Cleanup of two abandoned oil wells in the National Petroleum Reserve will have to be redone after a contractor reportedly did not do it correctly last winter.
State regulators blame the federal Bureau of Land Management with violating the regulations which are supposed to be implemented when plugging the exploratory wells.
BLM hired a contractor last winter who filled the wells, however the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission says it was done incorrectly on two wells.
Those two wells will need to be capped off again this coming winter.
The $50 million in funding the agency is using for the cleanup was inserted into a Helium Management bill by Senator Lisa Murkowski. That bill aims to clean up 21 of the “Legacy Wells” leftover from exploratory drilling in the NPRA from the 1940’s through the 1980’s.
