In addition to supporting jobs that address oil patch pollution, these federal dollars are used on wells that lack any owner to pay for reclamation. Left unplugged, such orphaned oil and gas wells leak huge amounts of methane into the atmosphere and can contaminate local water sources with salty water and benzene.
The Interior Department estimates that there are about 157,000 documented orphaned oil and gas wells nationwide. This figure is likely a dramatic undercount: The Environmental Protection Agency stated in an April 2021 report that there could be as many as 3.4 million abandoned wells nationally.
“Undocumented orphaned wells may emit nearly 63 million grams of methane per hour into the atmosphere,” according to a November 2024 report, “the equivalent of over 3.6 million gasoline-powered passenger cars driven per year.”
Orphaned wells represent the final stage in what ProPublica recently described as the oil industry’s “playbook”: When oil wells are no longer productive, large companies sell them off to smaller companies and thereby shed their obligation to plug those wells.
The increasingly marginal wells change hands, eventually landing with operators who lack the financial means to plug them. And when these companies go bankrupt, the wells become orphaned, meaning that the plugging costs then fall on American taxpayers.
We poked a hole in the ground and let out gas that will kill us. And then this man who some people apparent love stopped anyone from plugging those holes. This is just… insanity. And so many countries are slipping into the right wing… I’m not very hopeful about the future.
