Orphaned Well Program publishes latest annual report
September 8, 2025 (Denver) -- Today the Orphaned Well Program (OWP) at the Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) published its annual report for fiscal year (FY) 2025, ending June 30, 2025. The report details the status of orphaned wells, plugging operations, and the resources allocated to the program.
There are approximately 45,800 active* wells in Colorado. As of June 30, 2025, there were 948 orphaned wells. State law requires that operators plug wells at the end of the well’s productive life. The vast majority of wells are or will be plugged by operators. Orphaned wells are unplugged oil and gas wells that are inactive and have no owner or operator who can be found or is willing/able to plug them. Plugging a well is the process of permanently sealing a well to prevent the release of hydrocarbons and other fluids into the environment. Since its inception in 1990, the OWP has plugged more than 800 wells, nearly 40 percent of which have been plugged in the past four years.
The engineering and field work required to plug an orphaned well is complex and dynamic, and each well requires site-specific protocols. Each orphaned well site — and related, remote facilities — are reclaimed in accordance with ECMC’s stringent environmental and safety standards. When an oil and gas location is reclaimed to ECMC’s standard, the land is restored to the condition it was in before oil and gas development occurred, thus concluding ECMC’s regulatory process. The 400 Rule Series (operations and reporting), the 600 Rule Series (safety and facility operation regulations), the 900 Rule Series (environmental impact prevention), the 1000 Rule Series (reclamation regulations), and the 1100 Rule Series (flowline regulations) describe ECMC’s plugging, abandonment, decommissioning, environmental remediation, and reclamation standards.
In total, OWP completed 690 work tasks in FY2025, notably the plugging of 95 wells at locations across the state. OWP performed plugging-related work — such as methane monitoring and bradenhead (i.e. casing) pressure testing — at 258 orphaned wells and decommissioned production equipment at 113 facilities. OWP also abandoned off-location flowlines at 33 sites. For orphaned well work, flowline abandonment means removal of the flowline or flushing and sealing the flowline in place, where allowed by rule.
The Orphaned Well Program closes orphaned sites by:
plugging wells and abandoning flowlines;
removing production equipment and debris;
investigating and remediating soil and groundwater impacts;
installing safety equipment such as fences, signs, and locks or tags;
reclaiming well pads, remote production sites, and access roads; and
overseeing third party contractors.
A well enters the program in one of two ways: either there is no longer a responsible party in the historical record, or the former operator is deemed unable to financially ensure the closure and remediation of the well site to ECMC standards.
FY2025 OWP expenditures totalled $15 million. The program used no Colorado tax payer dollars: it was funded by operator fees per the Orphaned Wells Mitigation Enterprise (OWME) as well as grants funded through the 2021 US Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), and the Colorado office of the Bureau of Land Management. The Enterprise was established in 2022 to set and collect operator fees to fund work related to the plugging and abandonment of orphaned wells. The fee is currently $125 to $225 per well. That generates approximately $10 million per year.
The OWP FY2025 annual report, which is required by rule and by executive order, is posted online at ecmc.colorado.gov/regulation/orphaned-well-program. It includes detailed tables of the data and information as well as context about the program’s history.
Additionally, the state recently launched a voluntary program for operators to plug their marginal wells, which are low-producing wells that are at risk of becoming orphaned. In August, ECMC announced that 30 operators will receive reimbursement grants to plug 142 marginal wells per a new competitive grant made possible by operator fees and federal funds from the 2022 US Inflation Reduction Act. An operator-paid fee for the marginal well program is currently set at $115 per well and generates approximately $5 million per year.
“Nobody wants orphaned wells. Permanently plugging wells is a critical measure to minimize adverse impacts to public health and the environment, including the elimination of methane emissions,” said Commission Chair Jeff Robbins. “ECMC holds operators accountable to our stringent regulatory standards throughout the life cycle of production in order to reduce the likelihood of wells being orphaned, minimize the potential adverse impacts of a well in the event it becomes orphaned, and ensure the financial burden of orphaned wells falls to operators, not Colorado taxpayers. I’m extremely proud of our state’s common sense legislation and ingenuity: SB24-229 proactively reduces the likelihood of active wells becoming orphaned by creating a first-in-nation competitive grant for the plugging of marginal wells.”
*ECMC defines ‘active wells’ as those with Producing (PR), Injecting (IJ), Shut-in (SI), Waiting on completion, (WO), Drilling (DG), Active permit (AC) and Temporarily abandoned (TA) status. View the Daily Activity Dashboard for details.
About the ECMC
The mission of the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) is to regulate the development and production of the natural resources of oil and gas, deep geothermal resources, the capture and sequestration of carbon, and the underground storage of natural gas in a manner that protects public health, safety, welfare, the environment and wildlife resources. Visit the ECMC website for more information.