Multiagency effort aims to identify and characterize lost wells, including methane emissions and other environmental impacts
Los Alamos National Laboratory is leading a new research consortium funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to identify and characterize the nation’s hundreds of thousands of undocumented orphaned wells and determine their full environmental impact with a focus on methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas.
To support the effort, the program, funded by the Department of Energy, Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, will rely on advances in drones for carrying multiple, inexpensive, lightweight sensors to detect the wells. The program will also rely on the development of geophysical techniques to characterize the wells and advancements in machine learning for finding clear signals in noisy data, Viswanathan said.
In addition to Los Alamos, the consortium includes representatives from the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, the U.S. Department of Interior and four other national labs:, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, National Energy Technology Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories.
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