The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection recently released its first-ever assessment of the compliance of conventional oil and gas operators in conjunction with the state’s annual oil and gas report and found conventional well operators don’t comply with its rules more often than they do in some areas, according to Farm and Dairy.

The report found only about a quarter of conventional oil and gas well operators in Pennsylvania filed their annual production and inspection data to the state on time in 2021 and another 12% reported late. The remainder never reported their data at all.

Failure to plug a well upon abandoning it is another area conventional operators are falling short in. It was the most frequent violation issued to well operators in the past 5 years as the DEP has issued it more than 3,000 times since 2017.

Learn more: Farm and Dairy > Many conventional well operators don’t comply with DEP rules: report