Tell the Legislature: Pass the Orphaned Well Prevention Act!

Irresponsible oil and gas well drillers have 12,000 idle wells that should already be plugged! Half of those have gone unplugged for so long that the operators are no longer in business making them “orphaned” wells. WV SORO has gotten legislation passed that plugs 40 to 80 orphaned wells per year.  And 200 orphaned wells have already been plugged with federal funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act money. Another 200 may be plugged using funding from the Act, but that funding may be cut by the Trump administration. So there are lots of wells left to plug!

If you pour water into a bucket with a hole in it, you will never fill it up. We need to stop more wells from being orphaned! It is likely that Diversified Energy alone will have another 10,000 that need plugged around the year 2050 when Diversified has said their wells will no longer be profitable, and we expect those will end up being orphaned. We can’t let that happen! 

We need the Orphaned Well Prevention Act! Tell your State Senators and members of the House of Delegates to pass SB 11, HB 3415 or HB 3416. Click here to find their contact information. Tell them you want one of those bills put on a committee agenda and passed by the Legislature.

These bills will require the driller of a new horizontal shale well to start setting aside a small fraction (1/100 to 1/500) of the money from their current annual production so that there will be money available to plug the well when the time comes. (These wells produce 60 times the gas as a conventional vertical well, but probably cost less than 2 times as much to plug, so the driller/operator can afford to do this.)  

The Orphaned Well Prevention Act also requires operators that acquire wells from another operator to start putting aside plugging money before the previous operator can be relieved of their obligation to plug a well. It requires wells currently producing in paying quantities to set aside 15 cents per thousand cubic feet of gas produced to plug the well.  It requires the driller of a new well to plug all the idle wells in the new well’s drainage area and go after those idle well owners for the cost.  (The Act does not require anything of wells that are not producing in paying quantities and does not change bonding requirements because surety companies will not give drillers full cost plugging bonds.) The Act allows a surface owner to defer the plugging of a well if the surface owner is getting free gas, etc.   

Need inspiration? Click here to listen to WV SORO’s recording of the West Virginia Land Reunion Song.  

Want to learn more?  Watch our video tour of conventional producing and orphaned wells in Kanawha State Forest. 

Contact your senators and delegates and tell them to pass the Orphaned Well Prevention Act (SB 11, HB 3415 or HB 3416).