Upstream oil and gas infrastructure and wildfire burn areas in the western U.S.: Assessing current and future risks

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND AIM: The extent and intensity of wildfires has worsened in recent years, a trend that is expected to continue as climate change worsens. The western U.S., a region with numerous oil basins, has a particularly high wildfire risk. Wildfires damage to oil and gas wells may result in emissions of air toxics and higher costs for safe well retirement. We aimed to determine the extent to which oil and gas wells were located within and near wildfire burn areas in the western U.S. in each year between 1984 and 2020 and to identify wells at high risk of wildfire exposure in present-day and under projected risk in mid- and late century METHODS: We obtained oil and gas wells data from Enverus DrillingInfo, population data from the US Census Bureau, wildfire burn areas data from National Interagency Fire Center, and data on areas with high projected future wildfire risk from Argonne National Laboratory. We assessed which wells were inside or near (≤1 km) wildfire burn areas from 1984-2020 and estimated the number of people living near burn areas with wells. We then determined the count of active and plugged wells in areas with high current and projected wildfire risk. RESULTS: We observed that an estimated 31,385 (1.9%) of the 1.65 million wells in the western U.S. were located in wildfire burn areas during the study period and an additional 52,815 (3.2%) were within 1 km of a burn area. CONCLUSIONS: Wildfire damage to oil and gas wells may increase pollution in nearby communities, raise operator mitigation costs, and increase climate change through fugitive fossil fuel emissions. Policymakers may wish to consider wildfire risk in oil and gas operation regulation. KEYWORDS: oil and gas, climate change, wildfire, exposure, spatial analysis