Orphaned oil and gas wells are unplugged nonproducing wells with no solvent owner of record to plug and mitigate them, such that the responsibility often falls on government agencies and the general public. This map contains
more than 115,000 documented orphan wells in the US that are abandoned by their original owners.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that methane emissions from
over 2 million inactive, unplugged wells, of which documented orphan wells are a subset, range from a CO2 equivalent of
7-20 million metric tons per year (approximately the emissions of 2 to 5 million cars).
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Based on data from,