Public Affairs
Contact: Marc Kovac
press@ohioauditor.gov

Columbus – The Ohio Department of Natural Resources has steadily increased the number of abandoned oil and gas wells plugged throughout the state over the past decade, but the agency is still spending only about half of the funding required, Auditor of State Keith Faber announced. 

A new audit of ODNR’s Orphan Well Program was released Tuesday by the Auditor of State’s Ohio Performance Team, which reviews the operations of government agencies and programs and offers recommendations to improve their efficiency and effectiveness.  

https://ohioauditor.gov/auditsearch/Reports/2022/Ohio_Department_of_Natural_Resources_22_Performance-Franklin_FINAL.pdf 

The Orphan Well Program was established in 1977 to address the estimated 36,000 to 66,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in the state. The wells are considered a public health risk as they may leak oil and gas into the surrounding air, soil, or groundwater. 

State law requires 30% of the annual collections to be used for plugging orphan wells – for fiscal 2021, that would have amounted to about $23 million. ODNR has never met the expenditure requirement, however, with a total of $11.2 million in fiscal 2021 spent for its Orphan Well Program.  

Part of the challenge is locating orphan wells, which were abandoned more than a century ago, often in remote areas and without formal documentation of their existence. According to Tuesday’s report, “From the 1860s until the onset of regulations, around 175,000 oil and gas wells were drilled in Ohio; if a well ran dry, it was common practice during this time to simply abandon it.” 

OPT recommended the agency improve its orphan well inventory, ensuring location and other data are accurate. ODNR also should increase the number of wells put to bid annually – a well-plugging crew can complete work on a single well in about 10 business days, so each contractor could be expected to plug about 24 wells per year.