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The Department of the Interior has awarded $560 million to plug orphaned oil and gas wells across 24 states, the largest single investment in oil field cleanup in history. This funding is part of the $4.7 billion orphaned well program that was included in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Over 10,000 high-priority wells will be cleaned up with this funding.
Orphaned wells leak methane, contaminate ground water, and create health hazards for neighboring communities. As of 2021, there were over 129,000 known orphaned wells on state and private land.
“President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is enabling us to confront long-standing environmental injustices by making a historic investment to plug orphaned wells throughout the country,” said Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland in a statement. “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.”
This investment is part of the $1.15 billion Phase One of the national orphaned well program. An initial $33 million was used recently to plug nearly 300 orphans on federal lands.
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But if we want to continue to have water to support the millions who rely on it, if we hope to take care of the Grand Canyon and its river, if we want to even have a choice about what flows look like in the future, we need to stabilize this system. We can’t continue to deny the reality of simple numbers, and we can’t rely on year after year of hurried emergency measures to get us by. That’s not planning, that’s triage.”
