Beneath quiet neighborhoods across America, millions of forgotten oil and gas wells quietly exist—except some not so quietly. For NPR, Camila Domonoske takes a deep dive into the problem of long-ago plugged wells that are now leaking via the experience of Maria Burns, 79, who recently watched as crews worked for months to re-plug a leaking well in her yard in Ashland, Ohio. The well had been sealed once before, about 70 years ago, but deteriorating materials led to leaks that killed nearby plants and raised concerns about water and air contamination.
Domonoske offers an easy-to-comprehend explainer of the science involved: In Burns' case, deep under her lawn is a layer of sandstone that dates back hundreds of millions of years, to when the land was covered by a sea.
- "Trapped in the pores of that sandstone are molecules that are even older still: the remains of countless prehistoric lifeforms, transformed by time and heat into oil and natural gas. That process happened even deeper in the earth. But oil and natural gas don't like to stay put; in an underground formation, both those substances want to go up. ... Think of water flowing until it reaches a dam: It pools where gravity makes it stop. The same thing can happen in oil and gas formations; the fuel moves up until it's stopped, and there, it starts to accumulate. That high concentration of fuel is valuable. It also explains why properly plugging an oil well is essential. Any remaining oil and gas ... could use the old well as a path to migrate up and into the atmosphere."
Properly plugging a well involves drilling out old materials and refilling the hole with cement, a process that can take weeks or even months. Burns' well was one of America's many "orphan wells"—abandoned by companies that are no longer responsible for them (either because they were already plugged once, because they were drilled before there were plugging laws, or because the company went bankrupt), and now a state problem.
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No one knows the exact number of orphan wells nationwide, but estimates suggest there may be more than a million. State programs like Ohio's, funded by fees on oil production, have stepped up efforts to address the issue. Still, demand far exceeds capacity; last year Ohio plugged 353 wells, an improvement from previous years but just a fraction of the total. Federal funding—$4.7 billion under a recent initiative—is helping, though it's far from enough. The total cost to deal with Burns' orphaned well? $400,000. (Read the fascinating piece in full here.)
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