The Gulf of Mexico Has a $30 Billion Unplugged Oil Well Problem

In the roughly 160 years since Edwin Drake drilled the first US oil well in the hills of northwestern Pennsylvania, more than 4.5 million oil and gas wells have followed. When active, these wells are known to create environmental hazards that include methane emissions, air pollution and cancer risks for nearby humans. Many of those risks remain even after the drilling stops, which makes the fate of spent wells critically important.

But the most common solution — capping oil wells, a process also known as plugging and abandoning — is also an expensive one. In the US waters of the Gulf of Mexico alone, there are 14,000 unplugged, non-producing offshore and coastal wells, according to a study conducted by researchers at the University of California at Davis and Louisiana State University and published today in the journal Nature Energy. The study estimates that capping just those wells would cost more than $30 billion.