All across America, there are aging oil and gas wells no longer being used to extract oil or natural gas.

A lot of them. And there are a lot of them. Don't have anyone on the hook to seal them up.

There's a term for these wells.

I would say as far as total orphan wells, it's probably more like one and a half million.

Dan Arthur is an engineer who consults with petroleum companies on environmental issues.

Sometimes he plugs oil wells for work, and in a spare time, he finds them for fun.

NPR reporter Camilla Dominooski went searching for wells with him in Oklahoma.

What do you see?

So what I spotted here is what appears to be an orphan well, maybe a couple of orphan wells.

So let's get out and take a look.

Watch out for buffalo poop.

But because they haven't been plugged,

they're still leaking greenhouse gases and other chemicals into the atmosphere

and into the land around them.

So these wells can impact people, the environment,

groundwater, surface water, soils,

all these different things over time.

And, you know, it's frustrating for me because a lot of people don't see them.

Consider this. All over America, aging oil and gas wells are causing real environmental

problems. So what would it take to fill

them in? What does it take to plug even one orphan well? From NPR, I'm Juana Summers.

Grab a snack, make the bed, check your mail, or catch up on the latest news with the NPR News Now podcast.

...