{"id":21315,"date":"2021-05-04T09:43:48","date_gmt":"2021-05-04T14:43:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/?p=21315"},"modified":"2021-05-04T09:43:48","modified_gmt":"2021-05-04T14:43:48","slug":"maximizing-the-historic-job-creation-opportunity-waiting-in-our-nations-old-and-leaking-oil-and-gas-wells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2021\/05\/04\/maximizing-the-historic-job-creation-opportunity-waiting-in-our-nations-old-and-leaking-oil-and-gas-wells\/","title":{"rendered":"Maximizing the historic job creation opportunity waiting in our nation\u2019s old and leaking oil and gas wells"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By Adam Peltz<\/a>, Senior Attorney, Energy<\/em><\/p>\n

After over 150 years of boom and bust oil and gas development, there are over a million inactive, unplugged oil and gas wells across the country. A new study published in the journal Elementa describes<\/a> how, when not properly plugged, these wells can contaminate groundwater and emit methane as well as harmful chemicals into the atmosphere that endanger the economy and public health in communities where they are found. It also provides suggestions for how to maximize the environmental benefits of efforts to plug these wells.<\/p>\n

There are 57,000 documented<\/a> \u201corphan\u201d wells across the country, meaning they have no owner of record, at least not one that\u2019s still in business, and hundreds of thousands more orphan wells that are not documented. State, federal and tribal governments are left with the responsibility of plugging these wells \u2013 some of which have been abandoned for decades.<\/p>\n

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Plugging old oil and gas wells can be an expensive endeavor. The most complex, and damaged wells may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to properly plug. The total public liability from all these wells is likely in the tens of billions of dollars, perhaps approaching $100 billion.<\/p>\n

Most oil and gas states have orphan well plugging programs, but they are often insufficient to deal with the magnitude of the problem. For example, Pennsylvania is ground zero<\/a> with over 8,500 documented orphan wells and likely hundreds of thousands others drilled before good records were kept. It could take hundreds of years to fix the problem at current rates of progress.<\/p>\n

Low prices and the COVID recession exacerbate this problem, as well as potential solutions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stakeholders have increasingly focused on the orphan well problem in the past several years as a low-price environment tends to increase the rate of orphaning due to bankruptcies and other factors. When the pandemic hit at the same time as a global oil price war<\/a>, it led to tens of thousands of oil and gas job losses, and many observers saw a historic opportunity to use federal stimulus funding to create jobs plugging these wells..<\/p>\n

Inspired in part by a Canadian orphan well stimulus effort<\/a>, political leaders began planning a stimulus effort in the United States. Today, there are several pieces of legislation and other proposals to address orphan wells:<\/p>\n