Texas’s orphaned well count continues to grow, contaminating land and water and hurting taxpayers

As of April 2026, the number of orphaned wells – which are abandoned wells with no known or financially-solvent owners – increased by 37 percent compared to last year, reaching over 12,000 wells. The number of orphaned wells continues to grow as older wells are sold off to increasingly smaller companies with fewer resources that sometimes fail to plug their wells or go out of business. Current regulations also allow companies to postpone plugging their wells indefinitely.