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Carbon credits are a valuable tool for plugging orphaned wells in the U.S.
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Read the whole op-ed in The Oklahoman.
Earlier this year, a company in Oklahoma was issued the world’s first carbon credits for plugging orphaned oil and gas wells. This marked an important milestone for the Sooner State, where more than 17,000 of these wells can be found in farm fields, woodlands, and near where people work and play.
Oil and gas wells become orphaned when the company that operates them goes bankrupt or ceases to exist. When this occurs, governments you and me as taxpayers) are burdened with plugging them and addressing local environmental impacts. In Oklahoma, this responsibility falls to the state. Over the past decade, the Oklahoma State Funds Plugging Program has plugged an average of a few hundred orphaned wells per year, which has not kept pace with the number of wells that are orphaned, resulting in an enormous backlog of known wells that require plugging. In addition to documented orphaned wells, there are many unknown orphaned wells across the United States that are unmapped and unaccounted for in official records. The EPA estimates that the U.S. may have more than 3.2 million wells that will require plugging.