Finding or Fixing: Chicken or the Egg

Federal funding for decommissioning orphan wells is now available for many states. States are also encouraged to use the funding and resources to locate older undocumented orphan wells.

Prior to relatively new levels of regulatory oversight, little was required in the way of plugging when a well was decommissioned. Permitting was not a requirement in the industry’s early days and as such records on legacy wells are few and far between. Broad estimates suggest there may be vast amounts of undocumented wells but locating them is easier said than done.

Lost & Found: Legacy Wells

Some states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio are investing resources to find these undocumented wells: In one Pennsylvania park, five “lost” wells are found for every well already mapped, according to Richard Hammack, a researcher at NETL in Pittsburgh.

Many states have only rough estimates of orphan wells to be plugged. Pennsylvania lists 30,000 documented orphan wells, but estimates range from 200,000 to 750,000. Ohio has documented 20,000 orphan wells but estimates it may have up to 70,000 undocumented orphan wells.

“In three of four areas we flew in Pennsylvania, we would have, for every well in the state database, we would find at least two wells that were unreported,” said Hammack. Pennsylvania has implemented a drone program, using advanced magnetic anomaly detection to find metal well casings and methane detection to identify well emissions with results confirmed with on-ground survey crews.

Maximizing Impact: One Step at a Time

There is growing sentiment that efforts to find undocumented orphan wells are not the best use of federal funding. Current estimates project the $4.7B in projected funding won’t even get close to plugging the documented orphan wells we know about – let alone all the undocumented ones we haven’t found.

While some efforts to locate undocumented orphan wells may very well be justified – super emitters, wells in urban or environmentally sensitive areas, or problem wells disproportionately impacting communities or natural resources. Spending large amounts carrying out ground surveys in uninhabited areas, hoping to stumble over lost wells, is certainly less impactful than plugging wells that are known to be problematic.