Colorado oil companies offer $562M to guarantee to plug their wells

Colorado oil and gas companies are proposing to meet new state requirements by putting up $562 million in guarantees that their wells will be plugged at the end of their lives — more than 60% of the amount regulators targeted.

But more than a quarter of the companies filing financial plans, primarily smaller operators with low-producing wells, are offering to cover only 14% of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission’s $360 million estimate for their plugging and remediation costs.

Those 45 operators have nearly 8,600 wells with more than half of them shut-in or producing no more than 2 barrels of oil or 10,000 cubic feet of gas a day — an output that defines them as low-producing and potentially uneconomical.

The analysis is based on a review by…