Billions Spent on Abandoned Oil Wells Scratch at Ignored Problem

Cheryl Thomas stood in the woods near her northwestern Pennsylvania home on a rainy afternoon in June, watching black crude drip from an abandoned oil well just steps from a creek leading to the Allegheny River.

“The wet season, it flows like this all the time,” Thomas said.

She and her husband have counted about 60 derelict oil wells on their land east of Bradford, where companies began drilling one of America’s first oil fields in 1871.

The couple live with that legacy daily: Oil and methane have leached into their water supply and they filter water from their kitchen ...