March 12, 2024
Provided image/PA Cast
DEP plugged an abandoned methane well in Butler County (viewed from above) on Tuesday morning. These orphaned wells account for about 8% of Pennsylvania's overall methane emissions.
Pennsylvania officials gathered outside a home in Butler County on Tuesday morning to announce the plugging of an abandoned methane well, the 200th sealed since Gov. Josh Shapiro took office.
Over the past 14 months, the Department of Environmental Protection has capped more methane wells than it did over the previous nine years combined — but the government will need to work harder if it wants to tackle the other 350,000 scattered across the state.
Orphaned methane wells have become a pet project of the Shapiro administration, which has branded the effort as both a job creator and environmental necessity. (The governor's efforts are aligned with those of President Joe Biden, who made capping oil and gas wells part of the Build Back Better agenda.) Without intervention, abandoned methane wells can leak the greenhouse gas, which is up to 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, into the air and groundwater. Orphaned wells contribute to roughly 8% of Pennsylvania's overall methane emissions.
"It's frankly dangerous to just do nothing, which is why we've got to be aggressive in this space," Shapiro said at the site Tuesday.
The governor touted the milestone and acceleration of the plugging project. While DEP managed to cap 100 orphaned wells between January and October 2023, it plugged the next 100 in just five months, cutting the time in half. Speed will be vital if the department intends to cap Pennsylvania's estimated 350,000 abandoned wells, only about 30,000 of which have been located due to lax regulations at the time they were created. The first commercial oil well in the state was drilled in 1859.
Funding will also be a key factor. According to Jennifer Shirley, the acting secretary of DEP, plugging just one orphaned well costs about $100,000. The department has already spent $28 million on its most recent capping efforts, making the wells a "billion dollar" problem, Shirley said.
Shapiro (D) stressed that DEP would extract the cost from oil and gas companies that abandoned the wells wherever possible, though he did not mention specific perpetrators. In 2018, the department ordered Alliance Petroleum Corporation, CNX and XTC to plug 1,058 inactive wells. DEP did not confirm if those wells were plugged by 2020, per the orders.
Though the department is tapping its $400 million in federal funding under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to identify more orphaned wells, it is now calling on the public for additional assistance. At the conference Tuesday morning, Shapiro announced a new hotline where Pennsylvania residents can report abandoned methane wells. The governor urged anyone with information to text 717-788-8990 with photos and coordinates of the site, if available.
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