Mt. Morris company plugging gas well beside I-70
A rig marks the location where an abandoned gas well is being plugged just off the Route 917 off ramp from Interstate 70 east near Bentleyville.
Scott Beveridge/Observer-Reporter
Workers plug an abandoned gas well at the Route 917 interchange along Interstate 70 near Bentleyville in this May 2015 photo.
BENTLEYVILLE – A Greene County company typically finds itself working in an open field when it is called upon to plug an abandoned natural gas well.
These days, however, employees of Yost Drilling of Mt. Morris can easily be seen performing such a project by motorists traveling Interstate 70 near Bentleyville.
“It’s not our usual place to set up,” company owner Tom Flynn said Monday, when Yost worked to plug the well situated just a foot away from the pavement on I-70 east’s exit ramp to Route 917.
The well is shown on the original maps of I-70 when it was built in the mid-1900s, but the state Department of Transportation has no other information on it, PennDOT spokeswoman Valerie Petersen said.
“We don’t know if it was part of a farm we purchased for the highway,” she said.
“We don’t know why it wasn’t originally taken care of 65 years ago,” added Jay Ofsanik, another PennDOT spokesman.
The well needs to be plugged in order to widen I-70 and construct a new Route 917 bridge over the highway, a project that is expected to begin in August. The work is among $70 million in improvements to the road and the construction of a second interchange with a roundabout at Wilson Road in Bentleyville.
During the planning for the project, the state Historical and Museum Commission asked PennDOT to use sonar to make sure no other unmarked graves at Newkirk cemetery are paved over as some of them were in 1950. PennDOT also agreed to perform an archaeology dig to remove ancient Indian artifacts in the project’s path.
The orphaned gas well is believed to be 100 years old, and workers there already determined it’s about 1,800 feet deep.
Yost needs to find the bottom of the well, which still contains 260 pounds of gas pressure, Flynn said.
“It’s crazy,” he said.
The company also needs to remove as much of the casing in the well as possible before the void is filled with concrete “so that it’s safe to build a road there,” he said.