CLARION COUNTY, Pennsylvania — There are an estimated 350,000 abandoned oil and gas wells across Pennsylvania — and Gov. Josh Shapiro is keeping track of the ones that have been plugged.
The Democrat has seized on the issue since taking office in 2023, a move that could boost his environmental credentials as Vice President Kamala Harris considers him as a running mate in the presidential race. Shapiro announced in March that his administration had plugged its 200th well — more than the state had plugged in the previous nine years combined.
“There is a broader, bigger story in plugging these gas wells, and Shapiro is very adept at telling that story,” said John Hanger, who served as secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection under former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat. “He is very good at making the case that wise public investments make individuals’ lives better, communities stronger and our environment cleaner.”
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One of the plugged wells can be found in the front yard of a gray ranch house on a quiet country road in Clarion County, in the state’s northwest corner.
That’s where Brendon Green and Michael Douglas were working with a plugging rig last week. They were trying to remove a piece of pipe from a well believed to date back to the 1930s. It was right next to a stack of firewood on sale for $5 a bundle.
“This well, they’ve had some issues, the pipe was rotted,” Green said, wiping his brow. “There was a water well already drilled right next to it. So our options on this one are kind of limited.”
Their work is paid for with a $4.7 billion program in the bipartisan infrastructure law, enacted in the first year of President Joe Biden’s administration. It’s aimed at plugging abandoned wells, which can leak pollutants into the atmosphere, contaminate drinking water and pose safety risks to homeowners.
Political observers say the program is the sort of policy that has made Shapiro one of the most popular governors in the country. While issues like hydraulic fracturing and cap and trade have dominated energy and environmental debates during Shapiro’s time as governor, well-plugging offers an opportunity for the state’s former attorney general to appeal to a large swath of voters. Shapiro has attempted to sell the program as a job creator as well as an environmental cleanup program.
A press release celebrating the plugging of the 200th well in March noted that orphaned wells account for 8 percent of Pennsylvania’s methane emissions and cited a study showing plugging operations could put thousands of people to work.
Neil Shader, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, said the state is “is embracing that leadership role while addressing the threat these wells pose.”
Pennsylvania has a long history of oil and gas development. The country’s first oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859. In the years that followed, the locations of many wells were never recorded. State regulators have identified over 30,000 abandoned wells, but some estimates indicate the total number could be more than 300,000.
It means pluggers never know what they might find when they start a job.
In Clarion County, Luke Plants watched as Green and Douglas attempted to extract the piece of pipe from the old well next to the ranch house. Plants, who runs his family’s plugging company, has seen all manner of things come out of wells over the years, including old fence posts, boat ropes and bicycle tires. Others are often missing steel piping, which was exhumed to support the war effort during World War II.
“Many of these wells were already plugged, but they were plugged to 1920s standards, which might be a big piece of stump shoved down in the well or a cannonball or just some really ratty cement,” Plants said.
‘Great for jobs’
At this well, the company was attempting to isolate one of two strings of piping in the hole that would enable it to pump cement into the well’s base. But the well’s proximity to the house meant the firm had to take extra precautions. The company has been on the site for three months.
The company, Plants and Goodwin Inc., has been transformed by the increase in plugging. Started by Plants’ grandfather in the 1970s, it once operated a series of lower-production stripper wells. It entered the plugging business in 2008, when the advent of fracking and horizontal drilling led to a boom in natural gas production from the Marcellus Shale formation underlying the state. Old wells are a problem for new development because they can communicate with new wells and hinder production.
The shift from production to plugging was a natural fit. Plants and Goodwin was able to repurpose 95 percent of its production equipment for plugging operations.
Then the infrastructure law supercharged its business. Last year marked the first time that all the company’s revenue came from plugging. It employs 135 people in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.
“It’s been great for jobs,” Plants said. “It’s been great for our business to be able to pivot away from just being solely hooked on corporate customers who are plugging their wells to being able to sort of diversify revenue a bit with some of these government contracts as well.”
The federal money has the added benefit of requiring employers to pay prevailing wage, Green noted.
“That aspect alone is nice,” said the 28-year-old rig operator from Allegany, New York. “We treat it as another job but, I mean, it’s obviously cool to see because when these projects come in, usually it’s a bunch of wells so it’s guaranteed work. You don’t have to stress about where you’re going to be next.”
The job in Clarion County is part of a 19-well package that Plants and Goodwin is plugging for the state.
Pennsylvania’s well-plugging program has not been without criticism. Some environmental groups have said the state has focused on capping a larger quantity of wells to comply with federal timelines, rather than homing in on those that present the biggest risk to the environment and public health. They argue Pennsylvania should raise state funds to help address the issue rather than rely on federal money.
The state has so far received $25 million in infrastructure law grants but is eligible to eventually receive more than $300 million under the program — second only to Texas. Pennsylvania is waiting for approval on a $76 million grant application from the Department of the Interior, which administers the program.
Interior has altogether obligated $985 million for the program, of which $358 million has been spent, according to USAspending.gov, a government website that tracks federal spending. A department spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
Kelsey Krepps, a senior campaign organizer at the Sierra Club, said Shapiro has been “very vocal about the need to continue plugging our backlog of wells in Pennsylvania.”
But she said more money is needed to plug the hundreds of thousands of wells in the state.
“If the state is going to address this issue meaningfully beyond IIJA dollars, a more robustly funded plugging program is needed,” she wrote in an email, referring to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Shader, the DEP spokesperson, said the state will often focus its efforts on wells that are high environmental and public safety risk and then plug other nearby wells “in order to maximize the number of wells plugged while the equipment is in the area.”
Funding well plugging efforts has historically been a challenge in the state, he said. Thanks to the infrastructure law “that challenge is being addressed and we’ve been able to plug more wells than ever before and make progress for Pennsylvania,” Shader wrote in an email.
In Clarion County, Plants said he hoped the state’s well-plugging efforts offer a way to bridge the divide on energy and environmental issues in the highly charged political environment. The advent of data centers and artificial intelligence is prompting demand for more electricity, meaning fossil fuels like natural gas will continue to be needed, he said.
“But I’m also not so naive to believe that we could just continue the deranged system of oil and gas extraction that we’ve had for the last 150 years,” Plants said. “There are ways to responsibly extract oil and natural gas without all the leaks, without all the emissions, without leaving the liabilities for the taxpayers to fund at the end of the day.”
Reporter Jessie Blaeser contributed.
