Because the oil and gas industry is largely governed at the state level,
states banded together in the 1930s with the approval of Congress,
and more recently with federal funding,
to share best practices for regulating oil.

The resulting organization, the
" Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission",
has evolved into a forum where
-- much as happened in New Mexico
-- the industry influences the ideas that regulators take back to their states
and write into the rules governing oil companies.

This was on full display in October
at the commission’s annual conference,
hosted among Utah’s Wasatch Mountains,
which were blanketed by autumnal reds and yellows.

With Chevron, ExxonMobil and Oxy Petroleum among the conference’s largest sponsors,
oil and gas regulators from across the country had gathered at the Chateaux Deer Valley,
an upscale ski resort overlooking Park City’s renowned pistes.

As the conference began, regulators were clear-eyed that taxpayers could be saddled with the cost of plugging orphan wells.

“This year, I spent $29 million, and somehow that’s still not enough,”
Jason Harmon, one of West Virginia’s head oil regulators,
said about his state’s well-plugging efforts.

Catherine Dickert, New York’s top oil regulator,
noted that wells in her state get passed to ever-smaller companies
“until finally they get transferred to somebody who owns two wells that never, ever will be able to plug them.”

And cleanup funds are “woefully inadequate in Pennsylvania right now,”
Kurt Klapkowski,
the commonwealth’s lead oil regulator,
told the attendees.

“And we’ve gotten a lot of opposition about increasing that.”

But as the conference progressed,
talk of bonding regulations gave way to discussions of repurposing old wells.

Perhaps natural gas would still be needed to develop hydrogen fuel,
an ExxonMobil representative discussed on a panel at the conference.

Or wells could be used for storing captured carbon dioxide,
an Oxy Petroleum representative said on another.

State regulators returned home with these and other pitches from the oil industry on how to manage aging oil fields.

In addition to conferences,
the organization pens pro-oil and gas resolutions that it has placed in state legislatures.

In these resolutions, its members have called on the federal government to minimize regulations on climate-warming gasses,
increase oil-related tax credits
and shield certain royalty owners from cleanup costs.

States including Wyoming, Utah and Oklahoma, among others,
have passed resolutions pushed by the commission.

By the 1970s, the Department of Justice was arguing that the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission had largely become a lobbying organization.

Critics today say the commission is hampering reform.

“They’re this unique mechanism for corporate capture,”
said Jesse Coleman, a senior researcher with public interest watchdog organization Documented
who has tracked the commission for years.

“They get to act as this impartial source of information,
when in reality, they’re on the industry side.”

While about 60% of the people involved with the group were government officials,
a quarter worked in the oil and gas industry,
according to a 2021 membership survey Documented obtained via a public records request.

The Environmental Defense Fund is typically the only green group in the room.

The survey also found that people involved with the group saw its role as promoting
“diverse viewpoints on climate related issues”
and “fighting back against measures that seek to ‘keep it in the ground’”
— the “it” referring to climate-warming fossil fuels.

As the U.S. Department of the Interior doles out $4.7 billion
to plug orphan wells
from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act,
the commission and its members have helped write guidelines
governing the spending,
most of which is going to states,
documents obtained via public records requests revealed.

In many cases, the commission’s suggestions were highly technical and provided assistance to a federal department trying to navigate various states’ unique laws.

But at other times, the commission and its members asked the Interior Department to
tear up requirements that states prioritize plugging wells that are emitting methane,
a potent greenhouse gas,
and pay the regional prevailing wage to workers hired to do the plugging.

In an email responding to questions, Lori Wrotenbery,
the commission’s executive director,
said the group’s pushback was justified
because the Interior Department had exceeded its authority in telling states how to spend the money.

For Coleman, resistance from the commission comes as no surprise.

“The regulations and the resolutions that they promote have allowed a greater degree of pollution,” he said,
“and have allowed greater leniency on the oil and gas industry.”

Despite industry pressure,
some states have begun addressing the orphan well epidemic.

California passed a law in October that could significantly increase oil companies’ bonds.

A few weeks later, Louisiana strengthened rules pushing companies to more quickly plug wells that aren’t pumping.

But New Mexico’s story is more typical.

There and around the country, reform efforts have foundered.

Oklahoma, for example, faces an estimated shortfall of more than $7 billion between cleanup costs and bonds,
according to state data analyzed by ProPublica and Capital & Main.

Still, a group of Republican legislators has tried and failed for several years to increase the state’s bonding levels.

This legislative session,
Rep. Brad Boles,
a Republican,
ran a bill to increase the highest level of required bonds from $25,000 to $150,000.

Boles told a House committee that he had worked with two oil trade groups on the bill,
describing it as
“language that helps move the needle but also is not seen as anti-industry.”

His proposal unanimously passed the House of Representatives
and a Senate committee.

Even so, it died without a vote in the Senate.

(Boles declined to “point fingers at any particular person or group” for its failure but said he would try again next session.)

Meanwhile in West Virginia,
which has a projected bonding shortfall of more than $15 billion
and some of the nation’s weakest bonding laws,
a bill to strengthen regulations never made it onto a committee agenda.

This is the sixth straight year that such legislation has failed,
Mountain State Spotlight reported.

propublica.org/article/oil-ind…