'Orphan' gas and oil wells are found 'everywhere,' as the federal government aims to plug these hidden polluters

Adapted screenshot of interactive map that has data by county; for the interactive version click here.

Workers cap an orphaned well in Louisiana.
(Photo by Cooper Neill, The Washington Post)

On its own, an orphaned oil or gas well (named so because often no viable owner exists) has little impact the planet; however, across the U.S., there are thousands of unplugged wells that "collectively account for a significant source of the potent greenhouse gas" and pollute water, notes Brady Dennis of The Washington Post. "Congress set aside an unprecedented $4.7 billion to fund the idea in late 2021. . . . Dedicating billions of dollars to target the most troublesome wells around the country has the potential to result in significantly fewer toxic substances, such as arsenic and benzene, polluting groundwater."

Dennis joined the Tolbert Construction crew in the piney woods of Louisiana to understand the "find-and-plug-well" process: "Merely locating orphan wells can be arduous, and plugging them is tedious, time-consuming and expensive. To follow a crew like Tolbert's is to understand how the work is a mixture of sweat, science and improvisation. They must navigate swampy roads or thick forests with heavy equipment to access the wells, remove miles of steel piping, set underground plugs to prevent fluid from flowing, fill straw-like holes with cement, remove the well head, and restore the land to something resembling normal. The whole endeavor takes days and can cost $30,000 to plug a single well — and sometimes far more."

Attempting to count abandoned wells is like counting stars. "The wells are everywhere. They're in backyards and buried under thorny thickets in suburban woods. Rusted pipes rise from the farmland of Texas and New Mexico, from an Amish community in Kentucky, from the bayous in Louisiana and the dense forests in Pennsylvania and Ohio," Dennis writes. "They have been found under sidewalks and driveways, houses and apartment buildings — and in at least one Wyoming schoolyard."

Adam Peltz, a director and senior attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund who has worked on the issue for years, told Dennis, "We really only know where a fraction of them are. We are only scratching the surface on this." Dennis reports, "According to its most recent national inventory, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates the actual number of abandoned wells around the country could be in the millions and that the methane that leaks from them each year accounts for nearly 3 percent of the U.S. total."

Dennis explains, "Curtis Shuck, a former oil and gas executive, founded a nonprofit known as the Well Done Foundation, whose work has been funded primarily by philanthropic donors and corporate sponsors. . . . His foundation also has backed a carbon accounting methodology that, if adopted by the American Carbon Registry, could offer an incentive for businesses that want to offset emissions. Already, the nonprofit is plugging or monitoring wells in about a dozen states and has plugged 25 wells so far, with plans to keep expanding."

"Louisiana is home to more than 4,500 orphaned wells . . . . there are high hopes for the months ahead," Dennis reports. "With the federal money flowing, the state and its contractors have already plugged more than 100 wells this year, and some workers say 500 or more might be possible depending on the weather and any problems they encounter. Patrick Courreges, a Louisiana Department of Natural Resources spokesman, told Dennis, "We want to show bang for the buck."