HARRISBURG — Gov. Josh Shapiro and members of his administration highlighted Wednesday what they called historic work to cap and plug orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells across Pennsylvania.
As of Wednesday, the administration reported the state has capped and plugged 100 wells — more than in the prior six years combined. The 100th well was plugged at Hillman State Park in Washington County under an emergency contract with Yost Drilling after the state Department of Environmental Protection followed up on reports from nearby residents concerned about the risks abandoned wells pose to public health and safety.
“My administration is making real progress towards tackling a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions here in Pennsylvania, and creating thousands of good- paying, union jobs in the process,” Shapiro said. “We must reject the false choice between protecting jobs and protecting our planet. I believe we can do both. … Let’s plug the wells, improve our air quality and strengthen our communities.”
The governor ordered DEP to access as much federal funding as possible to cap and plug the orphaned and abandoned wells that dot Pennsylvania.
“We are grateful to Gov. Shapiro for his leadership in moving to address orphaned and abandoned wells,” said Amanda Leland, executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).
She noted the wells can leak methane and air toxics, contaminate groundwater and surface water, create an explosion risk for nearby structures and significantly reduce property values.
“President Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure legislation has helped jumpstart orphan well plugging in Pennsylvania — providing critical funds — and can help chip away at the state’s tens of thousands of documented orphan wells while work continues to identify the estimated hundreds of thousands of undocumented orphaned and abandoned wells in the commonwealth,” Leland said.
Shairo’s office said DEP has allocated “unprecedented resources” to plug orphaned and abandoned wells, which has allowed Pennsylvania to leverage millions in federal funding under the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Pennsylvania is poised to receive more than $400 million in the coming years to cap and plug wells. This has already led to a dozen additional DEP staff specifically working on wells in Western Pennsylvania alone.
More than approximately 350,000 orphaned wells across the state make up nearly 8% of its total methane emissions. Environmentalists say methane is particularly dangerous because it is up to 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide — warming the planet and contributing to air pollution.
Shairo’s office noted that because many wells in Pennsylvania were drilled before modern mapping and regulations, DEP only had locations for about 30,000 of them, a fraction of the estimated 350,000 orphaned wells.
DEP has been using the funding provided by the IIJA to inspect and inventory more abandoned wells, and to implement a new enforcement strategy. The agency says it is “aggressively going after operators who are walking away from wells and stepping in with emergency plugging contracts were needed to protect public health.”
The Shapiro administration is also prioritizing what is states is environmental justice when deciding which wells to tackle. DEP is going after the wells that pose the greatest threat to public health and safety, as well as prioritizing wells located in environmental justice areas.
“DEP is looking at methane emissions and impacts on disadvantaged communities to put those wells at the top of the list,” the governor’s office stated Wednesday.
Earlier this year, Shapiro announced an updated environmental justice policy, “which expanded the criteria to better include concerns of Pennsylvania communities most at risk from pollution and other environmental impacts and created an updated mapping tool that allows DEP to more accurately identify which communities qualify for environmental justice protections.”
