{"id":16886,"date":"2025-08-15T21:54:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T21:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/marginal-gas-wells-to-be-plugged-throughout-colorado\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:02:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:02:07","slug":"marginal-gas-wells-to-be-plugged-throughout-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/marginal-gas-wells-to-be-plugged-throughout-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Marginal gas wells to be plugged throughout Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A natural gas well is seen Thursday in La Plata County. The gas\/oil industry protested the way La Plata County officials took on adopting new gas and oil regulations last year. Now operators are struggling as they work to comply with the new rules. (Jerry McBride\/ Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Colorado Department of Energy and Carbon Management recently awarded 33 oil and gas well operators $13.97 million to start plugging marginal wells across the state.<\/p>\n

According to an Aug. 12 news release, marginal wells release more methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas, than the gas they produce. These wells are still subject to Colorado state regulations, but they do not produce enough oil and gas to offset the cost to maintain and regulate them.<\/p>\n

By sealing these wells, the gasses remain locked in the ground where they can do no harm and save both tax payers and well operators money, ECMC spokesperson Kristen Kemp said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem with marginal wells is that they\u2019re low producing, and relative to standard producing wells, they\u2019re disproportionately producing higher levels of methane,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Well operators are usually required to shoulder the costs of plugging wells, she said.<\/p>\n

The grant receives its funding from a flat annual fee of $115 per well from all oil and gas operators in Colorado as part of the Orphan Wells Mitigation Enterprise, as well as money set aside in the federal Methane Emissions Reduction Program. The money does not come from tax payers, Kemp said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other high accountability piece of this grant is that it\u2019s reimbursed,\u201d she said. \u201cIn this case, the operator wins the grant, but then they have to spend the up front costs. They\u2019re incentivized to get it plugged and to do it timely, because they don\u2019t get their reimbursement funds until it meets our plugging threshold.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that because it\u2019s expensive to plug a marginal well \u2013 upward of $100,000 \u2013 operators tend to keep marginal wells in production. The ECMC program is helping them get plugged because they get reimbursed for the costs needed to do so. Additionally, once a well is fully-plugged, it is no longer subject to the same regulatory costs, further saving the operator money.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe regulate any well until it\u2019s closed and fully reclaimed,\u201d Kemp said. \u201cso getting them fully reclaimed gets it off the books, so to speak, when we\u2019re no longer regulating.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new release stated that there are 922 wells that were eligible for state funding, 8,566 wells could receive the federal funds. In La Plata County, Dolores County and San Miguel County alone, there are 29 wells that received grant funding to be closed, according to ECMC documentation.<\/p>\n

Now that the 33 grant recipients have been announced, Kemp said, remediation and plugging work is expected to begin immediately. Additionally, the grant will renew yearly, with a new set of awardees given money to help plug wells, she said.<\/p>\n

Kemp said that marginal wells are at risk for becoming orphaned, which means the well\u2019s operator has abandoned it. Without any entity working to maintain a well, it leaks climate-warming greenhouse gasses and harms the environment, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what\u2019s really great about this program is that it\u2019s proactive, it\u2019s preventive,\u201d Kemp said. \u201cWhat we don\u2019t want is orphaned wells, and this program is taking a proactive approach to plug marginal wells before they have the potential to become orphaned.\u201d<\/p>\n

sedmondson@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

will reimburse operators for costs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1030,221,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-16886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-environment","tag-gas-and-oil","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16886"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77209,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16886\/revisions\/77209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16886"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=16886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}