He said the federal money will be a huge help for tackling wells that pose the greatest risk to the environment and human health, and he trusts the process the state is moving through to figure out how to most effectively use the money. DEP estimates there are more than 200,000 abandoned wells statewide.ĭave Yoxtheimer, with the Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research at Penn State, agreed with Jain that low bond amounts do not incentivize companies to plug their wells at the end of production. Wells that aren’t plugged correctly leak the potent greenhouse gas methane, which has more than 80 times the warming power of CO2 over a 20-year period. “I think that this is a problem that, if anything, could get worse over the next few years rather than better,” Jain said. The Sierra Club had asked the Environmental Quality Board to increase the bond amount, but this law prohibits the EQB from doing so.Īnkit Jain, an attorney with the Sierra Club, said failing to raise the bonds “ensures that a lot more wells are going to become abandoned and not plugged when they’re done producing.”īetween 2016-2021, DEP reported citing Pennsylvania drillers more than 4,000 times for trying to step away from wells without cleaning them up. The cost can be higher or lower depending on the complexity of the well. The law caps the bond amount conventional drillers need to put up for each new well at $2,500 for the next 10 years.ĭEP says the average cost to plug a well is about $33,000. Conventional operators are generally smaller companies as well. Conventional wells are shallower and produce less than unconventional, or fracked, wells. The Sierra Club is also raising concerns about the law, especially a provision dealing with bond amounts for conventional wells. “Unfortunately, these concerns were not addressed through the legislative process, and there are concerns that significant provisions of the bill are neither applicable to the program nor capable of being implemented,” Wolf said. Wolf said the law also eliminates DEP’s authority to impose stricter requirements than what’s needed under state law, even if more stringent requirements are mandatory parts of the federal program. In a statement in the July 30 issue of the Pennsylvania Bulletin, Gov. Leanne Krueger (D-Delaware) said the legislation doesn’t bar applicants that have existing compliance issues, which could prevent the Department of Environmental Protection from being able to deny grants to those companies. That language raised worries among Democratic lawmakers when the bill was brought up for debate.ĭuring a June meeting of the House Environmental Resources and Energy committee, Rep. ![]() It could be possible for drillers to apply for money to clean up others’ wells. ![]() Pluggers can’t apply for the money to clean up wells that they previously drilled. Under the law, a qualified well-plugger has either drilled or plugged 10 or more wells in Pennsylvania, or “otherwise demonstrates access to the equipment, materials, resources and services to plug wells.” The state’s new Act 96 directs the funds to two accounts and lays out basic requirements for companies that want to apply for the money.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |