Time is ripe for US to tackle thorny issue of country's orphaned oil and gas wells

摘要

TUCKED inside US President Joe Biden's much-anticipated infrastructure plan is a provision for $16 billion to clean up abandoned mines and plug orphaned oil and gas wells. Similar in scale and scope to former president Franklin D Roosevelt's Great Depression-era New Deal, Biden's $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan seeks to create millions of jobs while paving the way for the US to meet its goal of net zero emissions by 2050. The administration says the abandoned wells and mines clean-up programme alone will create 250,000 jobs. The number of orphaned wells in the US ranges from 57,000 to more than 3 million, depending on the definition. The cost of plugging and abandonment also ranges widely, from around $25,000 for a conventional vertical well to $300,000 for an unconventional horizontal well.