Zefiro Methane [Cboe Canada: ZEFI] [Frankfurt: Y6B] [OTCQB: ZEFIF] subsidiary Plants & Goodwin has successfully completed Pennsylvania’s first-ever Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act-funded oil and gas well plugging project.
The federal legislation allocated $4.7 billion to help address the nationwide proliferation of abandoned oil and gas wells, including granting over $300 million to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania alone.
Specifically, P&G executed a variety of “plug and abandonment” operations over a three-month period on a total of fifteen orphaned sites in Otto Township, Pennsylvania.
The wells that comprised this project were primarily located adjacent to several residential areas, with two sites situated mere yards from several single-family homes and one well only 20 feet away from both a dwelling structure and a state road.
These projects required a sophisticated approach to account for a series of unique operational challenges, including poor recordkeeping regarding the history of these abandoned sites and various safety issues related to performing heavy-duty groundwork within residential neighborhoods.
The success of this initiative is part of a series of publicly funded, ground-breaking assignments that Zefiro and its subsidiaries have undertaken to help address this issue, including working with the National Park Service on plugging numerous leaking oil and gas wells at Cuyahoga Valley National Park and helping complete the State of New York’s first orphan well plugging operation that used Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding.
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Why are abandoned oil and gas wells a problem?
According to the latest estimates from the U.S. Department of the Interior , there are more than 3.7 million abandoned oil and gas wells spread throughout the U.S., with the potential for many of these sites to be leaking methane gas that can be up to 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide emissions in terms of trapping heat in the atmosphere.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Zefiro Talal Debs explained further, “For decades, too many Pennsylvanians have had to contend with unplugged oil wells leaking potentially toxic methane gas into their own backyards. Zefiro is proud to have worked alongside our federal and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania government partners to complete this inaugural effort, and we look forward to helping more communities throughout the country eliminate the dangers these sites pose to critical air, drinking water, and land resources.”
P&G is itself a third-generation family business that has served Pennsylvanians for over fifty years, “I cannot be any prouder that our team of decommissioning specialists helped complete this landmark project,” said CEO Luke Plants. “The historic levels of funding allocated from this bipartisan legislation is an important first step toward properly addressing this legacy issue, and we stand ready to work with public and private sector stakeholders across the region to help combat this pressing public health threat.”
How many abandoned wells are there in the US?
The US Environmental Defense Fund estimates more than 120,000 documented orphan wells are spread across the United States and are eligible for closure under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. Most of these wells have no solvent owner of record but can leak oil, gas and other toxic chemicals including methane.
The EDF said the wells posed “a significant risk to human and environmental health.” The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the methane emissions from over 2mn inactive, unplugged wells range from a CO2 equivalent of 7 to 20mn metric tons a year (approximately that of between 2-5mn cars on the road).
