Jerome Bettis, DEP secretary visit Somerset Township to celebrate 500th abandoned well capped in Pennsylvania
The Bus stopped in Somerset Township Wednesday afternoon, but Jerome Bettis wasn’t there to talk about his days as a running back with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Bettis was there instead as the owner and CEO of M&A Resources, the Southpointe-based firm that specializes in plugging orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells. The occasion was the plugging of the 500th of those long-forgotten wells since Gov. Josh Shapiro took office in 2023.
“I’m proud to be part of this milestone and excited about what comes next,” Bettis said. “We are proud of the result.”
Bettis was joined by Jessica Shirley, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), at a site on Prosser Road outside Finleyville. The now-plugged well, which was drilled in 1922, was discovered this past summer as a result of a gas odor that permeated the neighborhood. There were no signs on the ground that the well was there, with the odor providing the only clue about its existence.
“You couldn’t see the well but you could smell the well,” said Adam Peltz, director and senior attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund, who was also at the event.
The well was leaking, and it was plugged under an emergency contract with M&A Resources. Bettis said, “This work takes good people who show up every day, do the job right and care about the communities they serve.”
Both Bettis and Shirley talked about the opportunities for job creation that come with plugging orphaned and abandoned wells, and it is likely that anyone who is employed in that industry will have their work cut out for them. There are an estimated 300,000 abandoned wells across Pennsylvania, many of those dating from 1859, when the first oil well in the United States was drilled in Titusville, until the commonwealth approved the Oil and Gas Act in 1984. In that 125-year span, some companies would simply walk away from wells when they became unprofitable because of the high cost of plugging them.
Altogether, the DEP has identified 27,000 orphaned and abandoned wells and says it is prioritizing those that pose the greatest threat to public health and the environment.
The state budget that was approved for the 2026-27 fiscal year has a one-time transfer of $19 million to the well-plugging program that the DEP says will “protect public health and create good-paying jobs.”
“The DEP is plugging more wells than ever, getting faster and more efficient at it,” Shirley said. “We receive new reports of abandoned wells every day.”
Shirley also said that capping the 600th well is “on the horizon.”
“It’s not a matter of if, but when,” Shirley said. “These wells pose a hazard.”