PA House environmental committee examines problem of abandonment of gas & oil wells
Pennsylvania House Democratic Caucus June 12, 2025 | 2:54 PM
HARRISBURG, June 12 – The state House Environmental & Natural Resource Protection Committee held a public hearing today at the state Capitol on the issue of plugging and abandonment of conventional oil and natural gas wells.
According to the state Department of Environmental Protection, owners and operators are legally responsible for plugging wells when oil and gas production is no longer economically viable, but for various reasons that has not always happened. Wells that are improperly abandoned may pose environmental and public health and safety threats.
Committee Chair Rep. Greg Vitali, D-Delaware, said that today’s hearing was intended to highlight this problem, which has become a seemingly routine practice by the conventional drilling industry.
“Abandonment of oil and gas wells is all too common these days and ostensibly accepted as a cost of doing business for many drilling companies in Pennsylvania,” Vitali said.
“Today’s hearing provided informative testimony to the committee about the dangers these abandoned sites present to the environment and to public health in surrounding communities. According to DEP estimates, there are up to 560,000 abandoned and orphaned gas wells in Pennsylvania. Chemicals and harmful substances, like methane, can leak out of unplugged wells causing air pollution, migrate into buildings causing a risk of explosion, there are groundwater and water supply impacts, soil contamination and other negative consequences. DEP has plugged only 308 wells in the last 2-1/2 years. In 2015, DEP’s Oil and Gas Program had a complement of 226, which is now down to 190. In my view, DEP needs more help to address this issue.”
Kurt Klapkowski, deputy secretary of the Office of Oil and Gas at the Department of Environmental Protection, said that the department’s review of inspection and compliance data since 2017 has revealed widespread noncompliance with laws and regulations in the conventional oil and gas industry.
“Of the 3,108 wells cited for abandonment between January 2017 and December 2024 that are remaining part of this analysis, 1,608 wells -- approximately 52% -- appear to have been abandoned on or after January 2017 and 530 wells -- approximately 17% -- appear to have been abandoned prior to 2017.
“Ensuring proper abandonment of conventional wells and protecting the taxpayers of the Commonwealth from bearing those costs will require additional resources, especially in the Bureau of District Oil and Gas Operations -- in particular, field inspectors and enforcement personnel such as Compliance Specialists, as well as permitting geologists, and the Office of Chief Counsel, which provides the legal guidance to identify responsible parties and compel compliance.
“DEP does possess some of the necessary authority and tools needed to take appropriate steps to address these issues; however, it cannot be emphasized strongly enough that increased oversight of the conventional oil and gas industry and enforcement will require additional resources.
“It is clear that the current conventional well bond amounts under the 2012 Oil and Gas Act neither cover the ‘the projected costs to the Commonwealth of plugging the well’ nor do those bond amounts provide an adequate financial incentive for operators to properly plug the well. Many operators do choose to follow the regulations and properly plug their wells, even without this incentive, but the compliance information makes it clear that other operators do not take such steps.”
Vitali has introduced H.B. 364 as part of a solution, which would restore the authority of DEP and the Environmental Quality Board to more accurately set the costs of bonds that drillers are required to post in an effort to reduce abandonment of well sites and decrease environmental hazards associated with orphaned wells.
“We also gained valuable insight today on the lack of resources for enforcement that might prevent abandonment,’ said Vitali.
“My legislation would restore oversight and authority over bonding to DEP and the Environmental Quality Board - the agencies that are best designed to understand and address these impacts. Increased bond requirements would encourage drillers to have ‘more skin in the game’ and be less likely to abandon wells. Drillers must be better stewards of the communities that they’re impacting.”
Ted Boettner, senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute, explained how the current low bond levels are disproportionate to the activity and impact of drilling.
“As it stands today, plugging a well is de facto voluntary. Bonding amounts are so low that they have little-to-no effect on inducing well plugging. As far as I am aware, the oil and gas natural gas industry is the only industry where bonding levels do not match project costs. The problem of funding decommissioning will not be solved by marginal revisions to policies, so it is time to either give up on the objective of proper well abandonment or embrace a path that includes regulatory reform and a targeted fee on the remaining industry that would create jobs while making Pennsylvania a better state to live, work, and raise a family.”
Melissa Ostroff, Pennsylvania policy and field advocate for Earthworks, testified to the devastating environmental hazards that unplugged wells present to communities and the commonwealth at large.
“The estimated hundreds of thousands of unplugged wells in Pennsylvania continue to represent a threat to both public health and our climate, and more are abandoned improperly every month. We know that unplugged wells not only vent methane – a potent greenhouse gas that heats our planet – but they also release carcinogenic pollutants into the air. This pollution impacts the health of Pennsylvania’s children who are living with leaking abandoned wells in their backyards, schoolyards, and parks.
“Chair Vitali’s legislation would prevent Pennsylvanians from having to solve a problem they didn’t create. It would ensure that no one ever has to use home insulation to “plug” a well that a gas company abandoned.”
Adam Peltz, director and senior attorney of energy transition at the Environmental Defense Fund, spoke directly to the environmental and economic impacts in Western Pennsylvania.
“There are around 25,000 documented and many hundreds of thousands of undocumented orphaned and abandoned wells in Western PA’s forests, farms, and residential areas. These wells are problematic for many reasons -- they can contaminate groundwater, release air toxins such as benzene, and emit methane, which is both a climate forcer and an explosive gas, and the very worst part about these wells is when methane migrates from an old well into an enclosed structure like a basement and explodes, which has unfortunately happened repeatedly in Western PA. Their presence also reduces property values and diminishes the economic viability of the geology.”
John Quigley, Kleinman Center senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and former secretary of DEP, addressed the deficient oversight of bonding in recent years and the need for more robust DEP staffing and resources.
“Current bonding requirements in state law are wholly inadequate. The passage of Act 96 in 2022 made the situation even worse by taking from the Environmental Quality Board its never-exercised authority over well bonding. Restoring that authority, as proposed in H.B. 364, would be an important step in the right direction.
“Given the complexities of finding and dealing with abandoned wells, the staffing of the Oil and Gas Program needs to grow significantly. It’s clear to me that overall, DEP needs additional inspection, compliance, legal, and other staffing to adequately and effectively enforce the law -- and not just in the Oil and Gas program.
“There is a constitutional requirement in the Commonwealth to protect Pennsylvania’s air, land, and water, and the agency is not equipped and not resourced to adequately meet that requirement, and it hasn’t been for a long time.”