(The Center Square) – Pennsylvania has seen 1,154 oil and gas wells abandoned since 2020. In the past two and a half years, on the other hand, only 308 have been plugged.
The dangerous and high polluting wells have plagued the state, created and abandoned by private companies who leave the state, or whoever cares, to foot the bill to fix them.
The 1,154 abandoned in that time represent just a fraction of the total unplugged wells across the state. According to reports from the Department of Environmental Protection estimate up to 560,000 of the wells statewide. The average cost to plug a well, per the DEP, was about $110,000 in 2024.
In September of last year, the state secured more than $76 million from the federal government toward plugging wells. DEP funded efforts can also serve to unlock additional matching funds through the federal government.
Rep. Greg Vitali, chair of the Environmental and Natural Resource Protection committee, has reintroduced a bill to give the DEP and the Environmental Quality Board the authority to set bonds for drillers that are closer to the cost of plugging a well. The higher bonds would act as a deterrent and compensation for abandoning newer wells.
Kurt Klapkowski, deputy secretary of the Office of Oil and Gas at DEP, says that the commonwealth is the “plugger of last resort,” meaning the daunting and expensive task is best left to those responsible for the problem. Yet many such companies are nowhere to be found with some of the wells going back over a century.
“It is clear that the current conventional well bond amounts under the 2012 Oil and Gas Act neither cover the ‘the projected costs to the Commonwealth of plugging the well’ nor do those bond amounts provide an adequate financial incentive for operators to properly plug the well,” said Klapowski. “Many operators do choose to follow the regulations and properly plug their wells, even without this incentive, but the compliance information makes it clear that other operators do not take such steps.”
Wells left behind pose a significant risk to both human health and the environment. Releasing toxic gases like climate warming methane and carcinogenic benzene, the wells pollute groundwater and emit foul odors. They can be disturbed by drilling and fracking, causing them to leak toxins into the water supply, as happened in New Freeport, Pa., where two out of the town’s three officials have financial connections to the fracking industry.
They also run the risk of explosion. A now plugged well in Bradford, McKean County, caused an explosion in 2011 that did $250,000 of damage to a neighboring home. Luckily, no one was harmed in the incident.
“As it stands today, plugging a well is de facto voluntary. Bonding amounts are so low that they have little-to-no effect on inducing well plugging. As far as I am aware, the oil and gas natural gas industry is the only industry where bonding levels do not match project costs,” said Ted Boettner, senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute.
DEP says bonding won’t be enough to solve the problem, though. Their department would need additional resources from the state to meet the moment.
“Given the complexities of finding and dealing with abandoned wells, the staffing of the Oil and Gas Program needs to grow significantly. It’s clear to me that overall, DEP needs additional inspection, compliance, legal, and other staffing to adequately and effectively enforce the law — and not just in the Oil and Gas program,” said John Quigley, Kleinman Center senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and former secretary of DEP.
Kleinman added, “There is a constitutional requirement in the Commonwealth to protect Pennsylvania’s air, land, and water, and the agency is not equipped and not resourced to adequately meet that requirement, and it hasn’t been for a long time.”
Asked what specifically the DEP needs, “We could always do more with more,” said Klapowski. They’ve asked for $19 million in this year’s budget to maintain their current work.
