ORPHAN WELL IDENTIFICATION ON NAVAJO NATION

The Department of Energy’s Consortium for Advancing Technology for Assessment of Lost Oil & Gas Wells (CATALOG) program aims to locate and characterize undocumented orphan wells (UOWs). As part of this initiative, teams are deploying to various regions across the United States to develop best practices for identifying and characterizing UOWs. These regions include Osage County, Oklahoma; Stonewall Jackson Lake State Park, West Virginia; Navajo Nation in the Four Corners region, and others. This poster will summarize a variety of work conducted by teams in the CATALOG program with an emphasis on the ongoing work in the Four Corners region with the Navajo Nation. UAV flights equipped with magnetometers and methane sensors were performed over old oil and gas fields to search for orphan wells and methane leaks. The results from various sensors and payload configurations on the efficiency and scalability of orphan well identification will be compared. In addition, the results from Navajo Nation will be compared to work elsewhere to determine the geographic, historic, and climactic impact on well identification. This work is ongoing and feedback from the community is welcome.