The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection fined Range Resources – Appalachia $294,000 for inaccurately listing wells as inactive that should have been abandoned and plugged.
Range Resources – Appalachia, based in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, paid the penalty Jan. 8 for violating the 2012 Oil and Gas Act after receiving a consent assessment of civil penalty with the DEP on Jan. 7.
“Assuring operators plug idle wells addresses liabilities now, instead of leaving them for future generations,” DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell said in a statement.
Issues
Range Resources applied for inactive status for its conventional Shirocky No. 1 well, in Fayette County, on Sept. 29, 2017. Inactive status indicates an intention to return the well to production.
However, interoffice communication at Range Resources included with its inactive well application showed that the Shirocky well had “no viable future despite conflicting information in its inactive status application,” according to a DEP press release.
The internal memo stated that the well had become “incapable of economic production,” according to the DEP penalty.
If a well has no viable future use, then it cannot be listed as inactive. After 12 consecutive months of no production, the well should be classified as abandoned and must be plugged.
An inactive well has five years to be returned to active status or plugged, although operators can also apply for an extension of inactive status.
Unplugged abandoned wells can be a hazard to people and the environment, the DEP said. Leaking wells can contribute to air, water and soil contamination. It’s estimated there are somewhere between 200,000 and 560,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania. Many of them are orphans, which are wells abandoned prior to April 1985 when the state began regulating old wells.
Actions
The DEP subpoenaed Range Resources for information on other wells that had applied for inactive status.
Records received showed that between July 16, 2013 and Oct. 11, 2017, 42 of the company’s conventional wells were placed on inactive status but never used again. The 42 wells are located in Mercer, Venango, Crawford, Indiana, Fayette, Centre, Clinton and Armstrong counties.
DEP issued a notice of violation to Range Resources for the Shirocky well, as well as the others. The company plugged all the wells but one, which is scheduled to be plugged later in 2021. The plugging and payment satisfied the conditions of the penalty.
The fine Range Resources paid will go into the DEP’s Well Plugging Program to plug orphan wells that have no operator and pose a risk to public safety and the environment.
