Issue 38, 2019Issue • October 18th, 2019
Contract Type FiledOctober 18th, 2019Why this is important: The agreement between the PA Department of Environmental Protection and CNX represents the early stages of state regulators’ efforts to address a longstanding issue of plugging abandoned and orphaned wells in their states. Regulators in Pennsylvania and West Virginia have been devoting more energy to addressing the large numbers of wells that are not producing gas or oil, but have never been plugged. State funds are not available to plug all the wells that need plugged, so efforts are ongoing to require current operators to plug wells in order to limit the number of abandoned and orphaned wells. States will also likely be looking to current oil and gas operators to fund, in one way or another, the backlog of unplugged wells. --- Mark D. Clark