Diversified gets well plugging shortcut through 2025 Legislature (people signing new leases/amendments should disallow shortcut).

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WVSORO was able during the 2025 West Virginia Legislature to stop the bill that would have cut the statute of limitations on back unpaid royalties. That was the good news. However, Diversified was able to use its political muscle to get a bill through, HB 3336, that weakened well plugging requirements. It did so despite an unexplained problem with the testing of the new technique.

Diversified had gotten a “variance” a couple years ago to try the new technique on 10 wells. One of them leaked and had to be re-plugged! A previous study by Princeton and McGill Universities found that 20% of historical plugged wells they studied leaked methane. No follow up study has ever been done to investigate why those wells leaked before the recent relaxation of plugging requirements.

That change is explained below. The West Virginia Surface Owner’s Rights Organization web site has slide shows on its web site if you need more background on how wells are drilled and cased and cemented, and on how wells should be plugged (not capped)

The new technique is essentially to start leaving the un-cased production casing (metal pipe) in the ground. Layers of cement are required to be placed at certain depths during the well plugging (with special clay in between cement jobs) in order to isolate rock layer formations to protect them from gas from the old production formation, and to protect them from other communication of gases and liquids (like iron water and salt water) between other formations, etc. (This also of course should protect methane from leaking into the atmosphere, and keep liquids from leaking onto the ground.)

Using the new technique leaves the production casing pipe in the ground, and then at depths where layers of cement are required, the plugger perforates the production casing pipe — making holes outside the production casing pipe into the annulus that is open to the borehole wall. Then when cement is pumped into the appropriate depths inside of the producing casing pipe now left in the ground, the new technique trusts that enough cement would leak through the perforations to also be left in the annulus outside the production casing pipe at appropriate depths similar to the cement left inside the production casing pipe.

It worked in 9 out of the 10 wells, but the 10th leaked gas into the atmosphere. The one that still leaked had to be at least partially re-plugged, and now does not leak. Despite numerous inquiries we were not told what caused the methane leak after the first plugging technique attempt. Our best guess is that it has something to do with the fact that the plugger can only check (“tag”) the depths of the cement layers it was placing inside the production casing, and the plugger cannot check problems with the cement that they hopefully shoved through the production casing pipe perforations into the annulus.

In all future leases WVSORO suggests negotiating into the addendum to the lease (and the lease’s recorded memorandum) to require that when the well is plugged all the un-cemented casing, including the production casing, has to be pulled as was the case before the 2025 Legislature gave Diversified and others this reduced plugging requirement. We doubt that this money saving shortcut will result in drillers plugging more wells — we expect they will just keep for themselves the savings for what wells they are required to reluctantly plug.