Searching for ‘slimy, shiny, brownish stuff’: A retiree helps track down Pa.’s abandoned oil wells

Driving into Bradford, Barbara Laxon tells people to look out for the flare coming from the oil refinery running along the town.

At 74, Laxon spends much of her free time taking people on tours to show the traces of the oil and gas industry in her town — from an oil jack located in the parking lot of a McDonald’s to hidden wellbores near a local elementary school.

After exploring town, Laxon leads people into Allegheny National Forest to find abandoned oil wells. Parking on the side of the highway, she guides visitors carefully through swampy woods, warning them to watch their step.

“We would take the little side roads and just walk up the roads and see if we could see anything,” Laxon said. “You could see the slimy, shiny, brownish stuff trailing down the side of the hill.”

She didn’t envision spending her retirement this way. The former occupational therapist moved to Pennsylvania from Florida about a decade ago to be closer to her son. Soon after, she became involved in Save Our Streams — an environmental advocacy group that seeks to plug abandoned oil wells in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania has thousands of these wells. The full number is unknown, but estimates range from around 20,000 to as high as 750,000 . They can emit methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, and leak toxic substances that pollute their surroundings.

According to state law, operators of wells are responsible for plugging them. When an owner can’t be identified, or when the well is older than the 1984 state law that regulates oil and gas drilling, the Department of Environmental Protection is responsible for the plugging.

But in practice, companies often skip out on their responsibilities, leaving the state responsible for a steadily increasing bill. A 2022 state report found a “ culture of non-compliance” in the industry, particularly with regard to “improper abandonment of oil and gas wells.”

Pennsylvania regulators struggle to identify where all of the state’s abandoned wells are, much less plug them.

Laxon spent years of her retirement trying to locate those wells, taking on at least part of the government’s responsibility. She and other members of the organization would go on “scavenger hunts” for undocumented wellbores, traveling across Western Pennsylvania from Pittsburgh to Titusville. After documenting the wells — their surroundings, whether they were leaking fluids or methane — the advocates would inform the state of their discoveries and post findings online.

Often, Laxon found the state’s data didn’t reflect her group’s reports. But she feels obligated to keep trying.

“I got great-grandkids, and they live here. They’re growing up and breathing in the air and drinking the water,” Laxon said. “They can’t get away. They are stuck down here in this little bowl in between these hills with all of these noxious fumes and all the other stuff.”

For decades , Pennsylvania has worked to plug its tens of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells.

Not only does the commonwealth have thousands of orphaned wells left behind from the historic oil and gas industry of the 19th century ; there are also thousands of newer abandoned ones . In the end, the state is responsible for ensuring all of them are plugged.

The DEP has chipped away at the problem, but the sheer number of abandoned wells, the high cost of plugging them, and limited state funding have made progress piecemeal — especially as new wells are drilled.

According to the state’s most recent oil and gas report, 177 new conventional wells were drilled in 2023, but in the same year, nearly 700 operators failed to submit the annual production reports that the DEP relies on to check which should be plugged.

The Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Act of 1984 requires owners and operators to plug their wells within one year of ending production. The DEP is authorized to implement and enforce the law, using tools like permit denials, liens, and even criminal referrals to compel owners to act.

However, enforcement takes “a significant amount of time,” according to Kurt Klapkowski, deputy secretary of the DEP’s Office of Oil and Gas Management. He told the Pennsylvania House Environmental and Natural Resource Protection Committee that “cases can take upwards of a year or more” in June 2025 .

“DEP continues to manage several cases involving improper abandonment that were initiated more than five years ago,” Klapkowski wrote in his testimony .

Well owners also put down a bond before digging the well, which acts as a safety deposit. The bond is forfeited to the state if they do not plug the well after it finishes producing oil.

However, the cost of a bond is only $2,500 for a single conventional well or $25,000 for multiple conventional wells, while the cost of plugging a well ranges from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars . Advocates and some lawmakers have pushed to increase the price of bonds or allow the Environmental Quality Board to adjust its price, but those efforts have yet to succeed.

That imbalance is exacerbated by the “culture of non-compliance” in the industry, according to a report by the Department of Community and Economic Development in late 2022.

The study found that operators often failed to report the operating status of individual wells, preventing the DEP from determining whether a site is in use or abandoned and must be plugged.

“The reporting non-compliance denies DEP and the public critical information about the operating status of individual wells,” the report said.

The document continued: “the failure to report seems to be an industry-wide rule rather than the exception.”

It also found that while the DEP can compel well pluggers to step up, the agency needs additional staffing in its Office of Chief Counsel and Bureau of District Oil and Gas Operations, particularly field inspectors and enforcement personnel, to “effectively administer increased oversight.”

The state funds the plugging of abandoned oil and gas wells a few different ways, largely depending on permitting and impact fees.

Last summer, lawmakers also appropriated $19 million to a fund dedicated to plugging abandoned wells in the state budget. But that money doesn’t go directly toward paying contractors for plugging; it supports the DEP’s team that manages and inspects oil and gas wells.

More money, in the form of federal funds from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, is coming to address the issue. In total, Pennsylvania is slated to receive nearly $400 million through 2030.

So far, the state has received just over half of that total sum — about $214 million. According to DEP spokesperson Neil Shader, Pennsylvania has spent $31.8 million of that as of last July — which has covered the costs of most of the well plugging the agency has done over the past five years.

Alongside those funds, the state also used federal money from the EPA, Department of Energy, and U.S. Forest Service to plug wells.

In total, Pennsylvania has plugged nearly 500 wells over the past five years, according to the DEP. This year, the state has plugged 113 wells. Even at that accelerated pace, the DEP can’t keep up. Thousands remain unplugged.

“We can always do more with more,” Klapkowski told lawmakers at a committee hearing in June 2025 . “It’s not quick, it’s not easy, it’s not cheap.”

Laxon said she’s skeptical that federal funding will have an impact in Pennsylvania.

She feels this way, she said, because of the DEP.

Laxon has worked with the agency throughout her time at Save Our Streams. The retiree said she’s reported wells and seen the agency fail to update its public map with the new information.

“We found 20 wells in a line, and none were listed on a DEP map,” Laxon recounted. “We of course told them about it. And they insisted we had documented the GPS coordinates wrong.”

Shader said the agency “can’t speak to specific instances” without “knowing which specific wells were identified.” But he added that the DEP takes several steps to confirm a site before adding it to the map to “ensure that wells reported to DEP as orphaned or abandoned are not associated with an existing operator.”

Those steps, according to Shader, include a field verification, an administrative review of DEP records, and an investigation to ensure there’s no responsible party for the well.

Laxon also pointed to the DEP’s use of the federal funds it has already received. A Spotlight PA analysis previously found that the cost to plug each well was roughly $100,000 . Laxon questioned why the cost was so high and criticized the decision to focus on the wells that were easiest to plug .

“Where did this money go?” she asked.

(Klapkowski previously told Spotlight PA that a decision was made to spend the initial federal funds before the money expired. The agency chose “anchor wells” that were already known to DEP and relatively easy to access, and targeted the wells that surrounded the anchor to maximize cost efficiency.)

In testimony to the state House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee last year , Klapkowski said the average plugging cost had dropped to $69,000.

Other states with historical oil drilling industries, like Kentucky and Oklahoma , have had similar issues plugging abandoned oil wells. Curtis Shuck, president of the Well Done Foundation, a nonprofit that plugs oil and gas wells across the country, called the work a “generations-long solution.”

Shuck estimates that plugging a well can cost anywhere from $60,000 to $400,000.

“This problem, while the scale is massive, is still solvable. It really does make a difference. I do think that’s super important to people,” Shuck said.

These days, Laxon focuses on teaching others how to spot wells rather than going on the scavenger hunts herself.

In 2021, Laxon was diagnosed with cancer, and due to complications with her Medicare coverage, she was only able to get treatment the following year. After six weeks of treatment and radiation, she had a hard time recovering.

Since then, she’s had to take a step back.

“I’m not in any shape to go out in the woods the way I used to,” Laxon said. “It does take a lot out of you. I don’t have the strength and the stamina anymore.”

Nowadays she takes people and advocacy organizations on tours of Bradford and the surrounding areas. She’s led tours with Physicians for Social Responsibility and Food and Water Watch, but she no longer goes out into the Allegheny National Forest by herself.

Another blow to the effort was a lead member of Save Our Streams falling ill and moving away. That left Laxon feeling like she was on her own. Still, she says she’s not done pushing for change yet.

Laxon said she doesn’t see a path forward for Save Our Streams right now. There aren’t enough regular members or leaders, she explained. So now she’s getting involved in local politics, like the local chapter of the Green Party. Still, she hopes someone will eventually come back and take up the mantle.

“I keep trying to spread the word because sooner or later, somebody’s, you know, some new person coming up is going to catch fire and lead the way forward,” Laxon said.

This story was originally published by Spotlight PA and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.