Biden infrastructure plan calls for employing oil workers to plug leaking wells: How it would work

President Joe Biden’s massive green infrastructure plan contains a proposal to address a long-standing environmental hazard while helping fossil fuel workers who lost their jobs during the pandemic or who are threatened by the administration’s push for cleaner energy.

Biden pledges to create a federal program providing $16 billion in government funding to states to help them plug “orphan” oil and gas wells whose owners are either unknown or insolvent.

His program would employ “hundreds of thousands” of oil and gas workers to do the job at the “same exact rate that a union man or woman would get having dug that well in the first place,” Biden said during a speech in Pittsburgh this week.

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There are 56,600 orphan wells across the United States, which can leak methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and potentially contaminate nearby groundwater.

States and the federal government require oil and gas companies to post bonds or other forms of financial assurance as a down payment in case firms go bankrupt before plugging wells.

But the payments are often insufficient to cover the cost.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/biden-infrastructure-plan-calls-for-employing-oil-workers-to-plug-leaking-wells-how-it-would-work