The Wells Nobody Knew About, Until Now

A landmark drone survey in Pennsylvania is mapping century-old abandoned oil wells, unlocking federal cleanup funding one flight at a time

29 Apr 2026

A survey drone swept across the wooded hills of Pennsylvania's Venango County last week, searching for something invisible from the ground: oil and gas wells drilled more than a century ago, never officially recorded, and leaking quietly into the soil ever since. The operation, coordinated by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Department of Energy and carried out by the Calgary-based firm Sawback Technologies, marks the first time the federal government has deployed this well-detection program under a Beyond Visual Line of Sight waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration.

The waiver, whose approval was delayed by a government shutdown, allows the survey aircraft, a DJI Matrice 400 equipped with a magnetometer and LiDAR mapping technology, to fly over terrain too remote or rugged to observe from the ground. A second drone flew alongside as a communications relay, extending the primary aircraft's operational range. The mission over Pennsylvania State Game Lands No. 47, near the small community of President, took place on April 28.

The scale of the problem the drones are mapping is difficult to overstate. Pennsylvania officially records roughly 30,000 orphaned wells, but EDF estimates the actual number may exceed 700,000. Nationally, analysts suggest more than a million abandoned wells may exist, many predating any regulatory requirement to document them. These sites, relics of more than a century of largely unregulated extraction, leak methane and toxic compounds with no owner obligated to address them. Federal funding of approximately $400 million has been allocated to Pennsylvania for plugging operations through 2030, yet that money can only reach wells that have been formally located and logged.

This drone program is designed to be replicable. Officials have described it as a scalable model, built on DOE research previously validated in urban Los Angeles, that state agencies could eventually operate on their own. Ground crews from Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection verify confirmed sites and assess equipment access before plugging begins.

Whether the technology performs reliably in steep, forested terrain remains the central question of the Venango County survey. A positive result could strengthen the case for broader FAA authorization, potentially enabling faster and less expensive well discovery across states from West Virginia to Texas. The results could shape federal environmental policy and the pace of cleanup efforts in the years ahead.