The Environmental Protection Agency estimates the number of abandoned oil and gas wells in the US at about 3.9 million, with 2.2 million unplugged.
Holy fuck, I had no idea there were that many. That's absolutely crazy to think about.
this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025
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The Los Angeles Times ran a map of just the ones in California. Most browsers will let you access it if you edit this URL to put a . after the .com and before the /
https://www.latimes.com/projects/california-oil-well-drilling-idle-cleanup/map/
Classic conservative mindset of "I don't care about ruining the environment unless it's my local environment".
But you know, sometimes you'll have to take the allies you can get in this fight.
It's fucking amazing to me that conservatives are so big into hunting but can't even conceive the concept of environment. Like, you want the deer you're eating to be drinking from contaminated rivers? Really? Sure, you caught that fish just south of Detroit... You're seriously going to eat that?
Tldr: they do it through political action and social media
we need this for the gulf.
And sometimes the plugged ones were done so long ago that they're effectively not plugged, just capped off a few feet below ground.