Dear editor:
Finally, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is requiring the oil and gas industry to grow up and operate responsibly.
BLM issued a new rule requiring bonds to cover the cost of plugging oil and gas wells and ensure reclamation of public lands and private lands over federal minerals. The oil and gas industry has had a free pass for decades, while the coal industry has been required to post bonds and reclaim lands since 1977. The coddling of the oil and gas industry is over.
I spent 31 years working with landowners to address the negative impacts of oil and gas development on their property. I witnessed first-hand the damages caused by thousands of idle or orphan oil and gas wells.
Trash and abandoned equipment littered the landscape with rusted and leaking tanks, blackened pits, rusted barrels, plastic pails, broken pump jacks, contaminated soils either barren or covered with noxious weeds, and dead birds in waste pits.
For decades, the oil and gas industry waltzed away from these messes due to the failure of BLM to require upfront bonding to ensure plugging and reclamation.
Landowners referred to this problem as the ruin and run business strategy. Wildcatters often initiate drilling, if a field is productive then major producers come in and operate during the boom but when production declines they sell at a low price to a producer with few resources.
Lacking financial resources to complete cleanup responsibilities, the small producer simply runs away. BLM would spend years on a wild goose chase looking for a responsible operator or former lessee to clean up the mess.
The powerful oil and gas industry will now be required by the Biden administration to post bonds for reclamation and the Petroleum Association of Wyoming is whining like a spoiled brat.
BLM’s new rule incentivizes operators to plug and reclaim wells sooner by requiring a higher upfront bond to drill. It increases bonds retroactively on existing wells. This ensures industry will plug and reclaim sooner rather than clean up taking years.
After over six decades of BLM requiring only minimal blanket bonds for thousands of oil and gas wells and the government spending over $4 billion in taxpayer money to plug and clean up orphan wells we are done bailing out the richest industry on earth. BLM will hold the oil and gas industry accountable, and the sky is not falling, despite what PAW claims.
All oil and gas companies, large or small, are now required to operate responsibly. Adequate bonding for the oil and gas industry is long overdue. The taxpayer will benefit, as will the land and water on which we depend.
Sincerely,
Jill Morrison
Story, Wyoming
