Plug your well, protect your property
Offering landowners a safe, permanent, and zero-cost solution to protect and restore their land.
Orphaned wells: Understanding the risks
Orphaned wells are oil or gas wells with no responsible party or operator to plug them. Often left sitting untouched for years, these wells pose many safety, health, and environmental risks to landowners and surrounding communities.
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Orphaned wells can leak harmful, toxic, or noxious gases and fluids into the air, soil, or groundwater and can pose significant risks to surrounding waterways
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Leaking wells pose significant risks to surrounding waterways like rivers or ponds
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Unplugged wells can make land dangerous to build or farm on due to explosion hazards and the risk of land contamination
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Land with an orphaned well may have a lower market value
Without understanding the risks of an orphaned well, landowners may be unaware of these hidden dangers and the potential loss in property value from underutilized or unusable land.
How to identify an orphaned well
Orphaned wells come in many shapes and sizes and are sometimes difficult to spot. You might have an orphaned well on your property if:
- There is visible equipment like metal pipes or casing, valves, a pump jack, or a tank battery
- The well appears abandoned, inactive, or idle, and no one has visited it for a long time
- The equipment is rusty, bent, or broken
- It smells like oil, gas, or rotten eggs
- There is gas or liquid bubbling on the equipment or at the surface
- There is dead vegetation or a depression in the ground around the site
Examples of orphaned wells:
The value of a well-plugged property
Plugging your orphaned oil or gas well can provide a safe and effective solution to restoring your land, making it usable again. Plugging prevents methane and other pollutants from doing any further damage to the soil, groundwater, or air, enabling you to use your land as you see fit.
How Tradewater can help
At no cost to the property owners, our team of engineers, experts, and local contractors will safely plug qualifying wells, ensuring all regulatory requirements are met and the land is remediated, quickly.
How it works:
Site inspection
A free site visit is scheduled to determine if the well qualifies for plugging
Emissions testing
For qualifying wells, additional testing is completed to evaluate methane emission levels
Plugging plan
A comprehensive plugging plan is developed at or beyond state regulations
Site restoration
The land is remediated to meet both state requirements and landowner needs for the future use of their land
Ready to plug your orphaned well?
Contact us to schedule your free on-site assessment and start the process of restoring your land, today.
