have already tried to walk away from another 354. The abandonments are not a fluke of oil prices or market shifts. From 2017 to 2021, state regulators sent more than 3,000 notices to companies for attempting to abandon oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania without plugging them.

This potential new wave of abandoned wells highlights the hydra-like nature of well abandonment in the state, and worries environmentalists about what they might eventually see throughout the Appalachian region. While Congress and the Biden administration committed $4.7 billion last year to clean up abandoned wells across the country, that significant influx of money could fall short in the mountainous region if states don’t stop drillers from walking away when wells reach the end of their lucrative lives (Energywire, Nov. 23, 2021).

“The federal money that is coming through the federal bipartisan infrastructure law is a godsend,” said explained David Hess, who worked in leadership at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection for a decade, including as secretary in 2001 and 2002. “But if we don’t stem this continuing flood of new well abandonment somehow, it’s going to be all for naught.” Appalachia is home to roughly half of the country’s orphans, and a high number of aging wells are located in those states as well, signaling what could be the next chapter of well abandonment.

“Wells enter the orphan rolls all the time,” said Adam Peltz, a senior attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund who tracks orphan well issues. Peltz said that the most concrete evidence of the problem is in Pennsylvania, but he remains concerned about it happening in other states in the region. But changing the way states manage oil and gas in Appalachia can be an uphill battle, with many lawmakers loyal to the long-standing industry and deeply opposed to federal intervention in how states manage oil companies. In Pennsylvania, conservative lawmakers from the natural gas-rich western region pushed through a law earlier this year blocking the state bureaucracy for 10 years from increasing bonding on some wells. That bonding is the financial insurance drillers lay down to ensure cleanup doesn’t fall to the taxpayers when companies go bankrupt or refuse to plug wells.

EDIT

https://www.eenews.net/articles/all-for-naught-biden-orphan-well-plan-faces-trouble-in-pa/

[Delarage]

1. Thank you, Democrats!

Biden should make a trip through Appalachia, along with the travelling dental/medical clinics that roll through every now and then, with a team of people to sign people up for healthcare, simple science examples to show how shitty the water is around these polluted areas, and great fanfare to trumpet what they do for actual people (vs. the nonsensical bullshit spewed by Republicans about the environment, climate change, health care, etc.). I bet most of the people living in polluted areas around these wells vote Republican.

Another idea: Use the war-profiteering penalties (hopefully!) to help clean up this shit/fund renewables.

Peltz said in most of Appalachia, where funding streams to plug orphan wells were “radically insignificant,” the federal cash is a “game-changer.”

“In Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, the money flowing through this grant represents like a five- or even tenfold increase in the amount of money available to plug the wells,” he said. “A lot of these wells are basically in people’s backyards, so it’s really going to make a difference.”

The proliferation of forgotten or left-behind wells across the country — which could number as many as 3 million, according to EPA — is a potential environmental hazard in many communities, where pollution can leak into groundwater and uncapped wells release the potent greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere. Pumping in concrete and sealing off the abandoned holes in the ground can reduce that deadly climate threat.

Across the country, the orphan well lists have gotten longer since the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law, with states now incentivized to account for their abandoned wells to secure federal funds.

[rampartc]

2. we have many of these "orphan wells" on louisiana

these things are drilled by the most profitable corporations on earth, bit each well is incorporated separately so when that well stops pumping profitably it can be abandoned and the corporation placed on bankruptcy.

just another way that capitalism takes care of the capitalists.

[Scrivener7]

3. This pisses me off no end:

But changing the way states manage oil and gas in Appalachia can be an uphill battle, with many lawmakers loyal to the long-standing industry and deeply opposed to federal intervention in how states manage oil companies.

So once again, you and I are footing the bill while fossil fuel companies rake in the profits on their garbage and R lawmakers grease their filthy palms.

Thanks for these posts. This corruption should be known far and wide.