Linking orphaned oil & gas wells with groundwater quality Completed
This project will combine the 117,000 orphaned oil and gas wells in the USGS Orphaned Well Dataset with groundwater quality data from the USGS National Water Information System (NWIS) to create a data product that can be used to analyze the interactions between orphaned wells, groundwater, and hazards to the environment.
The goal of this project is to create a combined dataset that can be used to identify relationships between orphaned oil and gas wells and ground water quality using existing USGS data. Orphaned oil and gas wells are abundant across the United States and pose multiple environmental risks, including greenhouse gas emissions, landscape hazards, and leaking petroleum and produced waters into groundwater. The National Water Information System (NWIS) is an authoritative source of water quality measurements with 428,538 sites across the United States, which we will use to compare orphaned well locations with associated groundwater quality measurements to assess the environmental impacts of leaking orphaned wells. Existing measurements of groundwater quality will be used to identify high levels of subsurface corrosivity, methane, and brines. This project will create an analysis-ready data release in USGS ScienceBase that contains water quality data within the proximity of known orphaned wells, with robust documentation to promote reusability of methods.
Measurements of Water Quality Constituents in Groundwater Within 1 Mile (1.61 km) of Orphaned Wells in the United States
- Overview
This project will combine the 117,000 orphaned oil and gas wells in the USGS Orphaned Well Dataset with groundwater quality data from the USGS National Water Information System (NWIS) to create a data product that can be used to analyze the interactions between orphaned wells, groundwater, and hazards to the environment.
The goal of this project is to create a combined dataset that can be used to identify relationships between orphaned oil and gas wells and ground water quality using existing USGS data. Orphaned oil and gas wells are abundant across the United States and pose multiple environmental risks, including greenhouse gas emissions, landscape hazards, and leaking petroleum and produced waters into groundwater. The National Water Information System (NWIS) is an authoritative source of water quality measurements with 428,538 sites across the United States, which we will use to compare orphaned well locations with associated groundwater quality measurements to assess the environmental impacts of leaking orphaned wells. Existing measurements of groundwater quality will be used to identify high levels of subsurface corrosivity, methane, and brines. This project will create an analysis-ready data release in USGS ScienceBase that contains water quality data within the proximity of known orphaned wells, with robust documentation to promote reusability of methods.
- Data
Measurements of Water Quality Constituents in Groundwater Within 1 Mile (1.61 km) of Orphaned Wells in the United States
This is a combined dataset from the USGS Orphaned Well Dataset (Grove and Merrill, 2022) and publicly available data from the USGS National Water Information System, NWIS, obtained via the Water Quality Portal using the USGS Python dataretrieval library. This dataset is composed of water quality measurements from groundwater sites located within 1 mile of the locations of unplugged orphaned wells