"A study published Monday in Nature Sustainability calculates that abandoned oil and gas wells cover more than 2 million acres of the U.S. And if that land is restored, it could deliver billions of dollars in benefit for a fraction of the cost of restoration.
There are an astronomical number of abandoned oil and gas wells across the U.S., with some estimates reaching as high as 3.2 million sites. Usually, fossil fuel companies set up bonds to provide for future remediation of wells, but as the industry flags, that money tends to dry up, leading to some companies to simply abandon their wells. A Los Angeles Times investigation last year found that while the cost of plugging one of the state’s 35,000 wells could rise as high as $150,000, oil companies in the state provided just $230 per well for cleanup costs on average.
According to the new study, cleaning up these wells and restoring the land around them would not only safeguard against the harmful impacts of abandoned oil and gas infrastructure—including methane leaks and groundwater contamination—but could deliver up to $21 billion in benefits from agriculture and carbon sequestration. “For people who live near that land–that [money] has real meaning,” said Matt Moran, the study’s lead author and a professor of biology at Hendrix College. What’s more, it would only cost about $7 billion to clean up all of them, the study estimated, a pretty good return on investment."
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