HOLLAND — State officials lauded the first gas well to be plugged with money from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law on Wednesday.
Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state received $25 million in the law for the work thanks to a federal grant, and efforts are on to plug more abandoned oil and gas wells. The goal, she said, is to protect public safety, help reduce methane and other climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions, and protect ground and surface waters.
“Abandoned oil and gas wells across New York State have the potential to threaten our air, water, and land – potentially hazardous reminders of the damages wrought by fossil fuels on the environment, human health and property,” Hochul said. “The historic investments being made by the Biden Administration are enabling our state to work with the Department of the Interior to bolster New York’s existing well plugging efforts that will locate and plug even more of these aged and abandoned wells for the benefit of our climate and the protection of our environment and communities.”
The first completed orphaned well plugging project using the federal funding is located behind a shopping plaza on Route 16 in the town of Holland. Drilled in the early 1960s, that well had sat abandoned for decades and was reportedly leaking methane.
Tens of thousands of oil and gas wells are on record across the state, and most of them are in greater Olean area. Of the 46,481 entries in the state Department of Environmental Conservation well database, 58.6% — or 27,250 — are located in Allegany and Cattaraugus counties. By county, there are 11,752 entries for Cattaraugus County, and 15,498 entries for Allegany County. Many are still active, while many others have been previously plugged, but many others — including an unknown number — are missing from the official records.
A team from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory investigated a 300-acre site near the city of Olean in 2022, hoping to pinpoint wells based on previous investigations and develop techniques to find them elsewhere in the country. The lab was called in by the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which has a database of 2,400 confirmed abandoned oil and gas wells. However, an unknown number of undocumented wells, for which no public records exist, dot the landscape. The Olean study found 63 such wells during its work.
Several well plugging efforts run by the state have already been completed or are underway. Almost 300 oil wells have been plugged since 2017 in Allegany County alone. According to the DEC, efforts began in May 2022 to plug several orphaned oil wells in the town of Allegany near West Branch and Boulder Ridge roads.
Officials are seeking reports of abandoned wells. For more information on reporting abandoned wells, visit www.dec.ny.gov/energy/111211.html.