This article first appeared at ProPublica and the Los Angeles Times.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1437615
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1437615
This is already happening in New Mexico.
https://www.governor.state.nm.us/2022/01/31/new-mexico-to-get-43-7-million-for-orphan-well-clean-up/
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Same old song and dance: privatize the profits, socialize the costs.
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Another reason to offload the Republicans
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First the taxpayers hand over billions in free money to these fucks so they can go off and find a few trillion dollars in oil.
Then the sons-of-bitches hit up the taxpayers to clean up their mess while they hide behind their scumbag corporate lawyers.
Now, tell me again about the fucking “free market.”
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Coal companies here in the East are doing the same.
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There will always be ignorant, get rich quick people who figure “An oil well! Ka-CHING!” without doing the, ya know, due diligence as to why they’re getting it at rock bottom prices. Then when cleanup time comes, they’re skint. And the big boys who sold it laugh all the way to the bank.
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From my teenage years:
The best things in life are free
But you can keep them for the birds and bees
Now give me money
(That’s what I want)
That’s what I want
(That’s what I want)
That’s what I want, yeah (that’s what I want)
That’s what I want
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Taxpayer Will Pay To Clean Them Up.
Taxpayers always pay to clean up extraction industry’s hazardous sites. Why, we wouldn’t want to make the companies, their executives and shareholders pay for it, would we?
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Corporations are people, unless they own a toxic waste site, then they are just worthless pieces of paper the public can’t squeeze a nickel out of.
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The fault belongs to us all. We have never paid the true cost of gas which is north of $20.
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IMO, every new well should be required to pay a “retirement fee” to a federal account, to be used to plug the well upon retirement. Although, of course, even Joe Manchin wouldn’t vote for such a law.
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The industry is dying.
The stagecoach repair business ain’t what it use to be either, bub.
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“True cost” is a concept extraction companies (and car companies) have been fighting against tooth and nail for decades. You can’t expect oil baron families to endow ivy league universities with money to pay for Environmental Economics courses.
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This triggered a couple of thoughts I’ve had today.
So, I now live in semi-rural Quebec, about an hour out of Montreal. The nearest “big town” is about 20-30 minutes, the nearest “okay town” with a couple of hardware stores is about 20 minutes and the nearest small town with a couple of grocery stores is about 5 minutes away.
Now, the first thought I had driving around today to various places is that at first you think distances are “far”, but then I realize that the doctor who treated my wife for her back operation back in Los Angeles was about 45 minutes away, the hospital where she had the operation was about an hour and both my kids had regular commutes that were about 45 minutes, which easily stretched well past an hour if there were any accidents or other glitches. In effect, I drive less here than I did in Los Angeles for the same effect (and oh, gas is cheaper here than in LA, although a bit more than in upstate Vermont…)
The second thought I had on my drive home tonight was to notice how many small businesses there were scattered between all these small towns. Now, in Los Angeles this wouldn’t catch your eye, since between each of them would be packed as many row houses as could be fit, but out here, they do tend to stand out, in between the acres and acres of corn!
So as I drove along, I noticed how many of the small businesses were privately owned garages dedicated to simple vehicle maintenance. It was then that I realized that as we transition to EVs, a good proportion of these businesses will likely not survive - EVs just don’t need all the periodic maintenace that gas-powered vehicles require (oil changes, timing belts, spark plugs, etc).
And as a final thought, I contemplated the fact (not for the first time) that back in the late '20s and early '30s, my grandfather worked a six day week. My dad, who came of age in the late '30s as he qualified as an Airframe & Powerplant mechanic, got to experience it being dialed back to first a five and a half day week, then a complete 40 hour, five day work week. Of course, his qualifications made him a prime candidate for shipping off to the war in the Pacific as soon as that kicked off, but in hindsight we should ask ourselves why that trend to shorter work weeks didn’t continue?
And even a five day work week? I think a whole lot of American workers are expected to work well past 40 hours each week, yet their income (adjusted for inflation) hasn’t increased at all since George Bush took office. Literally all of the growth in the economy since then has gone to the oligarchs and to senior management. What’s that all about?
If the trend to shorter work weeks as part of the “share the wealth” had continued, I suspect we’d all be expecting to work maybe three and a half or four days a week (and be seeing significantly higher base wages) than anybody is seeing now.
But instead? Unions are dying, folks are expected to work 50, 60 or more hours to “keep things going” and we have more billionaires than ever before.
Hmmmm… 
I do think we’re approaching an inflection point - if even a small subset of those cultists currently obsessed with the fact that they’ve lost the Culture Wars come back from the Dark Side then the fascists are doomed, and I do think they are, but Dog it’s stressful to watch it all play out - even from across an international border! 
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Texas as well.
The bipartisan infrastructure law passed last year by Congress dedicated $4.7 billion to create a new federal orphan oil and gas well remediation and plugging program. Both Republican U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz voted against the law — as did every Republican House member from Texas.
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Kern county in California has been particularly bad, accounting for 90% of the state’s fracking permits. A fracking operation involves multiple wells, some returning production water of undeclared composition to the aquifer, polluting it permanently. Jean “Fracking Queen” Fuller, once minority leader in the California Senate, noted that a four-well fracking setup uses only about the same amount of water as an 18-hole golf course. But then failed to note that Kern county does not have 10,000 golf courses. Of course Aera and others will never pay. McCarthy has been great in this respect in protecting resource extractor interests. By the time it is apparent to the locals that one of the greatest geological disasters has occurred below people’s feet, the extractive industries that so dominate will have gone elsewhere, leaving only a sign crusted in selenium salts that says “Food grows where water flows.”
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Golf courses use an average of a million gallons of water a day.
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That seems a bit high. California golf courses use about 400 acre-feet a year, or 120 million gallons a year. Kern uses steam injection to loosen the bituminous oil (in its natural state, a blob of the stuff has the consistency of beef. You can punch it with your fist and the indentation will slowly disappear as it reverts to its normal shape. The exact amount of water used, like the chemicals used in injection, are secret. Part of the production water is reinjected to make the steam injection work effectively. In any case, it’s a lot of water and the toxic water then creates blooms around the oil fields, making them useless as reservoirs of groundwater for millennia.
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Do they use drought-resistant vegetation? Or reclaimed rainwater? That might account for the difference. In my area, there is a municipal golf course that is Audobon-certified. It used native drought-resistant plantings which helps cut down on water usage.
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