The Department of the Interior recently announced a $109.6 million investment through President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda to put people to work plugging, remediating and reclaiming orphaned oil and gas wells in national parks, national forests, national wildlife refuges, and on other public lands and waters. The investment includes cleaning up abandoned wells in Wyoming.

Five federal agencies within the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture will address 484 high-priority, polluting wells that pose threats to human health and safety, the climate, and wildlife. The announcement brings the total distributed to address orphaned wells on federal lands to $250 million, the entirety of the funding made available in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for work on federal lands.  

“Toxic orphaned wells pose a significant threat to American communities and our environment,” said Secretary Deb Haaland. “I’ve seen firsthand how orphaned oil and gas wells left behind by extractive industries lead to hazardous pollution, water contamination, and safety hazards. This crucial funding reflects President Biden’s vision for a cleaner, safer and more equitable future. It’s a win-win-win — reducing harmful methane emissions, restoring our treasured landscapes, and creating good-paying jobs.”   

This year’s funding is part of an overall historic $4.7 billion investment from Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to address orphaned oil and gas wells across the nation that will create good-paying union jobs, catalyze economic growth and revitalization, improve public health and safety, and reduce harmful methane leaks. Methane pollution from many of these unplugged wells is a serious safety hazard and a significant driver of climate change, with methane being more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.  

The recent allocation is part of a total $250 million provided through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to clean up orphaned well sites on federal public lands and is in addition to $4.3 billion to plug orphaned wells on state and private lands and $150 million for clean-up on tribal lands. It is estimated that the money distributed for public lands will plug over 1,000 orphaned wells. To date, 199 of these orphaned wells have been plugged.    

The investment will fund cleanup efforts across 13 states and the Gulf of Mexico Outer Continental Shelf, covering a diverse array of projects, including plugging, reclamation, methane measurement, and infrastructure removal at various national parks, wildlife refuges, national forests and offshore oilfield locations.