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It is likely among the lesser-known examples of hazards left behind by industry exploiting the environment. It’s certainly less obvious than the easily spotted culm banks, abandoned strip mining pits and orange acid mine water runoff that remain glaring legacies of King Coal’s reign in our region.
But uncapped abandoned, or orphaned, gas and oil wells have been a problem in Pennsylvania longer than in any other state, for a simple reason: The first oil well in the country was drilled here. George Bissell and Edwin Drake used their rig successfully for the first time near Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859.
Oil had been accidentally discovered earlier in other states, but was an unwanted byproduct of efforts to drill brine wells as a source of salt. The Drake Well was drilled specifically in pursuit of oil for a growing lamp fuel market, thus beginning the U.S. petroleum industry a whopping 164 years ago. Which means that’s how long the Keystone state has faced the risks created when such wells are left unused and uncapped.
It also means that most of the people and/or companies that drilled and abandoned those wells are out of business and likely long gone. Put simply, there is no one to hold accountable in trying to seal most of those wells.
On Wednesday Gov. Josh Shapiro’s office of communication sent out a media release touting — in no uncertain terms — recent success in tackling this decades-old woe. The headline read: “Shapiro Administration Has Plugged 100 Orphaned & Abandoned Wells in Just 10 Months, Surpassing Total Over Previous 6 Years Combined.”
This is great news, and we see it as another smart move by a governor who, for the most part, continues to do well. But to pick one nit, it’s not as if Shapiro made this happen all by himself.
The release even points this out. Amid a lot of superlatives heaped on the current administration, it notes the progress has been made possible thanks to the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which provided “more than $400 million in the coming years to cap and plug wells across the Commonwealth.”
Nevertheless, the fact that the administration has capped 100 abandoned wells in 1o months is well worth celebrating, and Shapiro earns high marks for turbo-charging the effort once the federal money started flowing.
Unfortunately, as impressive as 100 wells sounds, it is a drop in the oil can when you realize the state has an estimated 350,000 orphaned wells. And the task is made more difficult by the reality that so many were drilled before modern regulations and safety protocols were put in place. The state Department of Environmental Protection has mapped only about 30,000 such wells.
These abandoned wells present an immediate environment hazard simply from the potential to leak oil and other chemicals into the nearby area. They also can be major sources of air pollution by releasing substantial amounts of methane, a short-term health risk for those nearby, and a long-term risk if you recognize the concerns of global warming (something you really should acknowledge by now). Methane is one of the biggest greenhouse gas contributors. The Environmental Defense Fund says plugging these wells “has an outsized short-term positive effect on the climate.”
It is sad math that, assuming the 350,000 open wells estimate is right, even at this highly accelerated pace of capping 10 wells a month it would take more than 2,900 years to seal them all. But the release promises the work is being prioritized to close “wells that pose the greatest threat to public health and safety.”
Besides, as the old proverb (generally credited to Lao Tzu) rightly points out: The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
We’re already 99 steps beyond that.
— Times Leader