It’s like saying you can keep your doctor.
I wonder if it’s legal - to buy land with an abandoned natural gas well operation on it, then build your own house on the land and restart the gas pumping, using it for energy/fuel just for your own home???
They did. Each operator had to post a $75000 bond per well.
If you read the whole article, it's evident that the Times is attempting to build a mountain from a molehill.
In addition to the bonding, the state has an ongoing conservation tax on the oil & gas industry for exactly this purpose. The state's Petroleum Association is cooperating and has agreed to a temporary increase.
The only problem is that so many wells were abandoned over such a short-period of time, so that it's going to take several years for the clean-up to catch up.
But the state and the Petroleum Association appear to have everything under control.
For its part, the Times is engaged in its characteristic anti-drilling propaganda.
Natural gas prices have doubled since most of these wells were drilled.
Since 2008, the price of NG has dropped from about $12 to as low as $3.50 about 2 months ago.
However, today, NG is $4.25, and is sitting close to a 2 year high.
I’ll guess the massive cold spell on Sunday will bump that price up some more.
“Why didn’t they get up front assurances (and money to back it up) that the companies would plug the wells once they were done?”
Nowadays it would seem that they would have to have some means of insuring they could remediate the sites (letters of credit required by the municipalities, for instance).