There’s a huge problem looming as California moves beyond fossil fuels: How to get its declining oil industry to plug and remediate tens of thousands of oil and gas wells that already sit idle or won’t be producing for much longer. And unfortunately, it’s looking like the companies responsible for the wells, tanks and pipelines won’t end up paying anything close to what it will take to clean up the mess they leave behind. All told, it could cost as much as $21.5 billion to clean and decommission … Without swift and dramatic changes, much of the cleanup costs will fall to taxpayers. That would be a shameful abrogation of responsibility by an industry that has for more than a century profited mightily from extracting California’s underground deposits while fueling the climate crisis, fouling the air and contaminating soil and water.