A climate group is pointing to a multimillion-dollar shortfall in money needed to clean up old oil infrastructure in Wyoming to highlight the shortcomings in President Joe Biden’s proposed oil reforms.
Nestled next to the Rocky Mountains, Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin hit peak oil production in the 1970s. But as it declines, its old oil wells and pipelines need to be decommissioned at a cost of up to $900 million, according to a report released Thursday by Carbon Tracker.
A proposed oil and gas rule from the Bureau of Land Management would add just $28 million to current federal bonds to cover that cleanup, according to the report.
The BLM rule would be the most significant update to oil and gas regulations on public lands in decades and reflects the Biden administration’s broader effort to tighten restrictions on public land drilling. The proposal would greatly increase the amount of money drillers have to secure before they operate on public lands — changing a minimum bond for a BLM lease from $10,000 to $150,000 — a safeguard to cover cleanup costs if companies go under.
