This month, the U.S. Department of the Interior approved a $25 million grant that will go toward the funding of plugging abandoned oil and gas wells in the State of Texas.
With the funds, the Railroad Commission of Texas is planning on plugging up to 800 wells within the state.
“We will use our established success with workplans, staff expertise and contracting processes to use the grant funding to plug abandoned wells,” Clay Woodul, the commission's assistant director of the Oil and Gas Division for Field Operations, said.
The grant is one of the aspects of the bipartisan infrastructure law that passed by Congress last year, which was designed to increase federal oil and gas well remediation and plugging programs by allocating approximately $4.7 billion across the country, Chron. reported.
To plug the 7,400 documented wells in Texas, it is estimated that it will cost approximately $482 million to plug the wells. According to estimates from the Department of the Interior, Texas is only expected to be eligible for $344 million in federal funds for the purpose of plugging wells that are documented. The first phase of this process is the grant of $25 million, which is the start of the process.
Among the 24 states that will plug abandoned wells over the next few years, Texas will be one of them. Over 10,000 of the high-priority well sites in eligible states have reported that they are ready for remediation efforts to be undertaken immediately. As a result of plugging these abandoned well sites, methane will not leak into the atmosphere and cause pollution of the environment.
It has been reported that Texas has 69 Superfund sites that have been prioritized for cleanup by the federal government, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, The Texas Tribune reported. There is a very high probability that the environment will be harmed by these extremely toxic sites.