Well Done Foundation Plugs 29 Orphaned Wells at Oklahoma’s Deep Fork National Wildlife Refuge

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Dec. 20, 2024.

The grant, funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, aims to plug and reclaim 111 orphaned well sites on at least 5 national wildlife refuges. The organization has since plugged 29 wells in its first 11 months in the refuge, which was established in 1993 and is home to 149 species of birds, as many as 59 of fish, 54 of reptiles, 22 of amphibians and countless types of insects including the endangered American burying beetle.

The work occurs amid shifting federal policy.

On the day he was inaugurated for his second term, President Donald Trump signed his “Unleashing American Energy” executive order. U.S. Department of the Interior paused dispersal of plugging and capping funds to oil-producing states.

The department remains committed to carrying out the Orphaned Wells Program as Congress directed, a spokesperson said, while actively evaluating the Bureau of Land Management’s bonding rule under Executive Order 14154. The Bureau of Land Management finalized an update to onshore oil and gas leasing in 2024 to bring public lands bonding requirements in line with contemporary well remediation costs.

The new BLM bonding rules were due to go into effect in June 2025 but in December the agency extended the deadline for compliance while the DOI proposed the rule’s recission.

At the time of the regulatory update’s proposal the BLM was reporting 37 orphan wells on BLM lands. The 2023 Orphaned Wells Program report cites 599 federal orphans in its database.

U.S. Out of about 4 to 5 million that have been drilled since 1859. The EPA says 58 percent of abandoned wells it has logged are not plugged. The federal Orphaned Wells Program documented 141,000 orphaned wells nationally and estimates an additional 250,000 to 740,000 out there.

6 million people, live within about a half-mile of an AOOG well. S. energy sector.

In December the New Mexico attorney general sued three Texas oilmen accusing them of selling more than 500 unproductive wells to shell companies created to declare bankruptcy and avoid remediation costs. More than 8,000 wells have been inactive for more than a year under delinquent ownership in Texas.

Between 2021 and 2024 the Texas Railroad Commission added 2,139 wells to its roster of abandoned and orphaned wells.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed legislation in June 2025 that set aside $100 million to plug orphaned wells. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission said it would cost just over $500 million to plug, reclaim or decommission 17,865 abandoned and orphaned wells on state or private land, budgeting about $28,100 per well.

Twenty-six of 32 states had applied for IIJA Orphaned Wells Program funding including Texas, Alaska, New Mexico, North Dakota and Colorado.

The 26 states listed 126,806 AOOG wells on state or private land that would cost more than $9 billion to plug, an average of nearly $72,500 per well. 9 million that year. 6 million cost.

Inside Climate News reported that the pause in funding has raised concerns among state and federal agencies, though IIJA state grant plugging money is moving again. Curtis Shuck is chairman of the Well Done Foundation, whose office is in Okmulgee, Okla.

He previously managed facilities at the Port of Los Angeles and was the senior sales director of the Port of Vancouver USA before transitioning to well plugging.

In August heat indexes regularly exceeded 110 degrees Fahrenheit at the Doneghy #2 well site in the Deep Fork National Wildlife Refuge near Okmulgee, Oklahoma. Isabella Osario, Curtis Shuck and Micaela Short conferred on Aug.

The Doneghy #2 well vents pressure and releases crude, saline water, methane and small amounts of hydrogen sulfide gas. The USFWS is proposing to list the tricolored bat as endangered and protects the bats by limiting well-plugging habitat disruptions. ” Shuck also said “I may have thought I was out there to change the world, the reality is that it was actually changing me.

He said of TRC’s increased AOOG count “A goodly number of wells were added in a chunk” in part due to the OWP funds. S.