Jamie and Bobbie Rieger recently decided they wanted to move out of Commerce City and onto the wide open lands of rural eastern Adams County.

On Sept. 1, they closed on a property just east of Barr Lake. The 45-acre property came with a brand-new house, views of Longs Peak and the Indian Peak Wilderness Area on a clear day – and an abandoned oil and gas well that is leaking methane.

The well, just over 250 feet from the house, was discovered to be leaking just in May.

On Tuesday, the Riegers got something else – a visit from Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, who both championed state and federal programs to plug orphan wells.

The Riegers’ well has since been plugged to stop the leak.

Adams County is ground zero in Colorado for abandoned or orphan wells. Out of 600 wells that have been abandoned statewide, the county has 312.

It is also the only county in the state with its own well monitoring programs. More than 300 wells have been inspected in the last 18 months, according to Greg Dean, the county’s oil and gas program administrator. About 50 are leaking methane and are on high priority for the state program for remediation, which operates under the Energy and Carbon Management Commission (formerly the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.)

“This is an important issue in our own backyard,” said Adams County Commissioner Eva Henry.

The county, she said, isn’t happy about those 312 wells but is aggressively dealing with it. 

Jamie Rieger told Colorado Politics he looked into the wells before buying the property. The wells were abandoned in the early 2000s by Plymouth Pegasus, a Houston-based oil company that later went bankrupt. When the company decided the business was no longer viable, they shut down the wells but didn’t mitigate the potential problems those wells could cause.

Henry said 190 of the 312 abandoned wells in Adams County are from Plymouth. 

Rieger said that put the responsibility for dealing with the problem on the state, which he said now has the initiative to mitigate these wells. In his area, those wells have the potential to pollute the Arapahoe aquifer. Rieger’s water comes from a well drilled into the aquifer, at about 400 feet, but the well only goes down about 260 feet, he said.

If something were to go wrong, the groundwater would be polluted, he said.

Eventually, the state will remove the wells, the tubing, the dirt around it, and several holding tanks attached to those wells. Given that his two wells have been checked and cleared for leaks, they are lower on the priority list and it could be several years before they’re removed. In the meantime, the wells do get inspected every year, Rieger said.

Rieger said he’s big supporter of the orphan well program and the funding attached to the program that pays for the mitigation.

“It’s all about protecting the water and the land,” he said.

That funding comes from the oil and gas companies in Colorado and not from the taxpayers.

In a statement to Colorado Politics, Kait Schwartz, director of the American Petroleum Institute, Colorado chapter, said, “We are pleased that Governor Polis chose to highlight the immense steps taken by industry and state regulators in plugging and remediating Colorado’s remaining orphaned wells.”

Last year, she said, her industry worked with the Energy and Carbon Management Commission, legislators and stakeholders in the development of the state’s Orphan Well Enterprise, which, she noted, is a byproduct of the commission’s historic financial assurance rulemaking.

“(We) believe it sets Colorado on a sustainable path, funded in full by our industry, in addressing the remaining orphaned wells in the state,” Schwartz said, adding, “Colorado continues to lead, not follow, and we should all be proud of the incredible work and progress that continues each and every day to bring safe and reliable energy to its citizens.”

The oil and gas industry is paying a minimum of $10 million per year to the state for the orphan well program enterprise set up in 2022 through bipartisan legislation. 

In a statement Tuesday, Polis said it takes “collaboration at every level of government to do this work.”

“Colorado has found a way to bring everyone to the table to prioritize health and safety, while moving toward a clean energy future. Our commission is working diligently to plug, remediate, and reclaim wells around Colorado to protect the health and safety of our communities,” he said. “This comprehensive work is an example the nation can follow, and Colorado is proud to lead the way.”

Haaland said millions of people live within a mile of an abandoned well and cheered the Biden administration’s orphaned well program, as well as the $4.7 billion provided in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that established it. The funding will cover site plugging, remediation and restoration activities on federal, tribal, state and private lands. She noted that Colorado has already gotten $25 million for its orphan well program and more will come. 

However, staffing limitations at the Energy and Carbon Management Commission may slow the spending of those funds, as well as the mitigation work it pays for. The program’s website notes that it has just six people working on orphan wells statewide, with the majority of those wells located in Adams and Weld County. 

Industry experts say that, eventually, the orphan well problem could become a thing of the past, due to consolidation within the oil and gas industry. Small- and medium-size operators are getting gobbled up by the large oil companies, such as Chevron or Civitas, and those companies are unlikely to abandon their wells. According to the American Petroleum Institute, the industry is now plugging more wells than it’s drilling.

Dan Gibbs, executive director of the state Department of Natural Resources, said Colorado is proud of its comprehensive approach to minimize the effects of oil and gas operations on public health and the environment. Its orphan well program has grown into the strongest in the nation, such as for improving air quality, public health and the environment, he said.  

While Colorado officials cheer what they call the best program in the country for dealing with the orphan well problem, the number of orphan wells in Colorado is actually fairly small compared to other states. Ohio, for one, which has more than 20,000. Nationwide, there are about 120,000 orphaned or abandoned wells in 30 states, although environmental groups believe the number is closer to one million.