They are among an estimated two million unplugged ‘orphan wells’ in the U.S., abandoned by the companies that drilled them
Stacks of valves, networks of pipes and hulking, two-story-tall tanks litter parts of the swampy landscape of Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin, rusting relics of sites where oil wells were drilled in the 1970s, an unwanted legacy of the energy industry that has long helped drive the Louisiana economy.
The Biden administration plans to tackle the problem nationally with $4.7-billion from the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in late 2021. Administration officials joined their state counterparts in the Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge recently to tout the efforts. The abandoned wells can leak oil field brine and cancer-causing chemicals that are components of crude oil, such as benzene. They also can emit methane, a greenhouse gas that’s 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide.
Williams’ agency last year announced it had received more than $13-million of infrastructure bill money to remediate 175 orphaned wells on six national wildlife refuges in Oklahoma and Louisiana.
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