Get The Facts

It will cost the oil industry $22.9 billion to clean up all of their wells.

A conservative estimate shows that a total of 100,696 unplugged wells exist in California.

  • 41,568 of the wells are orphan/likely orphan or idle, 36,530 of which are idle. 

  • 59,095 are active and only 2,497 of those are “new.” 

  • The average well in California only produces up to 3.9 barrels per day of oil, far below the marginally producing “stripper” industry-defined level of 15 barrels per day – and thus those wells sit on the cusp of being idle.

  • Plugging orphan and idle wells will likely create an estimated 24,038 jobs in the state and 12,685 for Kern County’s idle and orphan wells alone. 

Chevron Corporation

9,055 idle wells

Aera Energy

8,948 idle wells

California Resources

6,658 idle wells

Aera was owned by Shell and ExxonMobil until March 2023 and California Resources Corporation was spun-off from Occidental Petroleum in 2014. It will cost all three companies $5.2 billion to retire all of their idle wells. 

Just three companies operate 68 percent of California’s idle wells: 

For the three companies combined, doing a full remediation of their idle wells across California will only cost them 3.4% of their combined profits for 2022.

Oil industry trade associations, the Western States Petroleum Association, and the California Independent Petroleum Association lobbied to create the current regulatory loopholes that allow oil companies to keep idle wells indefinitely.

Other states like West Virginia and Pennsylvania have more aggressive well plugging policies on the books than California. Both of those states require plugging one year after a well becomes idle. Colorado and North Dakota also consider a well “idled” after 12 months and then allow the operator an additional six months to complete plugging.

Idle and orphan wells can leak the carcinogen benzene, making them a health and safety hazard for local communities. Idle and orphan wells pose a major risk to local groundwater reservoirs. Plugging these wells could substantially improve public health in the communities where they are concentrated. 

Leaking wells also jeopardize California’s fight against climate change, with an estimated 67% of unplugged wells at-large, including orphan and idle wells, currently leaking methane statewide, which is more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere over a 20-year period, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That 20-year period coincides with a generation during which broad-sweeping climate action must occur.