Colorado oil and gas companies offer $459 million to guarantee their wells are plugged eventually – By Mark Jaffe (Colorado Sun) / Mar 8, 2023
The plans seek to meet new state financial requirements, but some smaller operators are hoping to put up only a fraction of the needed funds.
Colorado oil and gas companies are proposing to meet new state requirements by putting up $459 million in guarantees that their wells will be plugged at the end of their lives — 60% of the amount regulators targeted.
But more than a quarter of the companies filing financial plans, primarily smaller operators with low-producing wells, are offering to cover only 14% of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission’s $360 million estimate for their plugging and remediation costs.
Those 45 operators have nearly 8,600 wells with more than half of them shut-in or producing no more than 2 barrels of oil or 10,000 cubic feet of gas a day — an output that defines them as low-producing and potentially uneconomical.
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