Orphaned Well Program (OWP)

The Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) runs the Orphaned Well Program (OWP). ECMC describes orphan wells as "unplugged oil and gas wells that are inactive and have no owner or operator who can be found or is willing to plug them." The program finds and ranks oil and gas wells, locations and production facilities across the state that have no known responsible party, or whose financial assurance instruments have been claimed, and deals with them.

In a Phase I ESA

ASTM E1527-21 does not name orphan or abandoned well lists among its standard record sources. The general reading of a well at or near a property is on Oil or gas well on or near the subject property. ECMC says such locations, left alone, may get in the way of a surface owner's farming, ranching or other use of the land, harm wildlife, put the environment at risk or endanger the public.

• The inventory is still growing. As of July 1, 2026, ECMC counted 2,156 orphaned sites in its inventory, with 996 wells on them still to be plugged. It says the inventory grew because new sites and wells came in faster than finished work took them out, and that pending enforcement and bond-claim cases are expected to add more in 2027.
• A plugged well is not a finished site. ECMC says plugging seals a well for good, but closing the site completely can also mean taking out equipment, abandoning flowlines, testing soil and groundwater, cleaning up contamination, controlling weeds and restoring the land, and that this work can go on after the plug is set. In fiscal year 2026, it says, 13 percent of field-project spending went to environmental work and 19 percent to reclamation. For an orphaned site on or near a property, ask the program which stages of its work are done.
• Orphaned is not marginal. ECMC separates an orphaned well, one with no owner or operator who can be found or who is willing or able to plug it, from a marginal well: one that still has an operator but meets the criteria, in statute and in the program, that mark a higher risk of becoming orphaned. The orphan well and marginal well programs have separate fee structures.
• Work is ranked by risk. Among what ECMC says it weighs: risk to public health, safety and the environment; methane emissions; nearness to homes, to water and to disproportionately impacted communities; the well's condition; environmental impacts; and whether work can be coordinated. It may take up a site's stages of work at different times, as technical information, access, contractors and money allow.
• Who pays. The Orphan Wells Mitigation Enterprise, established by Senate Bill 22-198, uses an annual fee from the oil and gas industry to plug orphan wells and reclaim their sites. ECMC says it completed more orphan-well work in fiscal year 2026 than in any earlier year, plugging 161 wells, and that the year's $26.5 million of field-project spending came from federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act grants, Enterprise fees, claimed bonds and a Bureau of Land Management grant.

Where to look a site up

• The OWP Project List page carries the program's project list. Its notes say that where the operator was never registered with ECMC and no bonds or other sureties are available, the operator is shown as "UNKNOWN - 1", "UNKNOWN - 4", "ENERGY & CARBON MANAGEMENT COMMISSION - 5" or "OLD OPERATORS - STATUS UNKNOWN - 99999"; that "Sureties Claimed" gives what a bond claim brought in for the project work, if anything; and that some projects worked before State Fiscal Year 2009-10 are marked as not available, being historic projects.
• The OWP GIS Map page sends readers to ECMC's current interactive GIS map.
• ECMC's fiscal year 2026 results and its fee decision are on the Colorado orphan-well progress and the 2027 mitigation fee page.
• A plugged well's own papers, the Form 6 well abandonment report among them, are found as the Oil and gas well records page describes. ECMC's main number is (303) 894-2100.

Getting the file

ECMC's Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) page says the Act allows any member of the public to request agency records unless they are excepted by law, and links an online form for filing a CORA request. The page read gives no fee and no response time.

Sources

Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission pages, read October 17, 2026, no modified date shown except where one is given:

• Orphaned Well Program
• Colorado orphan-well progress and the 2027 mitigation fee
• ECMC Orphan Wells Mitigation Enterprise Board increases industry fee to sustain Colorado orphan-well work, dated October 2, 2026.
• Orphan Wells Mitigation Enterprise
• OWP Project List
• OWP GIS Map
• Colorado Open Records Act (CORA)