Photo courtesy of Al Braden
I was born and raised outside of Titusville, Pennsylvania, the birthplace of the oil industry. For my 8th grade field trip we went to Oil Creek State Park where we were shown Drake’s Well, the first productive oil well in the US, drilled in 1859. Drake’s Well birthed an oil boom—which left behind thousands of abandoned oil wells across Pennsylvania. But orphaned wells aren’t just ghosts from the past. Oil and gas operators still have every incentive to abandon responsibility for unproductive or unprofitable wells. As market conditions worsen, they’re filing for bankruptcies and abandoning wells at higher and higher rates.
In theory, oil and gas operators are supposed to pay a bond to cover the cost of cleaning up their wells before drilling starts. In practice, the fees they pay cover only a tiny fraction of that cost. The think tank Carbon Tracker estimates that it would cost $12.2 billion to plug all the wells in Pennsylvania, and that the state has only $47.2 million in bonding available to plug these wells. That’s about three percent of the total costs of plugging the wells. Oil and gas companies have left state and local governments with two bad choices: Allow these abandoned wells to continue poisoning communities, or spend taxpayer dollars to clean up the oil and gas industry’s mess.
Today, it’s estimated that Pennsylvania has more than 200,000 orphaned and abandoned wells. Every day they sit unplugged, they emit dangerous pollutants, contaminate groundwater, and even put nearby communities at risk of deadly explosions. They also pollute the air with methane and other emissions that exacerbate the climate crisis. Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and scientists say that cutting methane emissions is critical to avoiding the most egregious impacts of the climate crisis.
If the oil and gas industry were held responsible for covering the costs of timely closure and remediation via higher bonds, it would not only keep Pennsylvania’s air and water cleaner and keep planet-warming emissions out of the atmosphere—it would also help create good-paying jobs for Pennsylvanians. Pennsylvania oil and gas workers already have the skills and equipment necessary to plug abandoned wells. As oil and gas drilling is phased out, plugging Pennsylvania's wells is an opportunity to create good jobs for the workers being displaced by the transition.
To that end, the Sierra Club, along with Pennsylvania-based environmental groups Clean Air Council, Earthworks, Mountain Watershed Association, PennFuture, and Protect Penn-Trafford, is kicking off a campaign to hold oil and gas companies accountable for the messes they’ve made—and fight for a future for the workers and communities whose economies rested on fossil fuels. Everyday Pennsylvanians already bear the brunt of the pollution their wells create, and the climate crisis they are responsible for. We shouldn’t have to pay to clean up after them, too.
Our coalition has already sent two petitions for rulemaking urging the Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board to ensure that oil and gas companies have to pay bonds that correspond to the true cost of plugging their wells, and hosted a campaign kickoff webinar. But these are just the first step in what will be a big campaign to ensure that the oil and gas industry is held accountable for the messes it has made. Click here to learn how you can get involved in the campaign and help build safe and healthy communities for all Pennsylvanians.