Methane Emissions from Abandoned Oil and Gas Wells in Colorado

Recent studies indicate emission factors used to generate bottom-up methane inventories may have considerable regional variability. The US’s Environmental Protection Agency’s emission factors for plugged and unplugged abandoned oil and gas wells are largely based on measurement of historic wells and estimated at 0.4 g and 31 g CH4 well-1 h-1, respectively. To investigate if these are representative of wells more recently abandoned, methane emissions were measured from 128 plugged and 206 unplugged abandoned wells in Colorado, finding the first super-emitting abandoned well (76 kg CH4 well-1 h-1) and average emissions of 0 and 586 g CH4 well-1 h-1, respectively. Combining these with other states’ measurements, we update the US emission factors to 1 and 198 g CH4 well-1 h-1, respectively. Correspondingly, annual methane emissions from the 3.4 million abandoned wells in the US are estimated at between 2.6 Tg, following current methodology, and 1.1 Tg, where emissions are disaggregated for well-type. In conclusion, this study identifies a new abandoned well-type, recently-producing orphaned, that contributes 74% to the total abandoned wells methane emissions. Including this new well-type in the bottom-up inventory suggests abandoned well emissions equates to between 22 and 49% of total emissions from US active oil and gas production operations.