There Are About 3 Million Abandoned Oil & Gas Wells In US; We Can Now Expect Many More
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic that's shaken the global oil sector, oil states fighting to restart their economies may face another kind of crisis: orphaned wells. The pandemic could add thousands of wells to already-strapped programs to reclaim old oil infrastructure in the West and Appalachia. Some states have cleanup programs and funding streams dating from previous orphan well crises. Others don't. Most are expecting their numbers to go up.
"There is no way to put a hard number on it, but we know it's coming," said Patrick Courreges, communications director for the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources. "We are fully expecting to see another big wave." Louisiana plugs about 180 orphaned wells a year, paid for from a tax on industry. The state's current count, however, is 4,000. There are more than 3 million abandoned wells pockmarking the country today, from Louisiana's coast to backcountry Kentucky to Wyoming's high desert (Energywire, May 20, 2019). Orphans are wells that have no ties to a solvent company or responsible party, and so their cleanup falls to the state or federal government. Costs range from the thousands to, in some instances, millions per well (Energywire, Nov. 7, 2019).
In Ohio, an orphan sits in the center of a major freeway being built outside Cleveland and must be plugged before construction. Outside of Pittsburgh, a man smelled gas and dug up his backyard, finding an 1,800-foot-deep well from the early 1900s, covered with a plastic bucket. These holes were punched during oil and gas booms and left behind when wells dried, or prices fell and companies went bust. Some are fairly harmless, but some are risky, already leaking toxins or natural gas.
Even before the recent oil price dive, these wells represented a burden, both in terms of cost and manpower. The depression in the oil business, caused by an oil glut and unprecedented drops in demand due to the pandemic, threatens to increase that weight. In Pennsylvania, the state's chief oil and gas regulator, Scott Perry, warned the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in April of a "looming crisis." As he saw it, conditions were ripe for "a mass abandonment of wells."
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