ENID — More than 10,000  abandoned well sites across the state have been cleaned up by Oklahoma Energy Resource Board since the organization began its work in 1994.

According to Minday Stitt, OERB’s executive director, the organization has two main missions: First, educate Oklahomans about the oil industry and its importance; second, clean up messes created by the oil industry in years past.



Damage done early



“In the ’20s and ’30s there weren’t regulations and they weren’t sure about the environmental effect they were having by letting salt water (used in the extraction pro-cess) run and leaving trash and debris,” said Stitt.

“In early days of drilling, they would put in cement corners to hold the rig. We do a lot of concrete breaking up and hauling up.

“We see a lot of salt water damage. Sometimes there is salt water with oil. They used to not be sure what to do with it and they would just let it run on the ground. We do a lot of soil cleanup. We do run into some hydro-carbon from oil left on the ground.”

Since OERB began cleaning up well sites 16 years ago, it has spent more than $57 million on more than 10,000 sites in Oklahoma. Funds are given voluntarily by the state’s oil and natural gas producers and royalty owners.

“It is a check-off program. It is one-tenth of 1 percent on the sale of oil and gas. The producers and royalty owners can get a refund if they don’t want to contribute, but we have about 90 or 95 percent participation each year. This has been a successful program, and other states are looking at doing something similar,” Stitt said.

Because OERB is funded voluntarily by the industry, sites are cleaned up at no cost to landowners.

“The landowner can’t believe it would be true that someone would come in an clean up their site at no cost to them. They are sometimes leery of calling us because they don’t want to get stuck with the bill,” Stitt said.

Some sites only take a couple hundred dollars to remediate, while others projects can take six figures. In Garfield County, OERB has cleaned up 82 sites and spent almost $300,000.

Although OERB has cleaned around 10,300 sites in Oklahoma, more than 500,000 wells have been drilled across the state. Not all sites need remediation because not all are abandoned.

“We are making a dent, but we estimated there are at least another 30,000 sites that need remediating. The oil industry has been in the state over 100 years,” Stitt said.

OERB recently implemented new technology, called aerial reconnaissance, to search for sites, but most still are reported by landowners.

“We’ve been doing advertising since the program started, and that is where we get the majority of our sites,” said Stitt.



One happy landowner



Mark Overton, a land-owner who saw an OERB television commercial, called to have sites on his land near Covington remediated.

When Overton acquired his land 10 years ago, it included several abandoned or sites and lease roads.

“I’d seen the ads on TV with their number and said they cleaned up sites. It wasn’t a hard process, but it did take a little bit to get going. I called, and they sent people to look at it. Then they had engineers look at what needed to be done. Then they did bids,” Overton said.

He had two separate projects completed on his land by OERB.

The first was Overton Project, completed in October 2007 for about $32,000, which included cleanup, pond creation and work to halt erosion.

The second job was Overton 2 Project, completed in June 2009 for about $39,000, that funded projects similar to the first project, Overton said.

“They came in and smoothed this (lease road) all out. When lease roads are built on a hill, they tend to wash down and make ditches. I have 800 acres on this pasture, and we did numerous lease roads. They seeded it all with bermuda grass. This lease road went down in a real deep ditch, and it kept washing out real bad, so they decided to build a dam and make a pond,” Overton said. “The lease road was going over to an old well site. They cleaned it up and leveled it back out. There were seven different well sites they restored for me.”

One of Overton’s well sites was not cleaned up by OERB. Before OERB does work on a site, they attempt to find the owners of the site. If the owner is found and still is in operation, OERB has the company come back and clean up the sites. OERB was able to find the owner of one of Overton’s sites.

Overton said he is pleased with restoration of his land.

“I was kept in the loop at all times. I would come out and they would make sure everything they were doing was OK by me,” said Overton. “It was all done at no cost to me. They were real good to work with, and I was real pleased with what we got accomplished.”