Energy Companies Have Left Colorado with Billions of Dollars in Oil and Gas Cleanup

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Energy companies have left Colorado with billions of dollars in oil and gas cleanup:

When an oil or gas well reaches the end of its lifespan, it must be plugged. If it isn't, the well might leak toxic chemicals into groundwater and spew methane, carbon dioxide, and other pollutants into the atmosphere for years on end.

But plugging a well is no simple task: Cement must be pumped down into it to block the opening, and the tubes connecting it to tanks or pipelines must be removed, along with all the other onsite equipment. Then the top of the well has to be chopped off near the surface and plugged again, and the area around the rig must be cleaned up.

There are nearly 60,000 unplugged wells in Colorado in need of this treatment-each costing $140,000 on average, according to the Carbon Tracker, a climate think tank, in a new report that analyzes oil and gas permitting data. Plugging this many wells will cost a lot -more than $8 billion, the report found.

Companies that drill wells in Colorado are legally required to pay for plugging them. They do so in the form of bonds, which the state can call on to pay for the plugging. But as it stands today, Colorado has only about $185 million from industry-just 2 percent of the estimated cleanup bill, according to the new study. The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) assumes an average cost of $82,500 per well-lower than the Carbon Tracker's figure, which factors in issues like well depth. But even using the state's more conservative number, the overall cleanup would cost nearly $5 billion, of which the money currently available from energy companies would cover less than 5 percent.

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