NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Interior Department is giving 24 states a total of $560 million to start cleaning high-priority derelict oil and gas wells abandoned on state and private land, the department said Thursday. It said up to 10,000 wells could be dealt with as the government begins allocating $4.7 billion set aside to create an orphan well cleanup program under the bipartisan infrastructure plan approved late last year. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates there are more than 3 million abandoned oil and gas wells around the nation. The infrastructure law “is enabling us to confrontlong-standing environmental injustices by making a historic investment to plug orphaned wells throughout the country,” Secretary Deb Haaland said in a news release. A dozen states including Arkansas, Kansas, New Mexico and Ohio, have prioritized wells in disadvantaged communities, the department said. Louisiana said it would plug 250 to 900 wells near lowincome communities, providing a chance for unemployed energy workers from such areas to learn how to plug orphaned wells and to get work doing so, a separate release said.
