Producing Reports Is The First Step To Plug Pennsylvania’s Wells To Address Environmental, Health, and Safety Concerns

Harrisburg, PA - Six months after two rulemaking petitions to raise oil and gas bonds were voted through by the Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board, petitioners are still calling on the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to produce reports that evaluate the petitions and provide recommendations on whether the EQB should approve the actions requested. The petitions were filed by the Sierra Club, Clean Air Council, Earthworks, Mountain Watershed Association, PennFuture, and Protect Penn-Trafford.

These petitions would work to adopt better bonding for conventional and unconventional wells in the Commonwealth and would complement the $104 million that the Department of the Interior will provide Pennsylvania  to plug the Commonwealth's wells to address environmental, health, and safety concerns. The expert report the petitions are based on calculated the average cost of plugging a conventional well at $38,000, but in its application for federal well plugging, Pennsylvania itself assessed the cost to plug the average orphaned well at $68,000. So, DEP increased the estimated cost to plug orphaned wells and increased the orphaned wells it is looking to plug since federal funding became available through the Infrastructure Bill, but has simultaneously not addressed the two rulemaking petitions to raise bond amounts for conventional and unconventional wells currently in operation.

Altogether, state regulators used data they’ve collected to receive more Infrastructure Bill money but have not used the same data to address the need for a higher bond amount.

Pennsylvania has been under pressure to adopt bonding requirements that are more in line with the actual cost of plugging and should look into these processes now rather than later to ensure that they receive the $50 million in additional federal funds the state is eligible for if it makes regulatory improvements like raising its bond amounts.

"Every day that passes without improving bonding requirements is another day that the oil and gas industry is let off the hook to continue polluting Pennsylvania communities,” said Melissa Ostroff, Earthworks Pennsylvania Field Advocate. “Six months is too long to wait for the DEP to issue an obvious recommendation to increase bonding requirements. The best time to address cradle-to-grave financing for oil and gas wells was long ago, but the next best time is today."

“It is urgent that DEP produce reports that reflect the full depth of this issue sooner rather than later,” said Sierra Club Senior Campaign Representative Kelsey Krepps. “As we continue to wait for recommendations, Pennsylvania’s significantly under-bonded oil and gas wells continue to be abandoned, a problem that only grows with time. We need substantial steps forward for bonding reform that will ensure that costs of plugging will not fall to taxpayers, incentivize faster plugging of wells, and reduce the climate and health consequences that Pennsylvanians have been subjected to.”

“For far too long, Pennsylvania has undermined public health and environmental safety by having woefully inadequate bonding amounts for oil and gas wells,” said Abigail M. Jones, PennFuture’s Vice President of Legal and Policy. "This delay from DEP in studying the merits of our petition is unacceptable, and we urge the department to take seriously its duty to provide its recommendations to the Environmental Quality Board."