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LAist is part of Southern California Public Radio, a member-supported public media network. For the latest national news from NPR and our live radio broadcast, visitThis aerial image shows a truck as it drives across a flooded road past Central Valley farmland along the Tule River in Tulare County during a winter storm near Corcoran, California, on March 21, 2023.
While it's still cooler along the coasts, the highs are in the upper 70s and it'll be breezy, with winds up to 20 mph. In downtown L.A., it will get up to 89. Over in the valleys, highs will be in the mid 90s except for the Antelope Valley, where highs will be in the mid to upper 80s. The well needed to be decommissioned, along with at least 21 more spread across woodlands and fields in McKean County, Pennsylvania. The job fell to Mong and other employees of an oil service outfit called Plants & Goodwin, which specializes in plugging so-called orphan wells.
The state oil and gas regulators responsible for issuing well-plugging contracts are typically understaffed. As a result, the pace of contract assignment in some states has been inconsistent, making it difficult for plugging companies to staff up and plan ahead. Well pluggers are also few and far between. Since oil operators, the service has remained a niche industry. Plugging companies have also struggled to find trained workers, not to mention the specialized equipment required to plug wells.
In a normal year, the California Geologic Energy Management Division , which regulates oil and gas production in the state, might contract plugging for 30 wells. According to former CalGEM employees, decommissioning even that number of wells had the agency running on all cylinders. Plants & Goodwin, which is headquartered in Bradford, Pennsylvania, has operated as an oil service company since 1970, but it pivoted to specialize in well-plugging operations in 2015.To expedite aspects of the contract-drafting process, DEP has signaled that it may outsource some of that work.
For a plugger, non-compliance could mean illegal dumping or improperly sealing a well; for an operator, it might mean abandoning a well without plugging it. But such policies can be difficult to implement when oil and gas companies sometimes operate through a bevy of subsidiaries in multiple states.against Diversified in West Virginia, around 10 percent of its 23,309 wells in the state are technically abandoned but unplugged.
Troy Hadfield uses a forklift to convert the area of a finished orphan well project from a muddy worksite to a walking trail.Plants has brought in experienced pluggers from Texas oil fields to help train up a new generation of skilled Pennsylvania hands. “We want to develop a local workforce that understands this work,” he said. But “you can’t just put whole crews of inexperienced people out there.
Cory Copp stands behind the team’s 1981 well plugging rig, attached to the back of a Vietnam War-era truck.On the whole, a few recent high school graduates on Plants’ payroll might not seem like bellwethers of a next-generation workforce. But some experts watching the federal orphan well program contend that a well-plugging wave could revive regions whose economic fates are tied to dwindling resource extraction sectors.
The thinking is two-pronged: access to quality jobs and layoff mitigation. That means offering good work to skilled laborers vulnerable to the energy transition. “So rather than just worry about the loss of jobs, it’s an opportunity to think about the new jobs for trades workers,” said Tim Rainey, executive director of CWDB. The program is in the early stages, but it offers a glimmer of what an effective orphan well program could yield.
By expanding the language to characterize eligible workers as “skilled and trained or covered by a labor management agreement,” the law could tap into tens of thousands of union workers represented by USW, Rogers said. Making these upgrades to your home and lifestyle will cost money — and you will need to plan ahead, says Joel Rosenberg of the nonprofit group Rewiring America and the author of. So don't feel like you have to change out your appliances overnight. Instead, buy them as your existing machines wear out. He offers a catchy phrase:"When it starts dying, get electrifying."into your home.
"[On] the low end you might be able to get away with $5,000, and on the high end, it might be $50,000, to get your whole home to run entirely on a heat pump," says Rosenberg. Electric vehicles are also getting more affordable. A small EV, such as the Nissan Leaf, starts around $30,000. That's $10,000 more than a comparable gas car, but the federal government hasInstalling a charger at home adds to the cost but some utilities offer incentives, such as cheaper charging during off-peak hours.
"If you have a warmer and sometimes dryer climate, you push yourself above the upper end of that acceptable envelope in these hotter and drier places," he said."And therefore, you lose a lot of potential prescribed fire days in these places."If you have really extreme weather conditions, you might still have a high intensity fire in those areas, according to Swain.
“I can’t help but think of how proud Senator Feinstein would be, seeing someone as brilliant, as accomplished, as history-making as Laphonza Butler take her place,” Schumer said. “I know that our old colleague is looking down at this moment with pride, now that her seat is in good hands.” Butler’s candidacy could especially complicate the path forward for Lee, who has trailed Schiff and Porter in early polling and fundraising. Many Lee supporters who pushed Newsom to fulfill his promise of appointing a Black woman by tapping the East Bay progressive icon were nonetheless pleased with the governor’s selection of Butler.
“She understood the plight of low-wage workers,” said Carmen Roberts, executive vice president of SEIU 2015. “She listened and she had a voice and used that voice to carry those values — the things that were valuable to the care workers — to the governor.” Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher dubbed Butler “Maryland 3rd US Senator,” in a statement, adding “Out of 40 million California residents, Gavin Newsom seriously couldn’t find one to serve in the Senate?”
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