By Mike Tony, Charleston Gazette-Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — All is often not well when wells end.
In 2020, Carbon Tracker, a London-based think tank researching climate change impacts on financial markets, estimated the costs of plugging gas and oil wells that ceased production in West Virginia exceeded $7.6 billion — with bonds totaling just $28.7 million to cover that expense.
That same year, a senior advisor to Carbon Tracker reflected on the business model behind thousands of those wells in West Virginia and across Appalachia in a conference call with the Capitol Forum, a corporate news analysis service.
The advisor called that business model a “legal Ponzi scheme.”
“[I]t only works as long as there’s growth and the perception of profitability,” Greg Rogers said…