After a century and a half of oil and gas production in the United States, the nonprofit environmental watchdog Climate Tracker published a sobering report in 2020: Some 2.6 million unplugged onshore wells lay scattered across the country. Plugging all those derelict holes, from the rocky Appalachian hill country of western Pennsylvania to the dry plains of West Texas and the tundra of Alaska, and countless points between, might cost as much as $280 billion. And that figure from the report did not include undocumented wells — the ones that have vanished from the books, if they were ever recorded in the first place. Carbon Tracker’s estimate of the number of undocumented onshore wells was also striking: 1.2 million.
Since 1859, when the first successful American oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, no state has had more holes punched through its bedrock or has sucked more hydrocarbons out of the ground than Texas. Carbon Tracker uses data from the energy industry analytics company Enverus to identify wells that are inactive or low producing, said Rob Schuwerk, executive director of Carbon Tracker’s North America operation. And as of 2024, Carbon Tracker reports there are 476,790 documented wells that have been drilled, but not plugged, in the Lone Star State. The lengthy list includes those that have ceased operation and been added to the state’s orphan well program.
