Pennsylvania is losing ground in its efforts to cap abandoned oil and gas wells.

According to a recent state legislative hearing, the state has seen 1,154 more oil and gas wells abandoned since 2020 while, over the past two and a half years, plugging only 308 abandoned wells. This comes after the state received $76 million from the federal government to speed up the process of capping abandoned wells.

The 1,154 abandoned in that time represent just a fraction of the total unplugged wells across the state. Reports from the Department of Environmental Protection estimate there are up to 560,000 of the wells statewide. The average cost to plug a well, per the DEP, was about $110,000 in 2024.

Obviously, money alone isn’t the only issue the state faces dealing with uncapped wells. House Rep. Greg Vitali, D-Havertown, chair of the Environmental and Natural Resource Protection committee, has reintroduced a bill to give the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Environmental Quality Board the authority to set bonds for drillers that are closer to the cost of plugging a well. The higher bonds would act as a deterrent and compensation for abandoning newer wells.

It’s not a bad idea, Companies drilling now should be required to cap wells before abandoning them so that the cost doesn’t fall back on taxpayers. But simply increasing the bond requirements on oil and gas companies only slows the gap between new abandoned wells and the number of wells being capped.

Corporate responsibility alone won’t solve the orphaned wells problem in Pennsylvania. State lawmakers and the Department of Environmental Protection need to come up with a plan to deal with orphaned wells. The federal government’s $76 million of help is appreciated, but at the state’s current average cost of $110,000 to plug an abandoned well in 2024, Pennsylvania has a $61.6 billion problem on its hands. The state can’t continue to lose ground as it deals with orphaned wells – and in our opinion that means the state is going to have to find additional resources to deal with orphaned wells and find a way to lower the average cost to plug an orphaned well.

New bond requirements only nibble around the edge of the orphaned well problem. A bigger shift in state policy and procedure is needed.