Congress: Restore Orphan Oil & Gas Wells Plugging Programs: Protect Communities

As an alarmed constituent, I’m writing to urge the immediate restoration of the Orphaned Wells Plugging Programs funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act. The decision by the Trump Administration to halt this program and freeze the funds that were already approved by Congress must be reversed. It's wrong, and as usual is executive overreach not founded on how Congress and Appropriations work in this country. There is no level of use for these wells to help any so-called energy emergency. The one very lame bill put forth by Republicans is about ’studying’ these wells. That is a mis-direction of effort. In fact, that bill’s main goal is to shield industry from measuring methane emissions from all kinds of wells. Utter nonsense. This orphaned wells program was making significant progress in cleaning up pollution and environmental hazards left behind by the oil and gas industry across the United States, but more work must be done. Even the hundreds already plugged in California, Colorado, Montana Mexico and Wyoming leave us far short of the cleanup goals. This is a huge environmental and health problem that impacts millions of people in the US. There are more than 56,000 documented orphaned oil and gas wells across the country. These wells are no longer in use and sit idle in or near our communities, leaking oil, gas, and toxic chemicals into our air and water. They can also emit methane, a powerful contributor to climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency - such as it is today - estimates there could be as many as 3.4 MILLION abandoned wells nationwide, with undocumented orphaned wells potentially emitting over 63 million grams of methane per hour. This is equivalent to the emissions from over 3.6 million gasoline-powered passenger cars annually. Freezing the orphaned well program will allow this pollution to continue unchecked, harming public health and exacerbating climate change. Halting this program wastes the opportunity to create jobs in remediation work to clean up environmental damage from extractive industries. It is crucial that this congressionally appropriated funding be promptly resumed to protect communities, safeguard the environment, and support economic development. Thank you for your attention to this matter of health and the environment we live in.