Eligible states will receive up to $350 million in federal funding to assist the oil and gas industry in identifying and permanently reducing methane emissions from low-producing conventional wells, according to a non-competitive funding announcement made public Monday by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). States will also be able to use a portion of their award for environmental restoration and to invest in their well-monitoring capacity. NETL plans to issue the funding opportunity announcement later this summer.
A low-performing well — also called a stripper well, or a marginal well — can play an outsized role in methane emissions, as we noted in Cover Me. These wells, which produce 15 boe/d or less over a calendar year, make up the majority of U.S. wells in service. In 2021, the most recent full-year data available, there were 714,603 wells categorized as low-performing (blue layers in left graphic below) — 78% of the U.S. total in operation — but they were responsible for only about 6.7% of U.S. oil (blue layers in right graphic) and natural gas production. In contrast, the 59,077 wells that produced more than 100 boe/d (gray and green layers in left graphic) were responsible for about three-quarters of oil (gray and green layers in right graphic) and gas production.
