Narrator: This crew is plugging an old oil well.
It no longer has an owner, and it was never properly sealed.
So for decades, it's been sitting here,
pumping out environmental toxins unchecked.
This is what's called an orphan well.
Curtis: You can actually smell the methane gas.
Narrator: And some of the stuff it leaks out
can poison us.
Ira: Benzene or xylene.
We know they're carcinogenic.
Narrator: Across America, there are an estimated
1 million orphan oil and gas wells.
That's like having an extra 2.5 million cars
on the road every year.
Plugging them would stop any leaks
and could help in our fight against rising methane levels.
Adam: This is some low-hanging fruit.
There's no other ways to abate these emissions
other than to plug these wells.
Narrator: But the problem is
we don't always know where they are.
Narrator: They've been discovered
under houses and schools.
And even in people's front yards.
This has really been everyone's dirty little secret.
Narrator: So who's responsible for cleaning up this mess,
and who's actually doing it?
Nowadays, when companies are done with a well,
they're required by law to plug it,
essentially fill it with cement
before abandoning it.
But Americans have been drilling for oil for over 150 years.
Before there were any regulations of any kind.
Narrator: So many early operators
before 1950 would simply fill the holes
with sand, cannonballs, or trash.
Throwing down telephone poles, rags, trash, whatever,
just to jam it up.
Narrator: Curtis Shuck is a retired oil exec.
For the last three years,
he's been plugging wells across the country
with his nonprofit, the Well Done Foundation.
We joined him on a well hunt in Louisiana.
Here, he found an orphaned one right next to the bayou.
If you didn't know what you were looking for,
it'd be easy to miss.
Curtis: Look at this crazy beautiful ecosystem
that is right next to this legacy well here.
This water inundates this whole area. This goes underwater.
And because the casing integrity has been compromised,
it starts to bubble gas up around it.
Narrator: Today, it's harder
for a well to become orphaned,
but it still happens,
especially when there are downturns in the oil industry.
Usually it's because operators have gone bankrupt.
Adam: So there's no responsible party left to plug the well.
So they fall to the state.
They become a ward of the state.
Narrator: Similar to an orphan child.
And states often don't have the funds
to keep plugging them all.
Curtis: I just couldn't believe my eyes that, you know,
in any universe, it would be OK
to leave something like that behind, to walk away.
Narrator: To plug these wells,
Curtis hires local guys that work
in the oil industry. And they use the same gear to plug wells
as they do to drill them.
Narrator: His team's plugging 75 wells in Louisiana
over the next few years, like this one in Caddo Parish.
It's typically a two-day process,
beginning with the tubing that runs the depth of the well.
Narrator: This well is about 4,000 feet deep.
So Terrence and his crew will spend most
of the day pulling out and stacking pipe.
Usually, the pipes won't go to waste.
Narrator: The next day, the crew returns
to plug the well.
First, they have to flush down high-pressure water to clean
out the hole.
Then they add cement.
Curtis: We've got cement to the surface.
The methane emissions have been stopped.
Narrator: They cut the well off 3 feet
below the surface.
We'll weld the monument cap on the top,
and then we'll restore the surface area
like we were never even here.
Narrator: But plugging is expensive.
If you don't have the money to plug it on your own,
you better learn to like looking at it.
Narrator: It can start at $30,000
and go up to as much
as $1 million per well,
depending on the geology.
Landowner Hunter Lawler planned to foot the bill himself
until Curtis adopted this well.
Well Done pays for its pluggings with donations
and carbon credits.
Because you really wouldn't want an orphan well
anywhere near where you live.
They can contaminate groundwater
and leak oil and salt,
which create environmental dead zones.
Mary: There have been wells
that have buildings built around them,
and there have been explosions.
Narrator: The methane wells leak out
is not only 84 times more potent than CO2,
it's also flammable.
Two dozen people were injured in 1985
when a Ross Dress for Less store blew up in LA.
It was sitting on an abandoned well leaking methane.
Smaller explosions have also happened
in nearby Marina del Rey, Colorado, and Pennsylvania.
Wells can also leak out carcinogenic or even deadly gases.
Adam: Around 9 million people live
within a mile of one of these wells in the US.
Narrator: A well that's properly plugged
will stop leaking methane,
except we don't know where to find all these orphan wells.
So they could be releasing all this bad stuff,
and no one would know.
Sometimes, all that marks a century-old wellbore
is a tiny pipe or a well casing,
which nature can swallow up over time.
To start trying to locate them all,
Adam and Mary use state data to develop this map.
So far, they've recorded 81,000 documented wells
and identified hotspots
in the South, Appalachia, and California.
But that just scratches the surface.
There's probably hundreds of thousands
of undocumented orphan wells
that we just don't know where they are.
We don't have records.
Narrator: Curtis and his team
have focused on Louisiana since 2021.
Curtis: This has been a huge part of this economy.
Little wells in people's front yards.
Narrator: He first starts
in state databases to get a general location of a well.
Curtis: Oftentimes, the coordinates
of a well are not, you know, they're very approximate.
It's a ground game. Probably walk about, you know,
anywhere from 5 to 10 miles a day.
Narrator: That's what he calls wildcatting.
Then he has to determine
if the well is a super-emitter,
emitting more than 22 pounds of methane an hour.
That's the case with one he found
in the woods behind someone's house.
This well is particularly bad.
You can actually hear the methane coming out.
Curtis: Yeah. Isn't that crazy?
Curtis: What it's telling you is
that it's over the exposure level.
Narrator: And on this camera, you can see the methane.
But the man living on the property had no idea it was here.
Curtis: How are you, sir?
Curtis: We're working on this orphan well here.
Have you seen this one before?
I didn't know that was there.
Curtis: Here, come and check this one out.
Check this out.
Can you hear that?
Chris: Oh yeah. Curtis: Yeah.
Narrator: Curtis adopted this well and will plug it just
like he did with the one up the road.
But even after it's been properly closed,
there's no guarantee a well will stay that way.
Across the country in California,
earthquakes can reopen plugged wells.
Wells that are drilled through faults are going
to be impossible to permanently seal.
Narrator: Ira Leifer runs Bubbleology,
a company that measures air pollution
to hunt down the biggest leaks.
He installed a bunch
of air-monitoring instruments on his truck, SISTER2.
It has ...
Ira: A greenhouse-gas analyzer, ozone, nitrogen oxides.
We have one GPS directly at this point.
If you don't know where you are,
you really don't know anything.
That's both philosophically true as well as scientifically.
This gives a picture of the atmosphere above us
as we drive.
Narrator: Ira says his monitors are so sensitive ...
Ira: We're able to see really small plumes, even miles distant.
Narrator: As he drives around,
he picks up plumes
from abandoned wells throughout Southern California,
like under homes in fancy La Brea, or here in Kern River.
Ira: Right now, we're once again
in areas of active oil production on all sides.
We see elevated methane.
Narrator: When his instruments pick up a plume,
he pulls over and takes an air sample.
Ira: When we're ready to collect the sample,
we crack this here just a little bit.
It's not filling too fast.
So today on our pass, we saw 14 ppm methane.
That actually is one
of the highest values that we've seen on land.
Narrator: Ira then passes his findings
to colleagues at California government agencies.
So what is the government doing about it all?
Well, for the most part, it's left to the states to deal
with the problem.
Most states launched plugging programs
in the '80s and '90s
and have since sealed thousands of wells.
But those programs have barely made a dent.
Pennsylvania alone still
has an estimated 200,000 unplugged orphan wells.
Curtis: States were woefully underfunded to address this project.
Narrator: So in 2021, Sen. Ben Ray Luján
from New Mexico and Sen. Kevin Cramer
from North Dakota introduced the REGROW Act
to address this problem on a federal level.
It passed with the infrastructure bill signed
by President Biden the same year
and earmarked $4.7 billion for well pluggings.
Luján: We're going to see funding go
to the states where we know that there's probably the most
orphan oil and gas wells across the country.
Narrator: The money will also get distributed
to the Department of Interior
to plug wells on federal lands.
An allocation specific to orphaned
and abandoned oil and gas wells
on tribal communities and pueblos.
Narrator: Even if it all goes perfectly, though,
the act will only address documented wells.
And that's less than a fifth
of the orphaned wells that might be out there.
Ira: It's a tiny down payment on bringing our infrastructure
to where it should have been 10 years ago.
I'm not saying it's not enough,
but it's not enough.
Narrator: In the last seven years,
hundreds of oil and gas producers have declared bankruptcy.
So as these companies struggle,
more oil and gas wells will go idle.
And as we wean off gas and oil for more renewable energy ...
Ira: Millions of wells are going to be abandoned
in the next couple years, so this is a serious problem.
Narrator: One solution is to get the oil
and gas industry to front more of the bill.
So that the cost doesn't have to be borne by the taxpayer.
Narrator: But Ira says
we can't put all the blame on drillers.
Ira: The reality is we want to live a life
where we don't shiver all winter,
to live in a place where we can move around
with cars and airplanes.
This all requires petroleum.
Narrator: So while we're still dependent on oil,
Curtis and his team will keep plugging away —
one well at a time.
Curtis: We keep getting further and further behind.
It's time to stop talking.
It's time to roll up our sleeves and get to work.