HARRISBURG, PA — The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is recognizing Harrisburg University of Science and Technology (HU) for a partnership that is modernizing how the Commonwealth locates its oldest oil and gas wells. In a new video, DEP highlights the work of HU’s Center for Applied Environmental and Geospatial Technology (CAEGT), where staff and students are digitizing thousands of historic paper maps to pinpoint wells drilled long before the state kept formal records.
Pennsylvania’s oil and gas history dates to 1859. For roughly the first 100 years, the state had no program for permitting wells. The result was a long stretch of significant drilling with no reliable regulatory record of where those wells were placed.
“During that time period, there were paper maps being developed: a whole series of maps that charted the locations of oil and gas wells,” said Seth Pelepko, DEP’s deputy secretary for oil and gas management. “We thought this was a great opportunity to utilize the expertise at Harrisburg University. They have the technology, they have the ability, and they have the students who can take these paper maps, digitize them, plot all of those well locations, and put them in a format that’s very usable to us.”
From paper maps to field data
“We start by gathering all of this data, and then we turn these maps over to the students to capture the well locations, as well as well types, permit IDs, and other information about each well in the GIS environment,” said Craig Lewis, director of CAEGT.
Students do much of that work hands-on. Rebecca, a CAEGT student worker, described the process:
“For any maps we’re given, we bring them into the ArcGIS program and apply definition queries to look at the specific area of that map,” she said. “Then we scan through the maps to mark where the wells are and go through the attribute table to fill in all of the information for each specific well.”
The scale of the discoveries has exceeded the team’s expectations.
“I was expecting a lot of wells. I don’t know if I was expecting quite as many as we have found,” Lewis said. “We’re currently sitting right around the 6,000-map mark. By the end of the next three and a half to four years, we will have processed somewhere around 35,000, is the estimate. And from the maps we’ve analyzed so far, we’ve found about 90,000 wells.”
For DEP, that data translates directly into fieldwork. Identifying these wells helps the department direct inspections and prioritize well plugging, an effort that recently reached a milestone of 500 orphan and abandoned wells plugged statewide.
“This is helping modernize the way we identify historical oil and gas wells. It’s giving us more data whereby we can make decisions,” Pelepko said. “As a regulator, we now have access to literally tens of thousands of prospective well locations. We can get this information out to our inspectors, go out in the field, and try to identify these wells. Without Harrisburg University’s expertise, we wouldn’t be able to do this.”
A partnership more than a decade in the making
The oil and gas project builds on more than a decade of collaboration between HU and DEP. Since its earliest years, the Center has supported DEP’s Mine Map Grant program, scanning, georeferencing, and digitizing historic mine maps to build one of Pennsylvania’s most significant environmental information resources. Of the many grantees that began work on the program, CAEGT is one of only three still active. Here’s a quick timeline:
- Originally known as the Geospatial Technology Center, the Center adopted the CAEGT name in 2020 to reflect a portfolio that had grown to include environmental science, applied research, web GIS, drone technology, and AI-enabled applications.
- Its oil and gas work expanded in December 2024, when the Environmental Defense Fund selected HU to lead a well-mapping project with Indiana University of Pennsylvania, the Center’s first project partnership with another university.
- In January 2026, the PA DEP awarded HU a $1.6 million, 3.5-year contract extension, funded through the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to continue locating abandoned wells using GIS, AI, and machine learning.
Students remain at the heart of the Center’s model. More than 120 HU students have held paid GIS positions with CAEGT, some logging more than 3,000 hours of professional experience before graduation, while working alongside partners such as the Tri-County Regional Planning Commission, the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, Pennsylvania American Water, and Capital Region Water.
Learn more about the Center for Applied Environmental and Geospatial Technology at HarrisburgU.edu.
About Harrisburg University
Harrisburg University of Science and Technology (HU) is an independent, nonprofit university in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, offering degrees in advanced manufacturing, analytics, biotechnology, cybersecurity, nursing, and other STEM fields. Accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, HU serves a diverse student body through bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs that link research with practical application. Learn more at HarrisburgU.edu or stay in the know by following HU on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, and YouTube.
Media contact
Have questions about this story? Want to line up an interview? Contact Dan Wilhelm, director of communications, at DWilhelm@HarrisburgU.edu.
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