DOE Announces $15 Million To Characterize and Remediate Undocumented Orphan Wells

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) today announced up to $15 million in federal funding to support research and development (R&D) projects that help reduce methane emissions and other harmful environmental impacts from undocumented orphaned oil and natural gas wells. The focus is on projects that advance cost-effective technologies toward commercialization that address characterization, advanced remediation techniques, and long-term monitoring of undocumented orphaned wells. These technology innovations will help to further the Biden-Harris Administration's goal to cut methane emissions by 30% compared with 2020 levels by 2030.

"Methane is many times more potent than carbon dioxide and is responsible for approximately one third of the warming from greenhouse gases occurring today," said Brad Crabtree, Assistant Secretary of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. "This research will conduct critical detection, characterization, and remediation of undocumented orphaned wells to help us understand the technology needs to plug these wells, reduce methane emissions, and address the legacy pollution that harms communities and the environment."

Undocumented orphaned wells are defined as idle wells for which the operator is unknown or insolvent. An undocumented orphaned well is a well that is not listed, or poorly documented in the responsible regulatory agency's inventory. It is estimated that there are hundreds of thousands of undocumented orphaned wells currently leaking methane in the United States.

While commercial remediation technologies exist for reducing methane and other emissions from undocumented orphaned wells, these technologies are not being adopted and employed as quickly as necessary to meet our climate goals. This is typically due to cost, material availability, well-specific variability, and operational factors.

Through this funding opportunity announcement (FOA), DOE aims to enhance technologies and processes for effective characterization of undocumented orphaned wells; improve advanced sensors for the measurement, estimation, and tracking of methane emissions from these wells and their associated infrastructure; and support the development of new remediation concepts and advanced materials for more efficient and cost-effective permanent plugging and abandonment of such wells. More specifically, the funding opportunity will focus on the following areas:

• Advanced Remediation Techniques for Undocumented Orphaned Well Boreholes to address the need for novel and advanced remediation materials, such as biofilm or biochar technologies, for undocumented orphaned well boreholes in various conditions and with minimal surface disturbance.
• Undocumented Orphaned Well Wellbore Characterization to address the need for surface deployable technologies that do not require entry into the wellbore to characterize wellbore conditions more effectively and determine the need for novel plugging and abandonment techniques in unique situations.
• Long-Term Undocumented Orphaned Well Monitoring to address the need for cost-effective, long-term well monitoring techniques and technologies to measure and quantify methane emissions from undocumented orphaned wells.

Read more details of this FOA here. All questions must be submitted through FedConnect; register herefor an account. The application deadline is November 13, 2024 at 5:00 PM ET.

FECM minimizes environmental and climate impacts of fossil fuels and industrial processes while working to achieve net-zero emissions across the U.S economy. Priority areas of technology work include carbon capture, carbon conversion, carbon dioxide removal, carbon dioxide transport and storage, hydrogen production with carbon management, methane emissions reduction, and critical minerals production. To learn more, visit the FECM website, sign upfor FECM news announcements, and visit the National Energy Technology Laboratory website.