OIl companies leave contaminated sites for Taxpayers to FIX
Even when funds can be found to plug and abandon oil and gas wells in Colorado, their legacy lives on in the form of precarious industrial accidents waiting to happen. These plugged and abandoned wells often leak and contaminate the land and air for years before being discovered, often by chance (older wells are more likely to leak). And once discovered, it is not a straightforward process to deal with them. Even if successfully added to the state’s list of “orphan” wells, it can be years before they rise to the top of the list and are remediated. And this remediation is only as good as the current technology – these repairs are likely to fail in time too – and then the whole cycle repeats.
Some O&G operators leave the state (either after filing for bankruptcy or after being forced out for illegal practices) and leave behind wells that need to be plugged and abandoned. The location and condition of these old well sites are often not known to people who buy the land later, and the expensive job of cleaning up subsequent contamination and plugging the wells falls to the state.
The article below is a good explanation of the challenges Colorado faces in dealing with the (ongoing) aftermath of its O&G extraction frenzy. The problem is only growing. There are 458 wells and 1147 sites on the state’s orphan well list and more are added each year. There is not enough money to pay to re-plug the wells and clean up these sites – the amounts raised from fees on O&G operators is not nearly enough, so the rest is made up by our tax dollars.
