New federal funding announced in April will help bolster Mississippi‘s efforts to locate potential orphan wells, the State Oil and Gas Board says.
Orphan wells, most of which were used for oil or gas production, are wells that are no longer used but have no ownership record or the company that dug them no longer exists. In an effort to ensure those wells don’t leak oil or methane, the federal government is spending $4.7 billion through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act. The U.S. Department of the Interior announced $6.8 million for Mississippi on April 24, adding to the $5 million the state received in initial funding.
“Many of these wells pose serious health and safety threats by contaminating surface and groundwater, releasing toxic air pollutants, and leaching methane, a ‘super pollutant’ that is a major cause of climate change and many times more potent than carbon dioxide to trap heat. in the atmosphere,” said a Department of the Interior news release.
The state’s orphan well program has been around for decades, the Oil and Gas Board told Mississippi Today. Typically the board pays for the program with money it collects from the oil industry, but new federal funding means the board doesn’t have to wait to accumulate that money. So far, the state has plugged 473 wells, according to the board’s database, most of which are in the southwestern part of Mississippi.
While there are only seven known orphan wells that the state has yet to plug (three in Walthall County, three in Wilkinson County and one in Wayne County), there are about 340 others that are potentially orphaned but that they are missing records, according to the database. The Board will use federal funds to plug the known wells, as well as locate the others to ensure they are properly plugged.
Jess New, executive director of the board, said the federal grant gives the agency five years to do the work.
“With the funds provided, (the board) will seek to identify, locate, characterize and classify orphan well sites, while continuing its efforts to plug, remediate and restore the locations where such wells exist,” New said in an email. . mail.
To plug a well, New explained, the agency has to remove any pipe or casing left inside and then inject mud and a cement plug to seal it. The new funding is also intended to “remediate” the wells by cleaning up the sites and removing any old equipment left behind.
David Snodgrass, the board’s senior geologist, said part of the process is finding exactly where the old wells are, including many in the Jackson area.
“There’s literally one under our building,” Snodgrass said. “We can’t do anything about it. When things are built on something, it is what it is at that moment.”
He explained that many of the older wells have coordinates shown on hand-drawn maps, but contractors with the right technology (such as a magnetometer, ground-penetrating radar or lidar) can find the wells as long as they know the general area. . .
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