Louisiana's Oilfield Site Restoration Program is perfect case study of why states have failed to managed to oil & gas wells and why we need a national Abandoned Well Administration. A 🧵🧵 1/
https://twitter.com/ltgrusselhonore/status/1445706686849695751
The Louisiana Oilfield Site Restoration Program (OSR), established in 1993 by R.S. 30:80, is one of the first programs in the nation to address the cleanup of derelict wells and improperly abandoned oilfield sites. 2/
An unelected Commission oversees OSR. The appointed ten members are representatives from oil & gas industry orgs including: the Louisiana Oil & Gas Association & the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association. Think API franchises running a state program. 3/
The industry dominated commission has statutory authority to approve & evaluate the annual priority site restoration list, choose plugging and abandoning contractors, and review administration of site restoration activities. It’s the wolf guarding the chicken coop arrangement. 4/
In 2020, a barge collided with a submerged, unmarked orphan well causing an oil spill in the Barataria Bay. The well spewed a 100-foot-high geyser of natural gas and light crude oil for weeks. 5/ skytruth.org/2010/08/barata…
OSR reported that because of the accident, “the program would [only] plug and abandon urgent and high priority scored orphan wells in marine environments that are potential hazards to navigation instead of plugging urgent, high, moderate and low priority orphan wells statewide.”6 
Therefore, the Louisiana Oilfield Site Restoration Program currently does not even address onshore wells, but only those offshore wells that directly interfere with navigation. Nothing onshore is being plugged. 7/
This program is designed to privatize profits & socialize costs. According to Louisiana’s Department of Natural Resources, 1,165,000 producing wells have been drilled since 1901. Since 1993, only 2,306 wells on the orphan well list have been plugged at a cost of $64 million. 8/
An oil and gas company can pay a $250 fee to delay plugging and stay on a “shut-in future utility list” rather than pay a low-end $50,000 to plug the well. In fact, the company could pay the small fee for 200 years before reaching that plugging amount. 9 medium.com/@megan.millike…
And as a tragic consequence, children like Zalee Day are made to pay for the greed of oil companies and the abdication of the state. 10/ desmog.com/2021/04/02/zal…
State programs are rotten. They were designed to conserve oil and gas and to promote the industry. These missions remain. They are not regulators. They exist to help industry extract as much oil and gas with as little obstruction as possible. 11/
These state programs in coordination with the oil and gas industry manufactured the orphan well crisis. This was inevitable. So rather than reward the architects of this current crisis, let's center workers and communities. 12/ amp.theguardian.com/environment/20…
You know where this is going to end. We need a new mission and a new agency beholden to that mission.
OOOPS cut off part of the table!
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