{"id":25489,"date":"2025-06-02T13:19:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T18:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/?p=25489"},"modified":"2025-06-02T13:19:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T18:19:08","slug":"legacy-liabilities-for-oil-and-gas-wells-under-the-mineral-leasing-act-new-sabin-center-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/2025\/06\/02\/legacy-liabilities-for-oil-and-gas-wells-under-the-mineral-leasing-act-new-sabin-center-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Legacy Liabilities for Oil and Gas Wells under the Mineral Leasing Act: New Sabin Center Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sabin Center\u2019s newest publication,\u00a0Legacy Liabilities for Oil and Gas Wells under the Mineral Leasing Act<\/em><\/a>, examines the laws and regulations that allow the Bureau of Land Management (\u201cBLM\u201d) to pursue the prior owners and operators of oil and gas wells on federal land for the costs of plugging those wells, removing other infrastructure, and generally \u201ccleaning up\u201d at the end of operations. These costs, which we refer to as \u201clegacy liabilities,\u201d are meant to be paid by oil and gas operators but, in recent years, have increasingly fallen on taxpayers as operators have skirted their legal requirements. \u00a0Our new report documents the history of legacy liabilities on the BLM-managed land, highlights key gaps in the MLA\u2019s legacy liability rules, and recommends reforms to the laws governing well-plugging and other clean-up on federal land.<\/p>\n

Background<\/u><\/h2>\n

The federal government is the largest landowner in the United States. The bulk of federal land is controlled by BLM, an agency within the Department of the Interior (\u201cDOI\u201d) that manages more than 245 million acres or approximately 10% of the land in the United States<\/a>. Below the ground, BLM\u2019s authority extends even further, with the Bureau controlling around 700 million acres of minerals. That is equivalent to roughly 30% of the onshore mineral resources in the United States.<\/p>\n

The enormous scale of oil and gas production on federal land has created a similarly enormous demand for environmental remediation. In the United States, the owners and operators of oil and gas infrastructure often have obligations \u201cto clean up after themselves<\/a> \u2014 to remove their installations at the end of their useful lives and make their abandoned sites safe.\u201d These obligations are set out in statutes and regulations that are often referred to generally as \u201cenvironmental repair laws.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the past century, Congress and DOI have established a complex set of environmental repair laws that govern oil and gas production on federal land. While these laws primarily target the current owners of oil and gas wells, they also allow BLM to pursue the former owners and operators of these assets for unpaid environmental repair costs\u2014a form of prohibition regime known as \u201ctrailing liability.\u201d However, BLM has sometimes struggled to enforce these environmental repair laws, resulting in thousands of abandoned and gas wells<\/a> that pose major risks to the environment and the public. In recent years, as the federal government has been forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars towards cleaning up these \u201corphaned\u201d wells, even though oil and gas operators should have footed the bill..<\/p>\n

Enforcing Legacy Liabilities on BLM-Managed Land<\/u><\/h2>\n

The Sabin Center\u2019s new report, Legacy Liabilities for Oil and Gas Wells under the Mineral Leasing Act<\/em><\/a>, examines the laws and regulations that allow BLM to pursue the prior owners and operators of oil and gas wells on federal land for the costs of environmental repair. \u00a0The report begins with an overview of oil and gas leasing on federal land, the environmental hazards posed by idled, abandoned, and orphaned oil and gas wells, and the challenges well abandonment has posed for BLM. The report then goes on to discuss the statutes and regulations that create legacy liability for oil and gas well-plugging obligations, and the way that BLM\u2019s legacy liability laws have been addressed by the courts. Finally, the report \u00a0highlights key gaps in existing \u00a0legacy liability rules, and offers high-level suggestions to reform the environmental repair laws governing well-plugging on federal land.<\/p>\n

The full report,\u00a0Legacy Liabilities for Oil and Gas Wells under the Mineral Leasing Act<\/em>, is available\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This report was authored by:<\/p>\n

Martin Lockman<\/strong>, Climate Law Fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and Associate Research Scholar at Columbia Law School.<\/p>\n

Ashwin Murthy<\/strong>, Negative Emissions Fellow at the Sabin Center and a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Columbia Law School.<\/p>\n

Romany M. Webb<\/strong>, Deputy Director of the Sabin Center, Research Scholar at Columbia Law School, Adjunct Associate Professor of Climate at the Columbia Climate School, and Senior Advisor on Climate Science at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sabin Center\u2019s newest publication,\u00a0Legacy Liabilities for Oil and Gas Wells under the Mineral Leasing Act, examines the laws and regulations that allow the Bureau of Land Management (\u201cBLM\u201d) to pursue the prior owners and operators of oil and gas wells on federal land for the costs of plugging those wells, removing other infrastructure, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2268,"featured_media":25492,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69249,69213,69222,9471],"tags":[65765,5668,9338,9449,9379,584],"class_list":{"0":"post-25489","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-energy","8":"category-environment-land-use","9":"category-fossil-fuels","10":"category-natural-resources","11":"tag-energy-transition","12":"tag-land-use","13":"tag-natural-gas","14":"tag-oil-and-gas","15":"tag-pollution","16":"tag-publications","17":"czr-hentry"},"yoast_head":"\nLegacy Liabilities for Oil and Gas Wells under the Mineral Leasing Act: New Sabin Center Report - Climate Law Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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