Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced this week in a news release that the new Orphaned Wells Program Office will use money from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for cleanup.
The Orphaned Wells Program Office will work to "ensure effective, accountable and efficient implementation" of the infrastructure law's "historic investment in orphaned well cleanup," the Interior Department said Tuesday, a news release said.
"Through President Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we are making a historic investment to tackle legacy pollution, the largest in American history," Haaland said in the news release. "As part of this effort, the department is standing up a new office to support states, Tribes and federal land managers as they close and remediate orphaned oil and gas wells that pose environmental hazards to communities across the country."
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland speaking in December 2021 during her visit to Vista Hermosa Natural Park for a California oil well remediation tour
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Secretary Order 3409, signed Tuesday, created the Orphaned Wells Program Office.
"While the department successfully met the formula grant deadlines, awarded the initial grants to States, and funded the first round of projects on federal public lands, national parks, national wildlife refuges and national forests, the need for significant additional work remains," the order said. "This work includes reviewing and awarding tribal grants, developing guidelines for the formula grant programs and establishing an application process, as well as the same tasks for the performance grants.
"Once established, these programs will then require longer term grant administration activities, including coordination with states, the secretary of energy, and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission," the order added. "Based on this experience and recognizing the immense scope of the state assistance program, the effective, accountable and efficient implementation of the state and tribal assistance programs and the federal program is best accomplished by creation of a separate office to be fully responsible for the programs."
The news release came the day after an Interior Department Twitter post that referred to the large numbers of orphaned wells in California.
"In Southern California hundreds of orphan oil and gas wells dot the landscape, a hazardous relic of the state's once expansive industry," the Twitter post said. "Thanks to @POTUS' Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, these abandoned wells will soon be plugged and reclaimed."
The Twitter post followed a Los Angeles Daily News story about DOI's work to close hundreds of abandoned oil and gas wells and described the Southern California area as "one of the nation's highest concentrations of so-called 'orphan wells' or wells that companies abandoned without first plugging them up for safety."
"The state has documented nearly 2,000 orphan wells in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties alone, while estimating that thousands more could be paved over, unrecorded and waiting to be rediscovered," the news story said.
Those orphan wells include three Lynnhart Company wells in Riverside County, according to a state orphan well inventory issued in September.
The number of documented orphan wells in California is significantly higher than previously thought. Only 16 orphan wells were recorded in California in 2016, according to a 2021 report from the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission.
Orphaned wells not plugged before companies stop using them can cause a variety of safety issues, including collapse and methane leaks. In addition, oil, gas or saltwater inside can leak into nearby freshwater sources, soil and other resources.
