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Colorado Senator Michael Bennet introduced legislation this week to clean up abandoned or "orphaned" oil and gas wells, to strengthen financial bonding requirements, and to expand opportunities for providing local input for lease sales on public lands.
The Oil and Gas Bonding Reform and Orphaned Well Remediation Act establishes a $500 million fund for the cleanup, remediation, and restoration for an estimated 56,600 documented orphaned wells and as many as 746,000 undocumented sites in existence. The bill stipulates a financial assurance threshold that would address future remediation on public lands to ensure taxpayers aren't liable for those costs. The Government Accountability Office found that 84% of oil and gas bonds for wells overseen by the BLM are too low to adequately cover well reclamation costs because most bonds are set at regulatory minimums that haven’t been adjusted since the 1950s and 1960s to account for inflation.
The second bill, the Public Engagement Opportunity on Public Land Exploration Act would provide transparency in bidding to restore local governments’ and taxpayers’ role in public land management decisions. The bill would require federal agencies to provide direct notification of upcoming actions to public land user groups, local governments, and surface owners for subsurface minerals under private lands. Lease sales would require a minimum 30-day scoping period for public comment, 30-day public notice and comment period for draft environmental determinations, and a 45-day protest period.
Speaking in support of the tandem legislation, Pitkin County Commissioner Greg Poschman said, “Abandoned oil and gas wells which are not properly reclaimed are a huge burden on the American taxpayer. The transfer of liability and expense from the gas producers to the taxpayers after the wells are played out must stop. Energy producers have a responsibility to pay their way and let the market reflect the true cost of oil and gas production.”
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In Colorado, our economy—from ranching to recreation—depends on multiple shared uses of our public lands. This administration’s approach has too often undermined that multiple-use mission, cutting Colorado out of land management decisions and leaving local governments on the hook to clean up the mess.”
