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Oil & gas inspectors not keeping up with growing energy development

The Western Organization of Resource Councils says inspections of active oil and gas wells in the West are falling behind the industry’s quick growth. The new report says the number of active oil and gas wells in Wyoming has risen from about 16,400 in 1999 to more than 37,000 in 2011. The number of inspectors increased from 6 to 12 in the same time period. Each inspector was responsible for more than 3,000 wells in 2011. 

Powder River Basin Resource Council Board Chairman John Fenton says that spreads each inspector thin.

“I’ve never seen a BLM inspector here in Pavillion, in the gas field east of Pavillion. And a lot of this is tribal mineral rights, which the BLM has authority over, but we don’t see inspectors out here. And this has been an area that has been actively drilled for decades. I think that our personal experience here mirrors what you see in this report,” says Fenton. 

The Oil and Gas Conservation Commission does not track the number of inspection conducted, so it’s not clear how often each well gets inspected.

Irina Zhorov is a reporter for Wyoming Public Radio. She earned her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA from the University of Wyoming. In between, she worked as a photographer and writer for Philadelphia-area and national publications. Her professional interests revolve around environmental and energy reporting and she's reported on mining issues from Wyoming, Mexico, and Bolivia. She's been supported by the Dick and Lynn Cheney Grant for International Study, the Eleanor K. Kambouris Grant, and the Social Justice Research Center Research Grant for her work on Bolivian mining and Uzbek alpinism. Her work has appeared on Voice of America, National Native News, and in Indian Country Today, among other publications.
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