Curtis Shuck has been extremely busy the past three years plugging orphan wells, monitoring methane levels and cutting through government bureaucracy. This past April, on Earth Day, The Crude Life interviewed Shuck regarding his recent orphan well work in Ohio and Louisiana, and Texas was off the radar due to the thick red tape.
Funny how quickly things can change. Less than six months later, Shuck and his team are in Texas scouting several locations for a major project that will plug 100 orphan wells.
“We are just kicking off our Texas program here,” Shuck said. “We have a 100 orphan well project just south of here at a place called the Santa Rosa Ranch.”
Shuck mentioned the ranch is near the “infamous Lake Boehmer” According to Wikipedia, Boehmer Lake has been slowly growing since 2003. It covers an area of more than sixty acres and the water is three times as salty as seawater. The casing in the well is corroded and the well hit a salt layer. The sulfate level is twenty-five times the legal limit for drinking water.
In the 1940s or 1950s oil wells were drilled near Imperial, Texas. None of them produced oil, but water and the oil companies deeded them to landowners who used them to irrigate farms, but they have fallen into disuse.
Shuck is currently “monitoring” and “qualifying” the wells across the acreage with a crew of ten people.
“We were plugging orphan wells across the United States, except for Texas,” Shuck said. “Recently we were contacted through our land owner assistance program, which we launched a few months ago, and an awesome rancher here in the area, a fellow by the name of Skyler White.”
Arrangements were made to come to Texas and check out the lay of the land. Shuck decided to organize a team in Texas and move forward in the Lone Star State plugging orphan wells.
Shuck also gave an update on their 10-year partnership with Newlight Technologies as well as their recent four-well-plugging awareness effort.
Shuck said the major partnership with Newlight Technologies will ensure the plugging of hundred of more wells across the United States for the next decade.
Newlight is a biotechnology company producing advanced sustainable materials. Over 10 years of research and development, Newlight developed a biotechnological process to harness microorganisms found in the ocean to convert greenhouse gas into a meltable energy material found in all living things: a naturally-occurring, biocompatible material that can be used to make fibers and solid parts, and help reduce the flow of carbon and synthetic plastic into the environment.
Following commercialization in 2013, AirCarbon was named “Biomaterial of the Year” by the Nova Institute in 2013, “one of the 100 most technologically significant innovations of the year” by R&D Magazine in 2013, and “Innovation of the Year” by Popular Science in 2014, and received the prestigious EPA Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge award in 2016. Today, Newlight is focused on growth through both internal and licensed production to help fulfill the company’s mission: to protect and improve life by accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable, regenerative materials.
This partnership continues the momentum of corporate sponsors helping plug orphan wells across America. Texas-based distillery Tito’s Handmade Vodka and the Felty Family Challenge recently funded the non-profit’s first well-plugging project of 2022. The well, known as Fenner #2, was installed near Caddo Lake on the Louisiana/Texas border in 1985, and abandoned in 2017.
Shuck was in Louisiana during the Earth Day interview with Jason Spiess completing “Tito’s Trifecta” of orphan well plugging.
Before Shuck made his way to the bayou, he and the crew with the Well Done Foundation just completed a plugging in Ohio at the Franciscan Village where residents complained for years about smelling gas in the courtyard of the subsidized senior-living complex in Kamm’s Corners for 11 years.
Although the smell was not constant, at times the leaking gas odor would be so strong that residents enjoying the flowers, benches and statue of St. Francis would have to get up and leave.
According to Shuck, several months ago a contractor discovered the well casing in the courtyard during construction on an atrium. Working with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Cleveland Fire Department, management of Franciscan Village and Moore Well Services the collective group of people and organizations banded together to plug the orphan well.
There may have been more than an orphan well discovered too. Shuck explains how state records show the well had been drilled more than a century ago to extract natural gas, but was plugged in the 1950s with a substance called fire clay.
“This was the industry standard at the time,” Shuck said. “However what they found was that what was commonly used by the industry at the time, had cracked and shrunk over time.”
Shuck said this discovery will now be reverse data engineered to see if there are other wells plugged with fireclay. This may impact the number of orphan wells in the nation as well as a number of other variables in the Big Data of oil and gas reclamation.
According to the Well Done Foundation website, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates there are 2.5 million unplugged abandoned wells in the United States. That includes 31 states, emitting 7.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent a year. They say that is equal to 798 million gallons of gasoline used, 1.54 million passenger vehicles for a year, or 7.85 billion pounds of coal burned.
The Biden administration recently authorized $4.7 billion nationwide for the plugging of orphan wells. An orphan well has been abandoned and have no registered owner. Abandoned Well typically refers to an unproductive well with a known owner/operator, however in either case, the wells remain uncapped.
The Well Done Foundations, founded in 2019, builds partnerships between regulators, owners and adoptive parties to plug “orphan” oil & gas wells. The non-profit is based in Montana but is also building capacity in Pennsylvania, Louisiana and several other states. For more information, or to contribute or sponsor a well plugging project, visit welldonefoundation.org.
Here are some recent Well Done Foundation projects.
- Our Lady of Angels Church #1: Cuyahoga County, OH in the Cleveland Township
- Martha Smith #1: Erie County, PA in the Waterford Township
- Gish A #35: Caddo Parish, LA in the Township of Mooringsport
- Lorenzen #15: Toole County, MT in the Township of Oilmont
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