Identifying Abandoned Well Sites Using Database Records and Aeromagnetic Surveys

Oil and natural gas are primary sources of energy in the United States. Improved drilling and extracting techniques have led to a renewed interest in historic oil and gas fields, but limited records of legacy wells make new drilling efforts more difficult, as abandoned wells may provide conduits for liquids and gases to migrate into groundwater reservoirs or the atmosphere. Well finding using aeromagnetic surveys pinpoints the location of steel-cased wells, detecting both active and abandoned wells, including buried casings lacking aboveground markers. Here, we present six aeromagnetic surveys conducted in Pennsylvania and Wyoming as case studies, comparing the magnetic points to locations known in databases. In all study sites, more magnetic points were detected than recorded in databases. Based on differences between theoretical database well counts and the actual number of wells detected in surveys, we estimated the total number of wells in Pennsylvania to be 395 000-466 000 and 181 000-182 000 in Wyoming. Extrapolating to the national level, we estimate the average number of wells in the continental United States is 6.04 ± 19.97 million wells with 1.16 ± 3.84 million of those designated as abandoned wells, within the range of previous abandoned well count estimations. Although aeromagnetic surveys are limited to detecting steel-cased wells and do not differentiate sites based on well status, this study nevertheless demonstrates the utility of aeromagnetic surveys in well finding efforts across the country and shows limitations in database records of oil and natural gas wells.