Staci Taruscio spent more than a decade scouting and drilling oil wells across the US, first as an engineer for others and then as head of her own company. Like most in the business, Taruscio spent scant time or effort following up on the fate of wells she once owned—hundreds of sites spread across the Great Plains.
In perhaps 15 cases, she says, her company had sealed them with cement, but for all she knew, the others were spewing toxic gases. “When we look back at the way we treated some wells that we probably should have plugged, it’s a source of a little bit of shame, honestly,” she says.
