Across Louisiana, thousands of oil and gas wells sit abandoned, left behind by operators with no one responsible for plugging them or cleaning up contamination.
Each dot on this map is one of Louisiana’s 6,400 orphaned wells.
In roughly the last year, more than 2,100 wells were added to the orphaned list. Wells are being added to that list faster than the state can plug them.
The red dots show wells orphaned since January 2025. The state has more orphaned wells now than it ever has before, according to the Department of Conservation and Energy.
One company, TBR Operating, appears to have stopped responding to regulators. It orphaned more than 500 wells, largely in Union Parish in north Louisiana.
Terronne Petroleum also went dark, orphaning 260 wells clustered in Ouachita, Union, and Morehouse Parishes in north Louisiana.
More than 350 Cox Operating wells were orphaned after the company went through bankruptcy. The wells it owned are scattered across the coastal parishes of south Louisiana.
American Natural Energy Corp. went through a bankruptcy-related reorganization in 2016 and appears to be dormant. It orphaned 74 wells in St. Charles Parish, including 10 drilled as recently as 2020.
Together, TBR Operating, Terronne Petroleum, Cox Operating, and American Natural Energy account for nearly 1,200 orphaned wells — close to one in every five on the list. Plugging a single well can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And taxpayers are left with the bill.
Source: Louisiana Department of Conservation and Energy. Data as of March 30, 2026.