Cleaning Up Oil Wells Costs More Than It Fixes

New RFF research finds the US orphaned well program costs $147M for $30–40M in benefits, but high-emitting wells tell a different story

18 May 2026

Somewhere beneath the surface of six American states, roughly 2,150 oil and gas wells have been sealed shut with federal money. Resources for the Future, publishing its findings in April 2026, puts the cost at $147m against societal benefits of $30-40m. At an average of $67,000 per site, the programme looks less like environmental remediation and more like an expensive lesson in blunt allocation.

With $4.7bn set aside by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the ambitions were sound. Orphaned wells leak methane, depress property values and impose health costs on nearby communities. Property values near plugged sites rose by an estimated $29m across the six states studied, a tangible if modest return. Not all wells leak equally, however, and funding has largely treated them as if they do.

Here is where the numbers turn. For wells with documented high methane emissions, the case for plugging is clear. Daniel Raimi, an RFF fellow and the study's lead researcher, argued that "future programs should concentrate on wells with the worst environmental impacts rather than distributing capital without emissions-based prioritization." A well venting large quantities of methane is worth far more to plug than one sitting quietly in a field.

Precise methane measurements were available for only around 100 of the 2,150 wells studied. Without that information, regulators cannot distinguish high-impact sites from low-priority ones, and money flows to whatever wells are easiest to reach rather than those most in need of attention. Fixing that blind spot is a prerequisite for smarter deployment of what remains of the federal budget.

On their own initiative, several states are already moving. In 2025, Texas committed $100m in state funding and capped operator idle-well periods at 15 years. Private capital is also entering the space, with BRG outlining blended-finance vehicles in early 2026 that pair grant co-funding with carbon credit revenues to attract infrastructure-style returns. Undocumented orphaned wells could number far beyond the 120,000 already on record.

Emissions monitoring is becoming more accessible, researchers note. Redirecting what remains of a $4.7bn programme toward evidence rather than convenience may yet salvage its economics.