RED MESA – In La Plata County, the short-lived boom of the gas industry has come and gone. What remains are dried-up, orphaned or abandoned wells – and a few still hanging on, their beams moving up and down, devoid of vigor and worn by decades of toil under the high-altitude sun.
On Wednesday, a plugging project was underway on Kroeger No. 1, an orphaned oil well installed sometime in the 1960s, was just days away from being stopped up with tons of cement.
The well is among the last orphaned, nonproducing or marginal oil wells in the area still needing to be plugged.
After plugging about 70 wells over the past five years, the state’s Orphaned Well Plugging Program appears to be nearing an unsteady finish line in its efforts to close orphaned wells across Red Mesa, southwest of Durango.
It marks a significant milestone for the Energy and Carbon Management Commission’s Orphaned Well Program and underscores the progress Colorado has made during a decade-long transition toward more stringent, protective oil and gas regulation.
Colorado has made major improvements in how it tackles a problem too large for any individual or local government to manage.
“We’re mitigating a huge liability. Everything wears out with time,” said Corey De Paulo, the West Orphaned Well Program supervisor.
Steel pipes cemented into the well at the extraction point – known as casing strings – serve as the critical support and safety infrastructure.
The ones on Kroeger No. 1, De Paulo said, are about 60 years old.
“If it sits here for another 10 or 20 years, eventually it’s going to wear out. It’s going to start leaking,” he said.
Leaking wells pose significant risks to nearby communities, watersheds and ecosystems. They can cause groundwater contamination, methane emissions, air pollution and even sinkholes.
Properly sealing them helps prevent the escape of harmful substances, protects groundwater, minimizes environmental harm and enhances public safety.
For years, dozens of abandoned or orphaned wells sat unmitigated across La Plata County.
In 2018, the state analyzed a list of 275 orphaned well sites and assigned priority ranking. La Plata County had the second highest number of sites on the list – 74 were scattered across the Red Mesa Oil Basin, more if the undocumented ones are included.
By February 2024, La Plata County had 1,410 orphaned sites with work planned or in progress and 649 wells remaining to be plugged at those sites.
But in the last decade, significant work – particularly concentrated in the Red Mesa area – has been done to address those long-standing hazards.
“This is a good one,” said Monte Jensen, the operation’s director as he looked at the crew hard at work over Kroeger No. 1.
The work had been smooth from the get-go – not always a guarantee for plugging projects on Red Mesa, and across the La Plata County, he said.
“It’s a different beast in this area, just because of its historic nature,” he said.
Many of Colorado’s orphaned wells predate modern data collection systems, leaving contractors with little information about underground conditions. That often leads to unexpected challenges requiring quick, on-the-fly adjustments.
The rugged terrain – and the presence of some wells on protected tribal lands – often demands creative solutions.
Members of the state’s Orphaned Well Team recalled one of their most memorable projects: a well on tribal land that couldn’t be reached by vehicle because of nearby cultural sites. Crews had to airlift about 100,000 pounds of rig equipment by helicopter, assembling parts of it midair and lowering cement pipes down canyon walls, said project manager De Paulo.
In another case, when plugging a well near a pond full of turtles, the landowner insisted the reptiles remain safe. The team worked with her, even planting trees she requested after the job was done, said Catherine Roy, the project’s senior reclamation officer.
“So we went out there, planted some trees, watered them, and she said she’d keep them alive,” Roy said. “We were like, ‘OK, she’s just kind of awesome.’”
The work doesn’t end once a well is sealed with cement. Mitigation is a three-step process: plugging, remediation and reclamation.
Then comes the waiting. In the arid, high-altitude climate of the Southwest, it can take up to five years for soil and newly planted vegetation to rebound, Roy said.
Roy’s enthusiasm for revegetating the dusty landscape is infectious. At a fully reclaimed site just down the road from the Kroeger No. 1 well, she kneels in the dirt to point out new grass shoots.
“There were hydrocarbons around the wellhead,” she said. “We tried to dig down to the root zone of the native sagebrush – but that’s 15 to 25 feet deep, so you can’t really get there.”
Instead, the team laid 6 inches of gravel to keep salt from rising to the surface, then topped it with clean soil.
“This is a new technique for us,” Roy said, beaming as she examined the fresh growth.
Until about a decade ago, the state’s primary focus was on fostering oil and gas development, said Jeff Robbins, a Durango resident and chair of the Energy and Carbon Management Commission. The commission, established in 1951, has since shifted its focus toward environmental protection.
“As part of that, we were told to go out and do a better job of creating two things,” he said. “One: a financial assurance program where operators really do have to pony up for the wells they’re going to drill. We created a new financial assurances protocol that is kind of first in the nation. We’re very proud of it.
“The other thing we did – and this is unique to Colorado – is create the Orphan Well Enterprise, which is a state-run business that charges a yearly fee on every existing oil and gas well,” he said. “If you’re a lower-producing well, you pay $125 a year; if you’re higher-producing, you pay $225 a year.”
In the past, operators who went bankrupt and abandoned their wells were sometimes able to “repeat offend,” state officials said. That no longer happens under the current system.
“Colorado has really set the bar in terms of oil well plugging and protective legislation,” Robbins said. “Now, all operators are required to fully guarantee that if they drill new wells, they’ll be able to afford the end-of-life scenario.”
Local governments such as La Plata County, he said, often raise concerns about orphan wells but typically lack the money or expertise to address them directly.
“They bring those concerns to our attention,” Robbins said.
Jensen, whose company contracts with several states, said Colorado’s approach stands out.
“We plug for a lot of states, and we tell a lot of them: ‘This is how Colorado does it. You might want to take a page out of their book, because they’re doing it really, really well,’” he said.
jbowman@durangoherald.com
