Public Hearing on The Plugging and Abandonment of Oil and Gas Wells / HB 364

Melissa Ostroff, MPH

Pennsylvania Policy and Field Advocate, Earthworks

June 12, 2025

Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Melissa Ostroff, and I am the Pennsylvania Policy and Field Advocate with Earthworks. Earthworks’ mission is to protect communities and the environment from the adverse impacts of mineral and energy development while promoting sustainable solutions.

In my role at Earthworks, I use my education in public health and training in optical gas imaging to make the impacts of invisible pollution from the oil and gas industry visible to policymakers and the public. This includes pollution from orphan and abandoned wells.

A little over a year ago, I spoke at a hearing held by Chair Vitali on the subject of addressing abandoned oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, almost nothing has changed in our commonwealth since that hearing. Bonding levels for both conventional and unconventional wells remain low enough that, in effect, we do not have financial assurance for oil and gas wells drilled in Pennsylvania today. Pennsylvania residents are paying the price for inaction now and future generations will pay more if we continue to sit on our hands.

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 including benzene and other volatile organic compounds 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. Beyond impacting air quality, abandoned wells have also been known to contaminate water and have the potential to cause explosions.

As I mentioned last year, in my fieldwork with Earthworks as a certified optical gas imaging thermographer, I have captured footage of orphan and abandoned wells polluting Pennsylvania’s recreational public spaces and backyards – places that no one should have to worry about running into oil and gas pollution. I told you about a teacher named Pam who I met in Forest County. Pam and her husband had resorted to using home insulation in an attempt to “plug” a smelly abandoned well in their backyard. You can see the abandoned well – and the garden she set up around it – in this picture. It’s been almost 4 years since I met Pam, and her well has yet to be plugged. Similarly, a complaint I filed for a leaky abandoned well near a public pool in Coudersport has gone unaddressed after almost 2 years.

Last spring, I filmed a leaky well at a public park in Allegheny County and filed a complaint. The well was listed as “active” by DEP, but appeared completely abandoned. An inspection was conducted following my complaint, and DEP issued ten notices of violation to the operator, including “failure to plug the well upon abandonment.” After almost a year of following up to ask when the well will be plugged – and who will be paying for it – I received this response from a DEP inspector who asked to remain anonymous, in reference to ongoing litigation with the operator: “I have seen these cases go on for years before the operator is removed from the equation. Oil and [g]as operators are given a consent order to plug unproductive wells, operators that are active and have an interest in continuing to produce gas as a business comply, in [operator name]’s case as in some others it’s like getting blood from a rock. There just aren’t the funds there. Eventually there is a settlement and the state assumes responsibility and plugs the wells.”

The problem is that Pennsylvania taxpayers don’t have the money to plug all of the wells that operators abandon – and continue to abandon every month. The Shapiro administration has done an excellent job of leveraging every federal dollar that Pennsylvania received under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to plug wells. However, if it wasn’t clear a year ago, it’s certainly clear now that we cannot rely on a taxpayer-funded solution to this problem. Not only are the funds insufficient compared to the scope of the problem, but they are subject to the whims of politicians in Washington. And, at the end of day, taxpayers cannot solve a problem that starts within the industry itself.

This is why we need systemic solutions like bonding reform. Earthworks was one of a number of organizations that filed petitions before the Environmental Quality Board to raise bonding levels for oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania in 2021. Shortly afterwards, the Pennsylvania legislature froze bonding amounts for conventional wells for a decade, keeping more residents like Pam stuck with leaking wells in their backyards. Chair Vitali’s legislation, HB 364, would prevent more Pennsylvanians like Pam 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.

But we know it’s not just conventional wells that are being abandoned. DEP reports more and more unconventional wells are being abandoned each month, and we are on a path to repeating the same mistakes in the unconventional industry that we’ve already seen play out with conventional operators. The legislation that froze bonding levels for conventional wells in Pennsylvania did not stop DEP from issuing a rulemaking to increase bonding for unconventional wells. And yet it has been more than 3 years since EQB voted for DEP to issue a report on the possibility of a rulemaking on unconventional bonding, and we still have not seen that report. Why are we sitting on our hands as this problem continues to balloon?

Methane and volatile organic compound pollution leaks from an abandoned well in McKean County, Pennsylvania

Bonding is one among many possible systemic solutions that could ensure taxpayers are not relied upon to foot the bill for a problem that starts and ends with polluters themselves. A production fee, as outlined in the Ohio River Valley Institute’s recent report, is another possible solution that could meet this problem head-on. As the report notes, “the cost per unit of production becomes small” when spread out across the entire Appalachian basin. “Depending on the scope of the costs intended to be covered by the fund…the cost could range from $0.05 to $0.21 per Mcf at today’s costs.” This proposal is estimated to increase oil and gas jobs by 32% without impacting energy prices or future drilling.

And make no mistake: workers are needed to tackle this problem. We know that through collaboration with organized labor, well plugging can increase workforce development and create more union jobs. I was heartened by the Shapiro administration’s announcement of a partnership with the United Mine Workers of America last year to begin an apprenticeship program to train workers to plug oil and gas wells. We need more of these partnerships, which turn the enormous problem of abandoned wells in Pennsylvania into an enormous opportunity for Pennsylvania workers.

It is my hope that one year from now I do not have to come back to Harrisburg to say that nothing has changed again. That we are still leaving this up to taxpayers and political whims. I want to be able to proudly say that Pennsylvania has made real progress to address the systemic problem of abandoned oil and gas wells in our commonwealth. That we have shown other states how to get this done. That we have protected the health of Pennsylvania residents like Pam and the futures of our children. That we have a plan to address this problem at the root and put people to work in family-sustaining jobs at the same time. Let’s get this done, Pennsylvania.