News & Events

MCOR hosts orphaned and abandoned well workshop – May 16, 2018

MCOR hosted a workshop on May 16, 2018 to facilitate engagement among landowners, researchers, regulators, and industry stakeholders to address environmental issues with orphaned and abandoned wells. It is estimated that as many as 750,000 oil and gas wells have been drilled in Pennsylvania, with several hundred thousand of these legacy wells unaccounted for and potentially impacting air and water resources. SAFERPA sponsored the workshop and is working with researchers at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Penn State to develop a phone app for field locating wells and with public education and outreach on orphaned and abandoned wells. Three presentations were given (available below) that provided insights on new technologies to locate wells in the field, state regulatory efforts to decommission wells, and industry perspectives on the market opportunities associated with properly plugging these wells. For more information please contact Dave Yoxtheimer of MCOR at day122@psu.edu.

Presentations from the workshop

• WellMapper App – a new mobile tool to crowd-source new information about PA abandoned wells, Steve Hovan, IUP Geosciences
• Industry Perspective on Well Decommissioning, Plants & Goodwin, Inc.
• Defining the Scope of the Legacy Well Problem in Pennsylvania and Developing Collaborative Solutions, Seth Pelepko, Well Plugging and Subsurface Activities Division, Bureau of Oil & Gas Planning & Program Mgmt