Assets are often sold to operators with less environmental stewardship.
Industry executives, environmental leaders and elected officials are among
those working to plug millions of wells left abandoned throughout the country.
Article by Michelle Thompson
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CRANE, Texas (AP) — Rusted pipes litter the sandy fields of Ashley Williams Watt’s cattle ranch in windswept West Texas. The corroded skeletons are all that remain of hundreds of abandoned oil wells that were drilled long before her family owned the land. The wells, unable to produce any useful amounts of oil or gas,…
The United States has more abandoned wells than we thought
The number of abandoned oil and gas wells in the United States is much higher than previously thought, according to an exclusive analysis shared with The Climate 202.
The analysis, which was done by the Environmental Defense Fund and McGill University, found that there are 81,283 documented orphan…
Plugging and cleaning up the open oil and gas wells in Texas could cost companies and taxpayers as much as $117 billion, according to a new report. Carbon Tracker, a nonprofit financial think tank that studies the effects of climate change on financial markets, estimates there are some 3.8 million unplugged oil and gas wells nationally, including…
WASHINGTON — Jim Walzel doesn’t fit the profile of what most people would think of as a climate denier — a term he rejects.
A chemical engineer who made his money as a pipeline executive, Walzel lives in West University, a Houston enclave populated with academics from nearby Rice University. He points to his COVID-19 vaccination…