Perilous Pathways: How Abandoned Wells Can Contribute To Methane Migration Problems

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

October 9, 2012 | 1:00 AM

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Part 1: Why abandoned wells are a problem
Infographic: How abandoned wells can contribute to methane migration
Part 2: How many wells dot Pennsylvania, and why aren’t we plugging more of them?
Map: Known abandoned wells in Pennsylvania
Part 3: How to track down an abandoned well
Part 4: States don’t do much to regulate drilling near abandoned wells
[/module]Methane is a flammable, odorless gas that exists within underground shale formations. Because of the porous, intertwined rock formations that many parts of Pennsylvania sit on top of, the gas can naturally seep to the surface. Methane can be dangerous when it migrates into water wells or basements.
Orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells create a natural pathway for methane to migrate from. The process can be accelerated when an active well is drilled into the same formation the abandoned well is tapped into. This occurrence — called “communication” — is extremely rare, but it can create major problems at the surface. A 30-foot geyser of gas and water that burst through the ground in Tioga County in June was likely caused by Marcellus Shale drilling near an abandoned well.
This graphic shows how methane gas can make its way from deep underground into a basement, water well or the ground.