In western Oklahoma, the Kiowa Tribe is preparing to plug potentially dozens of abandoned oil and gas wells and remediate the surrounding sites. The tribe recently received $1 million in federal funds to help identify and assess the wells.
Orphaned wells can be difficult to find because of a lack of documentation or physical markers. Estimates for the number of undocumented orphaned wells vary across organizations. State regulators earlier this year said Oklahoma could have more than 61,000 undocumented wells.
In 2025, researchers with Los Alamos National Laboratory, the U.S. Department of Energy and McGill University published a study estimating Oklahoma could have about 309,462 undocumented orphaned wells. The research was published in Science of the Total Environment.
The U.S. Department of the Interior awarded the tribe the second round of funding through a program allocated in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. The first round of funding was given in 2023 for plugging. Ephraim Kelley, director of natural resources for the Kiowa Tribe, said the grant didn’t address identifying the wells. The new funds will help with the planning, locating and staffing process, he said.
“This was one of the areas that we felt like would fit within our environmental goals and visions to remediate and take care of the land within our own jurisdiction,” he said.
Unplugged oil and gas wells pose risks to the environment and human health. Hazardous fluids or gases like methane can leak from the wells, polluting the air or water. Sealing a wellbore prevents those pollutants from migrating. But with an average price of more than $21,000, plugging a well can be cost-prohibitive.
Kelley said he views orphaned well remediation as an opportunity to continue the tribe’s work as an environmental steward and, potentially, repurpose some of the sites. First, the department needs to find them.
“We are a sovereign nation, and we do have the ability to set our own compliance laws, and so we're utilizing this program as an area for us to see what is best for us so we can set a new standard for our tribal lands as well.”
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