The Hydrocarbon Horizon: Orphaned Wells Analysis

Project: The Hydrocarbon Horizon: The Politics of Oil and Gas Site Closure Repository Author: Dr. David P. Adams, California State University, Fullerton Publisher: Routledge (forthcoming) Collaborators: Dr. Jon Fisk, Dr. Nurun Nahar, Dr. John Morris

Overview

This repository contains the data infrastructure, analysis notebooks, and SQL code supporting the empirical chapters of The Hydrocarbon Horizon. The book examines the politics of fossil fuel site closure in the United States, with particular attention to orphaned oil and gas wells as physical indicators of stranded assets and the unresolved liabilities of the fossil fuel regime.

The core database (orphaned_wells, PostgreSQL/PostGIS) integrates:

117,672 documented unplugged orphaned wells across 27 states (USGS DOW dataset, 2022)
85,230 U.S. census tracts (2021 TIGER/Line cartographic boundary file)
State governance framework data — just transition offices and plugging prioritization schemes
Financial liability estimates — per-well plugging costs and IIJA/BIL funding allocations
FGDC and ScienceBase metadata — full provenance for the primary dataset

Repository Structure

new-orphan-wells/
├── README.md
├── docs/
│   ├── database-schema.md          # Full schema reference: all tables, columns, indexes
│   ├── data-sources.md             # Provenance, citations, and data quality notes
│   ├── chapter4-variables.md       # Variable definitions for Chapter 4 (governance coding)
│   └── chapter5-variables.md       # Variable definitions for Chapter 5 (financial liability)
├── notebooks/
│   ├── ch4_geography/              # Chapter 4: Geography of Transition
│   ├── ch5_costs/                  # Chapter 5: Costs of Transition
│   ├── ej_analysis/                # Environmental justice / ACS demographic joins
│   └── spatial/                    # Mapping and spatial analysis
├── sql/
│   ├── schema/                     # Table and index DDL
│   ├── views/                      # View definitions
│   └── queries/                    # Analysis queries by chapter
├── data/
│   ├── raw/                        # Source files (gitignored — see below)
│   ├── processed/                  # Derived/exported datasets
│   └── ra-input/                   # RA Excel workbooks (Transition_Offices, Prioritization)
├── figures/
│   ├── ch4/                        # Maps and charts for Chapter 4
│   └── ch5/                        # Charts and tables for Chapter 5
└── scripts/                        # Shell and Python utility scripts

Database

Name: orphaned_wells Host: localhost (PostgreSQL 18, PostGIS enabled) Connection: psql -U postgres -h localhost -d orphaned_wells

See docs/database-schema.md for the full schema reference.

Quick start

-- Well count by state with liability estimates
SELECT state, state_name, well_count_dow,
       est_mid_liability, iija_phase1, unfunded_mid
FROM v_ch5_liability_summary;

-- State governance framework (populated after RA data loaded)
SELECT state, state_name, well_count_dow, framework_type, office_language_type
FROM v_ch4_state_analysis
ORDER BY well_count_dow DESC;

-- Highest-density tracts (environmental justice targeting)
SELECT tract_geoid, tract_name, county_name, state_usps, well_count, wells_per_km2
FROM v_highest_density_tracts
LIMIT 20;

Data Sources

Dataset	Source	Citation
U.S. Orphaned Wells (DOW)	USGS ScienceBase	Grove & Merrill (2022), DOI: 10.5066/P91PJETI
Census Tracts	U.S. Census Bureau	cb_2021_us_tract_500k, TIGER/Line
Plugging Cost Estimates	Raimi et al. (2021)	DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.1c02234
IIJA Funding	DOI/OSMRE	Phase 1 formula grants, Nov 2022
Transition Offices	Climate Policy Dashboard	climatepolicydashboard.org
Prioritization Schemes	IOGCC	Prioritization Report, July 2023

Full citations and data quality notes: docs/data-sources.md

RA Data Integration

When the RA returns the Excel workbook (Transition_Offices + Prioritization tabs), load into the database:

# From data/ra-input/ after saving tabs as CSV
psql -U postgres -h localhost -d orphaned_wells \
  -c "\COPY state_transition_offices (state,state_name,office_name,year_established,target_text,code_fossil,code_equity,source_url,date_collected,collected_by,notes) FROM 'data/ra-input/Transition_Offices.csv' CSV HEADER;"

psql -U postgres -h localhost -d orphaned_wells \
  -c "\COPY state_prioritization (state,state_name,system_type,tech_factors,code_rural_urban,code_vuln,code_surface,pdf_page,source_quote,source_url,date_collected,collected_by,notes) FROM 'data/ra-input/Prioritization.csv' CSV HEADER;"

The v_state_governance and v_ch4_state_analysis views activate automatically.

Notebooks

Notebook	Chapter	Description
`ch4_geography/01_state_distribution.ipynb`	4	Well counts, maps, fossil dependence by state
`ch4_geography/02_governance_framework.ipynb`	4	Engineering vs. justice state typology
`ch4_geography/03_ej_concentration.ipynb`	4	Tract-level EJ analysis
`ch5_costs/01_liability_estimates.ipynb`	5	State-level cost and funding gap
`ch5_costs/02_iija_adequacy.ipynb`	5	IIJA Phase 1 coverage analysis
`ej_analysis/01_acs_join.ipynb`	4–5	ACS demographic join via tract_geoid
`spatial/01_national_map.ipynb`	4	National well distribution map

Gitignore Notes

Large source files are not tracked. Add to .gitignore:

data/raw/
*.shp
*.dbf
*.shx
*.prj
*.sbn
*.sbx
*.cpg
*.csv
figures/**/*.png
figures/**/*.pdf

Citation

Naher, Nurun, David Adams, Jonathan Fisk, John Morris (forthcoming). Governing Focssil Fuel Legacies: Policy, Risk, and Resistance. Routledge.

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