New federal funding announced in April will help bolster Mississippi’s efforts to track down potential orphan wells, the State Oil & Gas Board says.

Orphan wells, most of which were used for oil or gas production, are wells no longer in use but have no record of ownership or the company that dug them no longer exists. In an effort to ensure those wells have no oil or methane leaks, the federal government is spending $4.7 billion through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The U.S. Department of Interior announced $6.8 million for Mississippi on April 24, which is on top of $5 million the state got in initial funding.

“Many of these wells pose serious health and safety threats by contaminating surface and groundwater, releasing toxic air pollutants, and leaking methane – a ‘super pollutant’ that is a significant cause of climate change and many times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere,” an Interior Department press release said.

The state’s orphan well program has been around for decades, the Oil & Gas Board explained to Mississippi Today. Usually the board pays for the program with money it collects from the oil industry, but the new federal funds means the Board doesn’t have to wait to build up that pot of money. So far, the state has plugged 473 wells, according to the board’s database, most of which are in the southwest part of Mississippi.

While there are just seven known orphan wells the state still has to plug — three in Walthall County, three in Wilkinson County, and one in Wayne County — there are about 340 others that are potentially orphaned but are missing records, the database shows. The Board will use the federal funding to plug the known wells, as well as track down the others to make sure they were plugged properly.

Jess New, the board's executive director, said the federal grant gives the agency five years to conduct the work.

"With the funds provided, the (board) will seek to further identify, locate, characterize and rank orphan well sites, while continuing its efforts to plug, remediate and restore the locations on which those wells exist," New said in an e-mail.

To plug a well, New explained, the agency has to remove any piping or casing that was left inside, and then inject mud and a cement plug to seal it off. The new funding is also for "remediating" the wells by cleaning the sites and removing any old equipment that was left behind.

David Snodgrass, lead geologist for the board, said that part of the process is finding exactly where the old wells are, including many that are in the Jackson area.

"Literally there's one underneath our building," Snodgrass said. "We can't do anything about that. When things get built on top of something, it is what it is at that point."

He explained that many of the older wells have coordinates shown on hand-drawn maps, but contractors with the right technology — such as a magnetometer, a ground-penetrating radar, or lidar — can find the wells as long as they know the general area.

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