The interior secretary said that about $33 million of the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan recently signed into law by President Joe Biden would be used to clear 277 of the roughly 15,000 abandoned oil and gas wells on federal lands.

Interior Secretary Deb Harland added in a news conference that millions of Americans live within a mile of abandoned oil or gas wells, adding that these wells pose a threat to people, especially in ethnic and rural communities.

There are an estimated 15,000 abandoned wells on federal lands. States say they need more than $8 billion to clear the other 130,000 orphaned wells, said Laura Daniel-Davis, principal deputy assistant secretary for lands and minerals. Daniel-Davis said the $1.1 billion announced in January included funding to help identify state inventories and make them available to states under infrastructure laws.

Daniel-Davis said this is the first $250 million in funding provided through the Infrastructure Act to clear orphaned wells and fields on federal public lands, national parks, national wildlife refuges, and national forests. She said the next one could be announced in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

Including wells on federal lands, the bill would provide $4.7 billion to clean up orphaned oil and gas wells, said Mitch Landrieu, Biden’s infrastructure coordinator. Louisiana has approximately 163 wells spread across five wildlife preserves and the Barataria Unit of Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve. Sixty-eight are in Darbonne National Wildlife Refuge, and 59 are in Upper Ouachita National Wildlife Refuge.

Kentucky, Daniel Boone National Forest and Oklahoma Deep Fork National Wildlife Refuge have 24. Another 20 are in Texas, 18 are in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest, and 14 are on Utah Bureau of Land Management lands. In addition, the government will conduct an inventory and assessment of water wells at the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Utah.

Ten wells are in California, three in Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and one in West Virginia’s Gawley River National Recreation Area. The contractor will measure the methane before, and after the cleanup, Haaland said.
Louisiana has about 4,600 orphaned wells, which state law defines as wells whose owners either go out of business or ignore state cleanup orders, said Patrick Courreges, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources.

Environmentalists often see those who have been in lockdown for at least five years as abandoned, he said. As of last fall, he said 447 companies owned 9,352 such wells. For the past five or six years, he said that Louisiana has plugged between 120 and 200 abandoned oil wells a year.