In Louisiana, more than 700 orphaned oil and gas wells once belonged to the world’s largest energy companies – including BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil – according to a recent analysis.
Using state data, the Center for Biological Diversity investigated the prior ownership of 724 oil and gas wells in Louisiana that are inactive, unplugged, and without a clear or financially solvent owner.
These orphaned wells can often leak, with one such well on Oct. 23 found to be leaking oil and gas in Lafourche Parish. The well, inactive since 1998, had released around 6,300 gallons of crude oil into Bayou des Allemands, local authorities told reporters.
As with other states with a long oil and gas history, Louisiana’s orphaned well problem continues to grow, with at least 22,087 inactive wells and 6,331 orphaned wells in the state as of this month, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. Older wells often change hands as their production slows over time, being sold to increasingly smaller companies with fewer resources that sometimes fail to plug their wells or go out of business.
Plugging costs for the thousands of orphaned wells in Louisiana could run into the billions. State regulators spent at least $42.6 million to clean up 15 orphaned well sites in 2024 and 2025 — with the most expensive of these projects involving spending $8.2 million to plug just six offshore wells, according to the Center’s analysis.
The state collects fees from operators meant to offset plugging costs. However, the Center found that the Louisiana Department of Conservation and Energy failed to collect 17 percent of these fees owed in fiscal years 2024 and 2025, adding up to $1.6 million.
In an Oct. 26 letter to Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, the Center, Healthy Gulf, and several Louisiana community and environmental groups urged the governor to hold oil and gas companies accountable for cleaning up inactive wells.
“The oil companies that profited from these wells should be the ones plugging them,” the letter states. “Yet public resources are being used to clean up orphaned wells based only on the current operators’ failure to plug them, even when there are former well operators that could afford to do it.”
