{"id":11619,"date":"2012-11-26T11:32:34","date_gmt":"2012-11-26T17:32:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=11619"},"modified":"2012-12-19T14:55:07","modified_gmt":"2012-12-19T20:55:07","slug":"why-oklahoma-gets-a-bill-when-the-oil-and-gas-industry-abandons-a-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2012\/11\/26\/why-oklahoma-gets-a-bill-when-the-oil-and-gas-industry-abandons-a-well\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Oklahoma Gets a Bill When the Oil and Gas Industry Abandons a Well"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Katsrcool \/ Flickr<\/p>\n

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To drill an oil, gas or disposal well in Oklahoma, operators have to post a bond with the Corporation Commission.<\/p>

But the financial requirements to drill in Oklahoma are the lowest in the region \u2014 too low to cover the risk of abandoned wells, the Journal Record<\/em>\u2019s Sarah Terry-Cobo reports<\/a>.<\/p>

Currently, a single operator can cover all its wells by posting a $25,000 bond. The highest bond \u2014 for particularly risky wells \u2014 is $100,000.<\/p>

Terry-Cobo writes:<\/p>\n

If the [drilling] company goes out of business, the state is responsible for safely capping the wells with cement, and each can cost as much as $55,000.<\/p><\/blockquote>

Oklahoma has 559 abandoned wells. One cent of every $100 of oil and gas produced goes into a well-plugging fund. The Corporation Commission says it could cost tens of millions to seal them all. The problem: \u201cThere is only $1.3 million in the account,\u201d the paper reports.<\/p>

The agency and State Rep. Seneca Scott, D-Tulsa, want to raise the bond requirements to drill in Oklahoma. A representative of the oil and gas industry says increasing the bond amounts \u2014 which haven\u2019t been changed since 1986 \u2014 isn\u2019t necessary, the paper reports:<\/p>\n

The Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association represents thousands of producers, and spokesman Cody Bannister wrote in an email that the industry has a record of environmentally responsible production. Increasing the surety is unnecessary, he wrote.<\/p><\/blockquote>

The bond requirements for drilling are higher in other oil and gas states, the Journal<\/em> reports:<\/p>\n

Texas\u2019 financial security requirements are calculated based on the depth of the well: $2 per foot. With wells as deep as 20,000 feet, surety requirements can run as high as $40,000. Pennsylvania has a tiered system that accounts both for the number of the wells and the depth, ranging from $35,000 to $600,000. In North Dakota the minimum is $50,000, and a blanket bond for multiple wells is a $100,000 surety.<\/p>

But North Dakota can raise the bond to $50,000 per well if a company has more than three wells out of compliance, said Doug Goehring, the North Dakota agricultural commissioner and a member of the state\u2019s Industrial Commission<\/p><\/blockquote>

The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs requires a $50,000 bond for drilling in Oklahoma\u2019s Osage County \u2014 \u201cdouble the state\u2019s requirement,\u201d the paper reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To drill an oil, gas or disposal well in Oklahoma, operators have to post a bond with the Corporation Commission.But the financial requirements to drill in Oklahoma are the lowest in the region \u2014 too low to cover the risk of abandoned wells, the Journal Record\u2019s Sarah Terry-Cobo reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":11622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[490,301],"tags":[390,238,419],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11619"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11619"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11629,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11619\/revisions\/11629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}