US earmarks $15 million to tackle methane menace posed by abandoned oil & gas wells

The United States Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM), is securing federal funding in support of research and development projects that help reduce methane and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from undocumented orphaned wells (UOWs) across the country.

As informed by the DOE, up to $15 million will be allocated for projects promoting cost-effective technologies toward commercialization that address characterization, advanced remediation techniques, and long-term monitoring of UOWs, with the ultimate goal of more efficient and cost-effective permanent plugging and abandonment of such wells. These innovations will support the Biden-Harris Administration’s goal of cutting methane emissions by 30% by 2030, part of the Global Methane Pledge championed by the European Union (EU) and the U.S. at the COP26 UN Climate Conference. 

“Methane is many times more potent than carbon dioxide and is responsible for approximately one third of the warming from greenhouse gases occurring today,” said Brad Crabtree, Assistant Secretary of FECM. 

“This research will conduct critical detection, characterization, and remediation of undocumented orphaned wells to help us understand the technology needs to plug these wells, reduce methane emissions, and address the legacy pollution that harms communities and the environment.”

This is particularly relevant since the report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) disclosed in April 2024 placed the U.S. at the top of the list when it comes to emitting methane from oil and gas operations. As stated in the report, stopping the planet from warming to a dangerous level requires a 75% reduction in methane emissions from fossil fuels by 2030. State-of-the-art satellites are identified as one of the ways to tackle this issue, and one such satellite was launched in March.

UOWs are defined as idle wells whose operator is unknown or insolvent, or that were plugged or abandoned before 1985 using obsolete techniques. Furthermore, an undocumented UOW is entirely unknown, or there is some evidence of its existence, but further investigation is needed to locate and characterize it. These wells can often go undetected and uncharacterized for years or decades while potentially leaking oil, natural gas, brine, or other gases into the atmosphere. 

Over 126,000 orphaned wells and 310,000 to 800,000 undocumented orphaned wells are thought to be scattered across 32 oil-and-gas-producing states in the United States, and their numbers are expected to increase as producers move towards more sustainable sources of energy in line with global trends.

While commercial remediation technologies exist to reduce methane and other emissions from UOWs, these technologies are not being adopted and employed as quickly as necessary to meet the country’s climate goals. Reasons for this include cost, material availability, well-specific variability, and operational factors.

According to the DOE, the funding opportunity will focus on three main UOW areas. Advanced remediation techniques for boreholes are getting the biggest slice of the funding cake, or $10.2 million. This area aims to address the need for new and advanced remediation materials, such as biofilm or biochar technologies, for UOW boreholes in various conditions and with minimal surface disturbance. 

Next on the agenda is $2.5 million envisaged for each of the following two areas. The first is wellbore characterization, exploring surface deployable technologies that can be used to determine wellbore conditions without entering them. These are expected to characterize UOWs more effectively and determine the need for novel plugging and abandonment techniques in unique situations.

Long-term monitoring is the second one, aiming to find cost-effective, long-term well monitoring techniques and technologies to measure and quantify methane emissions from these wells. Since their aging equipment and infrastructure can cause uncertainties regarding emissions, developing technologies and strategies to determine the environmental impact of a UOW in varying temporal and spatial conditions is seen as essential.

Two months ago, the EU adopted its methane regulation, with implementation among member states starting in 2025. The regulation is designed to crack down on methane emissions from energy imports by setting strict new curbs on emissions from fossil fuel operations across the member states and applying strict standards to many producers exporting their oil, coal, and natural gas products to the Union.