N.Y. Envtl. Conserv. Law § 23-0101

Current through 2024 NY Law Chapter 553

Section 23-0101 - Definitions

As used in this article, unless the context otherwise requires:

1. "Buffer zone" means all that area outside and surrounding the underground gas storage reservoir which the department approves as appropriate to protect the integrity of the reservoir, no part of which shall be more than thirty-five hundred linear feet from the boundary thereof.

2. "Cavity" means an open or partially open space left after a salt has been solution mined.

3. "Commissioner" means the commissioner of environmental conservation.

4. "Department" means the department of environmental conservation.

5. "Fund" means the oil and gas fund as established in section eighty-three-a of the state finance law.

6. "Field" means the general area underlaid by one or more pools.

7. "Gas" means all natural, manufactured, mixed, and byproduct gas, and all other hydrocarbons not defined as oil in this section.

8. "Local agency" means any local agency, board, authority, school district, commission or governing body, including any county, city, town, village or other political subdivision of the state.

9. "Metered" means the physical measurement of gas by means acceptable to the department.

10. "Oil" means crude petroleum oil and all other hydrocarbons, regardless of gravity, that are produced at the wellhead in liquid form by ordinary production methods and that are not the result of condensation of gas.

11. "Owner" means the person who has the right to drill into and produce from a pool or a salt deposit and to appropriate the oil, gas or salt he produces either for himself or others, or for himself and others.

12. "Person" means and includes any natural person, corporation, association, partnership, receiver, trustee, executor, administrator, guardian, fiduciary, or other representative of any kind, and includes any department, agency or instrumentality of the state or any of its governmental subdivisions.

13. "Plug and abandon" means the plugging, replugging if necessary, and abandonment of a well bore including the placing of all bridges, plugs, and fluids therein and the restoration and reclamation of the surface in the immediate vicinity to a reasonable condition consistent with the adjacent terrain.

14. "Pool" means an underground reservoir containing a common accumulation of oil or gas or both; each zone of a structure which is completely separated from any other zone in the same structure is a pool.

15. "Producer" means the owner of a well or wells capable of producing oil, gas, or salt; or any salt or hydrocarbon mixture.

16. "Product" means any commodity made from oil or gas and includes refined crude oil, crude tops, topped crude, processed crude, processed crude petroleum, residue from crude petroleum, cracking stock, uncracked fuel oil, fuel oil, treated crude oil, residuum, gas oil, casinghead gasoline, natural-gas gasoline, kerosene, benzine, wash oil, waste oil, blended gasoline, lubricating oil, blends or mixtures of oil with one or more liquid products or by-products derived from oil or gas, and blends or mixtures of two or more liquid products or by-products derived from oil or gas, whether herein enumerated or not.

17. "Reservoir" means any underground reservoir, natural or artificial cavern or geologic dome, sand or stratigraphic trap, whether or not previously occupied by or containing oil or gas.

18. "Salt" means sodium chloride, evaporite or other water soluble minerals, either in solution or as a solid or crystalline material in a pure state or as a mixture.

19. "Solution mining" means the dissolving of an underground salt by water to produce a brine for transport to another underground or surface location for sale, processing or storage.

20. "Waste" means

a. Physical waste, as that term is generally understood in the oil and gas industry;

b. The inefficient, excessive or improper use of, or the unnecessary dissipation of reservoir energy;

c. The locating, spacing, drilling, equipping, operating, or producing of any oil or gas well or wells in a manner which causes or tends to cause reduction in the quantity of oil or gas ultimately recoverable from a pool under prudent and proper operations, or which causes or tends to cause unnecessary or excessive surface loss or destruction of oil or gas;

d. The inefficient storing of oil or gas; and e. The flaring of gas produced from an oil or condensate well after the department has found that the use of the gas, on terms that are just and reasonable, is, or will be economically feasible within a reasonable time.

N.Y. Envtl. Conserv. Law § 23-0101