Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is an orphaned well and who owns them?

A: An orphaned oil and gas well is one that is no longer in use and has no legally responsible party to oversee its proper plugging and abandonment. These wells were typically drilled by companies that have since gone out of business or have otherwise dissolved, leaving no entity to manage the decommissioning process.

Q: What is the Bureau of Land Management’s role in plugging wells in this area?

A: The BLM manages minerals that are owned by the United States. This usually includes minerals under Federal surface, such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ civil works projects and national forests. In these cases, the wells were present when the Forest Service or the Corps purchased the land. The BLM and these agencies have plugged a few orphaned wells in the last few decades, but the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed in 2021, provides a significant amount of funding to the Department of the Interior for plugging orphaned wells.

Q: Why do these wells need to be plugged?

A: These legacy pollution sites are environmental hazards and jeopardize public health and safety by contaminating groundwater, emitting noxious gases like methane, littering the landscape with rusted and dangerous equipment, and harming wildlife. Properly plugging these wells and reclaiming the surrounding area will mitigate methane emissions and address land and water contamination, including potential leaks from old well casing, oil tanks, and pipelines.

Q: How long does it take to plug an orphaned well?

A: It depends heavily on the amount of earthwork that has to be done to access the well, the well’s depth, and other aspects of the landscape as well, but usually a plugging takes a few weeks.

Q: What is involved in plugging a well?

A: First, the well has to be located. Since many orphaned wells were drilled long before GPS or thorough permitting requirements, a lot of these wells are known only by a crude map or a rough location on a faded permit form. Since the well site locations have not been maintained, many of the wells have become buried in dense vegetation in remote areas. Second, after locating a well and determining that it has no known responsible operator or adequate bonding, the agencies determine whether the well is emitting methane or leaking other contaminants into the atmosphere or surface. The agencies use high-resolution topographic maps and site visits to determine where to place a temporary road and pad around the well. A contractor is hired to clear vegetation and grade the temporary road and pad. If the route to the well has to cross a stream or a wetland, the contractor may need to install mats to minimize soil compaction or install a temporary bridge. The contractor removes the surface equipment, such as tanks and pipelines, and as much as possible of any other objects that have fallen or been placed in the well bore. The contractor fills the bore with cement, then installs a well identification plate on the well and burying it below grade. Then finally, the contractor removes the temporary road and restores the land by planting seeds or plants.