On a crisp recent morning, we arrived at the edge of the forest, piled out of our vehicles, donned our bright orange hunting vests, and grabbed our… walking sticks. We were there to hunt, but we weren’t looking for deer. We came to Pennsylvania’s Oil Creek State Park to hunt for abandoned and orphaned oil and gas wells.
My companions included members of the Venango PA Senior Environmental Corp (VPASEC), a watershed monitoring group of volunteers who since 2004 has also taken on the task of finding and documenting abandoned and orphaned oil and gas wells: John, Ev, Steve, Peter, Jan, and their enthusiastic pup. These wells are defined a little differently in every state. In Pennsylvania, an abandoned well is one that has not produced in the past 12 months and has not been properly plugged. A well abandoned before 1985 is further designated as an orphaned well. Both kinds of wells may be leaking methane and air pollutants, contaminating the air and water, harming people and wildlife, and accelerating climate change.
Tell Congress: Hold the Line on Progress to Cut Air and Climate Pollution
Oil Creek State Park was the site of the first commercial oil well drilled by Colonel Edwin Drake in 1859. Until the Oil and Gas Act of 1984 began requiring well operators to register wells, thousands of additional wells were drilled there without documentation.
As our group traversed the park’s undulating landscape blanketed with leaves and twisted vegetation, we began to find clues. We saw an old pipe running along the ground and some electrical wires clearly no longer in use. From there, our group split. Peter and Jan followed the wires to see if the wells they were associated with might still be there. John, Ev, Steve, and I ventured farther into the area where we saw the pipe and found more debris, including metal rod lines. These rods would likely have been connected to a central power, the engine that powers the pumps for extracting oil and gas, inside a pump house. Multiple wells would often surround such a structure.
For a well hunter, finding a pump house is like hitting the jackpot. Ev, the recorder of the group, recalls expeditions when they found a pump house in the past. She would find a central perch while everyone went out and radioed data to her for all the wells they were finding.
“There have been times that I have been so busy that I haven’t been able to move off my spot,” she recalls. On one of their busiest days, they found upward of 25 wells. Ev documents their characteristics and uses GPS coordinates to record their locations. This information is then shared with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). As of the morning of our hunt, Ev says that the Venango PA Senior Environmental Corps have found and reported 944 oil and gas wells in Oil Creek State Park since 2004, when the program began.
When VPASEC first started searching for abandoned wells, the effect of the wells on nearby waterways was the primary focus. But soon they learned about the potential for methane leaks, so they also became concerned about the impact that leaky wells might be having in the air and climate. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that causes warming much faster than carbon dioxide. The group now has a methane detector. At each well we found, John used the device and often detected leaking methane.
On our hunt, we found many different types of artifacts left behind from the years of oil and gas operations in the park. John and Ev, both former science teachers, shared their wealth of knowledge about the variety of equipment we found while Steve used his understanding of the industrial layouts of the area’s oil fields to uncover more and more clues. In addition to artifacts, the well hunters were on the lookout for holes where well casings used to be as these can still be emitting pollution. Areas without vegetation in usually lush Pennsylvania forests can indicate leaking oil and gas. At the end of our day in the woods, we had found five wells to report.
It’s estimated that in Pennsylvania alone, there are between 300,000 to 700,000 abandoned and orphaned wells. It’s going to take many individuals and organizations to find and plug them all. In collaboration with the Pennsylvania DEP, the Department of Energy (DOE), McGill University, and Moms Clean Air Force, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has launched a project to locate and address these wells in Western Pennsylvania using drones. On the ground, the Venango PA Senior Environmental Corp is certainly doing their part.
If you’re interested in doing your part, there are several steps you can take. If you think you have found an abandoned or orphaned well, report it to your local environmental agency. You can also join Moms Clean Air Force to continue to learn about efforts to plug these leaking wells across the country.
Tell Congress: Hold the Line on Progress to Cut Air and Climate Pollution