Orphan wells are volatile oil and natural gas sites that threaten citizen safety
It was the call no firefighter ever wanted to receive: a mass-casualty incident.
On August 25, 2025, an explosion occurred two miles deep into the hilly terrain of Wayne National Forest. A team of workers with Monroe Drilling Operations LLC and a mineral resources inspector joining them from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ONDR) found themselves engulfed by the ignition of their equipment while trying to plug an oil and natural gas well on forest grounds. First responders arrived at the forest’s jurisdiction and braved the fire as flames surrounded them, two miles from the nearest fire hydrant. Of the six injured, five were airlifted in critical condition to Marietta Memorial Hospital.
What orphan wells are
Orphan wells are oil and natural gas wells that have been abandoned, with no known owner who can take responsibility. This well is one of over 20,000 in the state as tracked by the ODNR. The ODNR launched an initiative to plug as many of the wells as they can and encourage locals to report any they come across through a form on their website. Orphan wells can be identified by old, rusted or abandoned equipment including pump-jacks as well as leaks or sinkholes in the surrounding area.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Services, old and faulty equipment on-site can leak harmful gases like methane and benzene which harm the environment. Furthermore, the oil, brine and gas pollutants can contaminate local drinking water, and in the case of a locations such as the Wayne National Forest, harm natural ecosystems.
During their heyday in the early 20th century, these wells were drilled and operated before environmental regulation. Plugging the wells can mitigate these problems by sealing away pollutants and preventing future leakage. But these defunct, improperly sealed wells are volatile, and on August 25, the filling equipment sparked and triggered an explosion, severely burning the workers.
Joint operation
As acting chief of the Reno Volunteer Fire Department, Jon Bradford was one of the firefighters on the scene. He said the distance from the nearest fire hydrant to the site of the explosion forced the team to hook up the larger side-to-side truck to the hydrant. They had to navigate four-wheeler brush trucks through the forest terrain in order to deliver the water.
“You always think about these mass casualty things in the back of your head; I run these scenarios in my head all the time,” Bradford says. “But it’s just not something you think about on a Monday morning.”
Bradford says the jurisdiction of the forest remains ambiguous and hopes he did not overstep boundaries while putting out the fire.
“I assumed it was Newport Township because I could almost throw a rock to their high school … then a day later we find out it was Independence Township and that’s Little Muskingum Fire Department,” Bradford says. “We ended up doing what needed to be done … somebody had to do it.”
The Reno Volunteer Fire Department received a grant at the beginning of last year that Bradford says his people were lucky to receive. It gave them funds for the side-by-side Bradford equipped with a pump and a rescue kit, as well as funds for the off-road, four-wheeler brush trucks that carried Bradford and his team onto the explosion site.
“Thank goodness we were able to acquire something like that in a time of need, the availability of the right equipment,” Bradford says. “We didn’t know how far back in the woods it was, so we just brought everything.”
Due to the remote site of the orphan well, Bradford noted medical personnel were unable to be dispatched to the location. The injured workers had to be brought to the foot of the hill and out of the forest in brush trucks one by one before they were airlifted to receive care.
Cryptic Credentials
ODNR Press Secretary Karina Cheung states that the ODNR’s orphan well division worked with local disaster response to ease the situation and keep the rest of Wayne National Forest safe. Early investigations have found that crude oil and natural gas had traveled from the work site and ignited the equipment, causing the explosion.
A vast majority of Ohio’s orphan wells are located in the eastern half of the state. Southeast Ohio has a dense cluster of orphan wells as well, more tightly packed than those in Northeast Ohio.
Cheung says 3,400 of them have been successfully plugged, 2,000 more are ready to be contracted for plugging, and another 5,000 are undergoing the final stages of inspection before contracting a fill job. The ODNR’s orphan well program was founded in 1977.
While the negative effects of orphan well are well document, explosions are practically unheard of. The ODNR is investigating the incident to ensure that all the staff have the proper safety training and equipment credentials.
“In this part of the state, I know there are several orphan wells that are in the process of being plugged and getting things tidied up,” Bradford says. “But this is one of the first accidents we’ve had to respond to with them plugging an orphan well.”
The ODNR’s website states they are expecting up to $326 million in federal funding for the orphan well program by 2030 from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in November 2021 by the Biden administration. The BIL’s Section 40601 dispenses funding for “orphan well site plugging, remediation and restoration.” The ODNR received an initial grant of $25 million in October 2022 and a formula grant for its next phase amounting to $57.7 million in July of the following year.
According to the Orphan Well Quarterly Report, 133 orphan wells were plugged with the initial grant alone. Every single one of them also lists that the surface operations were conducted by privately contracted workers, and that the plugging of each site was witnessed and authorized by an ODNR inspector.
Whether the incident at Wayne National Forest will jeopardize future federal funding remains.
Readers can follow along with the orphan well plugging project by visiting the ODNR’s Oil and Gas Well Viewer, then filtering by “Orphan Status.”
Further, people can fill out a form from the ODNR to report orphan wells and call the ODNR out for inspection. Use caution when approaching and do not interfere with equipment beyond reporting its location and apparent condition.
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