Tallgrass prairie wells to be plugged
Special to The Gazette
Saturday, August 1, 2009
The Kansas Corporation Commission on Monday will begin plugging a series of abandoned natural gas wells located on the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve .
Twenty-seven abandoned wells are identified within 12 square miles on the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. Because the wells are located on the prairie and are not connected by roads, staff has marked the wells’ locations using GPS as they have been discovered. If left unplugged, the remaining natural gas could seep into the ground water causing an environmental hazard or leak at the surface causing a public safety hazard.
The KCC has contracted with K-W Oil Well Service of Chanute to plug the wells. K-W Oil Well Service will begin the project on Monday and expects to plug two to three wells per week. Total cost for the project is estimated to be $75,000 and will be financed by the Abandoned Oil and Gas Well-Site Remediation Fund.
The fund was established by the Kansas Legislature in 1996 to address the problem of abandoned oil and gas wells and remediation sites related to oil and gas exploration and production activities. Monies from this fund can be used by the KCC Conservation Division to plug abandoned oil and gas wells and remediate surface and groundwater contamination related to oil and gas activities.
biscuitboy (anonymous) says...
I'm glad the state is seeing to it that these wells are capped before they can contaminate groundwater. My question is shouldn't that have been the job of the people that sank the wells in the first place.....or that benefited from whatever profit might have been ekked from them.
This looks like another example of governemt stepping in to spend taxpayer money on a problem created by private enterprise...that should have been fixed by private enterprise.
But this type of taxpayer support for business is never mentioned when people cry and moan about the use of taxpayer money on the poor. Talk about hypocritical.
August 1, 2009 at 3:14 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
biscuitboy (anonymous) says...
I understand that.....and yes I was interjecting my liberal bias into the issue of corporate versus personal welfare.... but it doesn't answer my quesyion as to why this was not done by the pople that owned the wells in the first place. Shouldn't that have been their reponsibility rather than just taking the money and leaving the state to fix the problem? That is my question.
August 1, 2009 at 4:43 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
biscuitboy (anonymous) says...
In addition...I never said anything about increasing how much welfare is handed out to the poor......I said crying about using taxpayer money to help the poor. The "increasing" was your conservative bias being interjected into it:-)
August 1, 2009 at 4:47 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
biscuitboy (anonymous) says...
Oh...I see now. So in truth we bought the problem along with the property thereby allowing the ones that profited from the wells to wash their hands of the problem. Kinda like Pontius Pilot...one world class hypocrite.
August 1, 2009 at 5:02 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
seriouslyfolks (anonymous) says...
They abandoned the wells cuz they are racist capitalist pig dogs that practice religion of some sort and they should be brought down by a bloody revolution led by the poor "working" class!
August 1, 2009 at 6:33 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
biscuitboy (anonymous) says...
So it sounds like the real villian of the abandoned well scenario was the legislators that rushed to set up the abandoned well remediation fund......and maybe the lobbyist that pushed the effort. I wonder what interest the lobbyist represented? Hmmmmm
As for the slave issue.....I have no idea about that. Had never heard that story before.
August 1, 2009 at 7:10 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
biscuitboy (anonymous) says...
Our he got the government to use tax payer money to fund an Escape From Welfare Through Work program.....and built it with tax dollars. Just Kidding....I think :-)
August 1, 2009 at 7:23 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
alfalfa (anonymous) says...
Whoever drilled the wells and/or produced them should have plugged them. There would be record of that, normally it would not be the responsibility of the landowner. Often times these wells are discovered, either not plugged or not legally plugged, and in some cases they were plugged in a fashion that was legal 25-50 years ago but not legal now. The fund was set up among other reasons to protect new landowners from the cost of plugging wells they may not have known even existed. Often times the actual producer of the wells may be out of business or even dead, so it is impossible to get them to plug them. It use to be legal to drive a wooden plug down the hole a few feet and cap it with concrete, that is not the case anymore.
August 1, 2009 at 11:28 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
biscuitboy (anonymous) says...
Thank you alfalfa for a very informative answer.
August 2, 2009 at 4:24 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
biscuitboy (anonymous) says...
Based on alfalfa's information I can now recognize the need for the fund to deal with old problems.....even though my liberal leftist bias still wonders why the burden was not just shifted to proprty owners rather than taxpayers. Let them work their way out of the situation themselves.....don't you know.:-)
But I do sincerely hope that modern drilling laws and practices contain measures whereby new wells will not also just eventually be left for the taxpayer to close
August 2, 2009 at 6:47 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
alfalfa (anonymous) says...
For your consideration bb. We need domestic oil and gas production. In Kansas most of the good wells have been hit, my best guess is most drilling operations within 50 miles of Emporia have a 50% chance or less of hitting a paying well, and the payout will be small. Landowners get 1/8 royalty off of producing wells. I can't speak for gas, but I would guess a 5 barrel well would be considered to be a pretty good strike with less than that much more common, and the very real possibility the production would fall off rapidly from there, in otherwords your 1/8 isn't going to make you rich. If you put landowners into a position where there is much of a possibility at all they may get stuck plugging wells themselves, you are going to even further discourage oil production because landowners are going to be very reluctant to lease, you are guaranteed one thing if you drill a dry hole,you will have to plug it. I think that it is prudent to have measures in place to plug abandoned wells without costing landowners because it helps encourage needed domestic production.
August 2, 2009 at 10:42 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
biscuitboy (anonymous) says...
alfalfa......even with my leftist liberal bias I agree with virtually evry word of your last post. Why?......Because it is obvious that this is in all of our best interest.....and government then is in the best position to do the job.
Having said that though...hear comes the coup de grace.....call it whatever you like....but what we have then is a form of corporate wellfare...whereby taxpayer money is being used to do a job that should be done by privavate enterprise because private enterprise is either unwilling or unable to do it for themselves.
Government handles personal welfare for much the same reasons. One, it is assumed it is in all of our best interest. Better to maintain some minimal level of comfort...than to have a rogue, disinfranchised, outlaw class out here running around with nothing left to lose.
This then is a job the welfare recepient has shown themselves to be unwilling or unable to do for themselves.....hence we do it for them.
My point in this from the very begining has been to point out that government welfare is handed out to all classes...in many ways....for many reasons. And we should all keep that in mind when we adopt our holier than thou attitudes about "welfare bums". There is a little welfare bum in all of us.
August 3, 2009 at 3:49 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )