Interior grants $560 million across 24 states to plug more than 10,000 orphaned wells

The Department of the Interior on Thursday announced a $560 million grant to 24 states to start plugging up and reclaiming abandoned oil and gas wells.

The Interior department estimates there are more than 10,000 of the so-called orphan wells across those 24 states that leak methane, significantly polluting communities and recreation spaces and contributing to climate change.

The funding to plug up the wells comes from President Biden’s historic infrastructure package passed last year. The law includes $4.7 billion specifically to address the orphan wells. Thursday’s funding is part of a phase one investment of  $1.15 billion.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said the infrastructure law “is enabling us to confront long-standing environmental injustices by making a historic investment to plug orphaned wells throughout the country.”

“At the Department of the Interior, we are working on multiple fronts to clean up these sites as quickly as we can by investing in efforts on federal lands and partnering with states and Tribes to leave no community behind,” Haaland said in a statement.

Interior officials say there are more than 129,000 abandoned oil and gas wells across the country, so the effort to plug them up in 24 states is just one step in the Biden administration’s larger goal of halting those methane leaks on the continental U.S.

Some of those 24 states have a large number of orphan wells. Kentucky, for example, is estimated to have up to 1,200 of them, while Kansas has more than 2,300 wells and Oklahoma has about 1,196.

As part of Thursday’s grant, six states, including California, Mississippi and West Virginia, will begin measuring methane emissions at wells they plug up and remediate.

Twelve states, including Kansas, New Mexico and Ohio, will prioritize plugging up wells in disadvantaged communities.

The Department of the Interior announced the phase one investment in January, the same month officials warned the U.S. has double the amount of abandoned oil and gas wells than previously thought.

The department also announced a $33 million package in May to plug up 277 wells on national lands.

The Biden administration has focused much of its attention on tackling climate change, including through the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act this month, which has allocated $369 billion for clean energy projects.

Methane is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere and significantly accelerates climate change once released.