Zefiro Methane Corp [CBOE:ZEFI] has confirmed that its subsidiary Plants & Goodwin has successfully completed the company’s first ever Oklahoma-based gas well remediation project. Specifically, P&G executed a complex “plug and abandonment” operation on a gas well in Custer County, Oklahoma that was 15,000 feet deep and required the removal of nearly 5,000 feet of 7” casing.
The sealing of this site is expected to produce American Carbon Registry-approved offset products and represents Zefiro’s ambitions to expand into additional south-central states, such as Texas and Louisiana, within the next 12 months.
According to the latest expert estimates, there are millions of unplugged oil and gas wells spread throughout the US, including approximately 18,000 confirmed sites in Oklahoma , 8,500 officially listed wells in Texas , and 4,785 confirmed locations in Louisiana.
The projected cost to permanently seal the estimated 1.14 million suspected unplugged wells (which are locations that are not yet included on official government registries) in those three states is $158 billion, and plugging all the abandoned and orphaned oil and gas wells nationwide could cost up to $435 billion.
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Public health threats from gas wells
Zefiro Founder and Chief Executive Officer Talal Debs commented, “Too many Oklahomans and Americans living across the south-central United States are still forced to navigate the public health threats posed by these vestiges of a bygone era. The completion of this project not only represents Zefiro’s successful entry into a key marketplace, but also reinforces the Company’s forward momentum and total commitment to executing our growth strategy by helping more of our neighbors combat this legacy issue.”
Now more than ever, investors throughout the international voluntary carbon marketplace are seeking offset products that can immediately help clean up critical air, land, and water resources. The expertise of the oil and gas well remediation specialists on this project have further diversified both Zefiro’s operational presence and unique portfolio of high-quality, verified carbon credits, and our entire team cannot be more excited to continue meeting this long-unaddressed sector demand.
Zefiro Senior Vice President of Business Development and Chief Executive Officer of P&G Luke Plants provided further detail:
“The Custer County project is the largest leap forward that our environmental remediation and carbon markets teams have taken together to help solidify Zefiro as the methane abatement sector’s leading comprehensive service provider. This successful effort is indicative of our environmental service division’s drive to help plug more of these wells throughout the south-central United States and in every corner of the country by expanding technical capacity, making operations even more efficient, and helping generate high-quality carbon credits.”
The success of this project is also the latest in a series of commercial initiatives that Zefiro has undertaken to expand its operational footprint into new markets across the United States. This includes opening a new operations facility in West Virginia , completing strategic acquisitions of Ohio and Pennsylvania -based entities that bolster the company’s client service capabilities nationwide.
Zefiro is also working with numerous federal and state government partners, including the National Park Service , the State of New York , and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on numerous landmark well remediation projects.
Each of these efforts is aimed at helping more communities address the public health threats posed by orphaned oil and gas wells, which can leak methane gas that can be 25 to 85 times as potent as carbon dioxide emissions in terms of trapping heat in the atmosphere.
