Groups Urge Environmental Quality Board to Raise Bond Amounts for PA Oil and Gas Wells

Harrisburg, PA -- Today, national and Pennsylvania-based environmental groups sent petitions urging the Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board (EQB) to adopt full-cost bonding for conventional and unconventional oil and gas wells. 

In the state of Pennsylvania, the required bond amounts for oil and gas wells -- the money drilling companies have to put aside for cleanup and plugging before being allowed to drill a new well --  are just a fraction of the amount needed, leaving the state and taxpayers to front the extra costs. Unplugged wells leak climate-polluting methane along with other chemicals into the air and water that harm public health. They mar communities, reduce property values, and depress the local tax base. As companies go bankrupt or abandon their wells, Pennsylvania taxpayers are left to bear the cost of cleaning them up. 

Today’s petitions, filed by the Sierra Club, Clean Air Council, Earthworks, Mountain Watershed Association, PennFuture, and Protect Penn-Trafford, call on EQB to require oil and gas companies to pay the full cost of cleaning up their wells up front before drilling. 

“Current bond amounts are so low companies are incentivized to go out of business instead of cleaning up. They’ve been allowed to abandon thousands of wells across Pennsylvania, leaving taxpayers to cover the cost,” said Sierra Club Senior Campaign Representative Kelsey Krepps. “Pennsylvania needs to raise its bond amounts to ensure that these companies doing the drilling and polluting in our state, not taxpayers, are the ones accountable for cleaning up their messes.” 

"Low well bonding amounts are yet another backdoor subsidy for the gas industry," said Joseph Otis Minott, Executive Director and Chief Counsel of Clean Air Council. "The very least we should be asking of the gas industry in 2021 is that it pays for its own costs."

“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. “Increasing bond amounts is an easy way to ensure that Pennsylvanians are not on the hook to clean up the mess while the companies who created it simply walk away. We must stop giving handouts to an industry that doesn’t deserve it.”

“It is unacceptable to let private companies pollute our environment and bodies and then disappear, leaving taxpayers responsible for their mess,” said Gillian Graber, Executive Director of Protect PT (Penn-Trafford). “When an operator closes an abandoned well, the condensate tanks and other polluting aspects of the drilling operation are left to rot and weather. Requiring bonding will properly incentivize and fund the closure of abandoned wells and would greatly reduce the pollution families like mine are exposed to.”

“This rulemaking is a critical first step towards shifting the burden of the oil and gas industry away from taxpayers. However, because of current legislation, bonding is limited to the cost of plugging a well but the actual cost of fully remediating a site involves much more activity and could cost the state millions,” said Melissa Marshall, attorney with the Mountain Watershed Association. “Moving forward, legislation needs to be introduced that creates a bonding system mirroring that of the coal industry’s, which requires companies to place a bond for the total cost of remediating after potential environmental damages.”

"The oil and gas industry owes Pennsylvanians nothing less than to take full responsibility for their cradle to grave climate and health pollution across the state,” said Melissa Ostroff, Earthworks Pennsylvania Field Advocate. “It is shameful for oil and gas companies to abandon polluting operations and leave taxpayers on the hook to clean up an industry on an inevitable path to decline."