§ 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.