Locating and characterizing undocumented orphaned wells across the United States

More than a hundred thousand documented orphaned oil and gas wells are known to exist in the United States, with potentially over a million remaining undocumented. Due to funding shortfalls, many orphaned wells remain unplugged and are negatively impacting human health, degrading the environment, and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, such as methane. Nearly $5B in federal funding has been committed to plug documented orphaned wells and locate undocumented orphaned wells, which are wells with unknown locations and well conditions. To inform plugging efforts, optimize mitigation, and improve our understanding of the risks of orphaned wells, we will develop novel frameworks for locating and characterizing undocumented orphaned wells across the United States, combining field work and advanced analytics such as machine learning. The research project aligns with the expertise and ongoing research work of both the home supervisor (McGill University) and host supervisors (Los Alamos National Laboratory), which focus on characterizing orphaned wells and quantifying their methane emissions. Our results will help prioritize plugging and remediation for the hundreds of thousands, potentially over a million, orphaned wells across the country.

Faculty Supervisor:

Mary Kang

Student:

Partner:

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Discipline:

Physics

Sector:

Artificial Intelligence; Oil and Gas

University:

McGill University

Program: