West Virginia has hundreds of abandoned oil and gas wells that aren’t properly plugged – but the state is doing fewer inspections and issuing fewer notices of violations to operators, according to a new report from the Ohio River Valley Institute.

West Virginia has an estimated 50,000 abandoned oil and gas wells, many of them leaking toxins and lowering property values, said Ted Boettner, a senior researcher for the institute.

"The state has been able to take advantage of federal funds and increase state funds to deal with it," he said, "but it would take decades to deal with this problem at its current pace."

Federal grant funding could decommission around 1,300 orphaned wells through 2031 and support hundreds of jobs. According to the report, if West Virginia pursued a new decommissioning program, between 2032 and 2041, an additional 4,000 abandoned wells could be plugged.

Boettner said he expects the costs of not dealing with these wells to be passed on to Mountain State residents. He noted that when they become orphaned, they also become the responsibility of the state.

"And if that happens at an increasing rate going forward," he said, "that will mean billions of dollars in cleanup costs that will be passed from operators onto state residents."

Boettner said West Virginia’s bond-based system has made regulating the problem more difficult. From 2013 to 2024, West Virginia signed 88 consent agreements with dozens of operators, but these agreements often don’t require the operators to immediately plug leaking wells.

Source: Public News Service