At a March 21 meeting in Pierre, the Board of Minerals and Environment, a nine-member citizen panel appointed by the governor, imposed a maximum civil penalty of $500 per well, per day on Spyglass for violations of state regulations related to the condition of the wells. The total penalty is $15.494 million.

Extracting any money from Spyglass could prove challenging, based on past indications. Earlier this year, for example, the company failed to stave off the revocation of its permits when it was unable to post a $200,000 cash or surety bond requested by the Board of Minerals and Environment.

To help fund the plugging of some of the Spyglass wells, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has proposed using a $130,000 bond from a failed oil-well project near Wasta.

That project, undertaken by a company called Quartz Operations, ended shortly after it began in 2013. During drilling of the project’s first well, a 150-foot section of the drill stem got stuck 2,760 feet down the borehole. After trying and failing to remove the drill stem, the company capped the upper portion of the well with concrete.