They came. They drilled. They left, and in their aftermath are unplugged holes in the ground — orphaned coal-bed methane wells. To date, there are 6,924 plugged and abandoned coal-bed methane wells in Campbell County, according to the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Of those wells, 5,202 are on fee or state land. The rest are on federal land. There also are wells that are orphaned — wells that the operators walked away from, leaving them unreclaimed. The responsibility of plugging these wells falls on the Oil and Gas Commission if the wells are on state or private land, or to the Bureau of Land Management, if they are on federal land. Since production peaked in 2009 at 580 million thousand cubic feet, the number of orphaned holes has been rising. There are about 1,220 abandoned wells on state and fee (private) land in Wyoming, most of which are in the Powder River Basin, according to Gov. Matt Mead's office.
{}