No One Is Certain, But EPA Estimates That There are 3.7 Million Abandoned US Oil/Gas Wells, 58% Of Them Unsealed [View all]

There are a few truisms in the oil and gas industry: It is crowded with prodigious egos, there is always a boom around the corner and some industry operators aren’t above walking away from their mess at played-out well sites. Abandoning wells is a deliberate technique to pad marginal oil and gas operators’ profits by dodging cleanup costs. In December, for instance, the New Mexico attorney general sued three Texas oilmen, accusing them of selling more than 500 unproductive wells to shell companies created for the purpose of declaring bankruptcy to avoid remediation costs.

Many of the millions of wells left derelict throughout oil-producing states are abandoned, often unplugged and polluting, some with owners of record and others, orphans with no known owner responsible for cleaning them up. In 2023 the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that there are around 3.7 million abandoned and orphaned oil and gas wells—AOOG for short—in the U.S., out of about 4 to 5 million that have been drilled since 1859. The EPA says 58 percent of abandoned wells it has logged are not plugged. A significant number of the rest were sealed so poorly, or so long ago, that their plugs are failing today. The federal Orphaned Wells Program, using data compiled by the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, has documented 141,000 orphaned wells nationally and estimates there are an additional 250,000 to 740,000 out there, somewhere.

EDIT

Each abandoned or orphaned well is a mystery that unravels as it’s plugged. Some are relatively inert on their own, but other unplugged wells might vent hydrocarbons like methane, volatile organic compounds like the carcinogen benzene or deadly gases like hydrogen sulfide. Some leak oil, or a brine called “produced water” contaminated with heavy metals, chemicals or radioactivity. Some pollute underground aquifers or nearby surface waters. Others create their own noxious lakes. Changing subterranean conditions can make previously stable AOOG wells vent or leak.

Wastewater from oil and gas production is typically disposed of by pumping it into spent, adjacent oil and gas wells, but overpressurized underground disposal reservoirs can force it back to the surface where it can disrupt production from other oil and gas wells.In addition to fouling nearby waterways, groundwater, air and ecosystems, AOOG wells contribute to the greenhouse gas pollution that drives global warming. According to the EPA’s 2024 assessment of greenhouse gas emissions, AOOG wells spewed 303 kilotons of methane, ranking fifth among the nine methane emitters in the U.S. energy sector.

EDIT

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10052026/well-done-foundation-plugging-abandoned-oil-gas-wells/