by Brittney Melton

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July 20, 2025

Good morning. This week, over 20 states sued the Trump administration to unfreeze billions in education grants, several Louisiana police chiefs were charged in an immigrant visa fraud scheme, and the British government announced plans to lower the voting age to 16.

How old oil wells become ‘like a zombie army’

by Camila Domonoske, NPR Business Desk correspondent

Sometimes a story is inspired by a single fact. Like this one: The vast majority of U.S. oil wells produce very little oil.

The U.S. is the world’s largest oil producer. It pulls a mind-bending quantity of crude out of the ground. But most of it comes from monster wells in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico that spit out more than 1,000 barrels every day.

The vast majority are far less impressive. They’re old, dribbling things, barely eking out a few barrels per day.

So — why are they still hanging around?

Scott Rabinowitz, president of Grand Resources, stands near a pump jack in Sperry, Okla., on March 20, 2024. Beside the pump is a black SUV. The area is grassy and there is a large puddle of water showing the reflection of the scattered, cloudy sky above.

September Dawn Bottoms for NPR

For the last couple of years, I’ve been chipping away on a series of stories that spun out from that question. They took me to the tranquil prairies of Oklahoma and to a torn-up front yard in Ohio, with lots of conversations along the way with folks in California, Texas, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. Together, they paint a picture of how America is disastrously better at creating wells than at shutting them down.

Oil wells have a life cycle. They’re born: Someone drills a hole deep into the earth, and pent-up oil races to the surface. They mature: Their flow slows down as the pressure drops. They age: Picture a toothpaste tube getting emptier and emptier, but never completely dry. And even a little bit of oil can be worth a good chunk of money.

Then they die. Or, they’re supposed to. When the juice ain’t worth the squeeze, production will stop. At that point, a company is legally required to shut the well down permanently. That means plugging it with cement.

That’s an essential step, because without it, a well is a pathway to the surface for all kinds of things to ooze up from underground. Oil, of course. Natural gas, also known as methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas. Toxic chemicals like hydrogen sulfide and arsenic. An unplugged well risks harming plants, water, people and the planet — without providing any benefit at all.

But in reality, wells are often not plugged. Plugging is expensive, from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. And there’s no promise of profit: It’s purely an expense.

That provides a huge incentive for companies to keep wells alive as long as possible. Even when they’re not being used, wells can linger for years or decades. They are often sold from one company to another like a hot potato. If a company goes bankrupt — pretty common, in the boom-and-bust oil industry — with unplugged wells on its books, now the hot potato has landed in the hands of the taxpayer.

Wells like these, with no one legally on the hook to cover the cost of plugging them, are known as orphan wells. America is full of them — hundreds of thousands, possibly more than a million. We don’t even know where they all are.

This is a problem many people are working to solve. Some are sending out drones to locate old wells. Community groups are leading tours to raise awareness about urban pollution from wells. Advocates are working to get more effective regulations. Groups are trying creative ways to fund the sealing of orphan wells. And the government authorized a $4.7 billion program to plug orphan wells.

But there’s one more wrinkle: Wells don’t always stay plugged. The last story in my series features a woman who saw a natural gas well in front of her family home get plugged when she was a little girl. And 70 years later, she watched it be plugged — again — after it started to leak.

Wells that seem dead don’t necessarily stay dead. They’re like zombies — and, like a zombie army, their numbers keep growing.

The U.S. is now drilling oil and gas wells faster than anybody is plugging them. It’s building up a debt: A collection of wells that are opened but never sealed. There’s nowhere near enough money set aside to cover the costs of shutting them down — perhaps multiple times.

Old wells are often out of sight. As one of my sources put it: “A lot of people don’t see them.” This series of stories was about trying to help people see (or hear!) an unpaid and unnoticed debt — the multigenerational problem lurking underground.

Check out more great reads from the NPR network you may have missed:

For generations, the simple recorder has been used to teach music in elementary schools, but its popularity has declined in recent years. Some schools, though, are working to keep the tradition going and keep kids excited to learn about music.
Unstable financial markets and fluctuating tariffs pose a threat to the multibillion-dollar influencer industry. Here’s why cautious spending on the influencer economy from both people and brands could serve as a new recession indicator.
Republicans in Congress are working to renew an effort to exclude millions of non-U.S. citizens from being counted in the decennial census. The results of the census influence a state's allocation of House seats and Electoral College votes for a decade.
Under President Trump’s second term, over two dozen people have been deported to Bhutan, a small Himalayan kingdom that has refused to accept Nepali-speaking refugees for years. This is the story of one such refugee who was deported there, ordered to leave by local authorities and is now essentially stateless.

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Pod Club

A man in a blue shirt and cap holds a baby in an ice cream truck and kisses them on the cheek. Outside of the truck are seven children, some of whom are holding and eating cold treats.

StoryCorps

Thanks for tuning in last week to the Planet Money episode “Summer School 1: A government's role in the economy is to make us all richer.” The episode discussed why some nations are rich and others are poor.

Today, we’re listening to StoryCorps. The “Taste of Summer” episode is all about how summer is the perfect time for foods that celebrate the season and treats that grant sweet relief from the heat. Hot dogs, pizza and ice cream are more than just the flavors they bring to our taste buds; they can hold special memories and carry different meanings to different people. The episode dives into stories about powerful memories relived through the tastes of summer.

What summer food memories does this podcast episode make you think of? Let us know, and your response could be featured in next week’s newsletter.

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In today’s episode of The Sunday Story from Up First, host Ayesha Rascoe sits down with Ryan Ross and his teenage son to discuss "The Talk." This important yet difficult conversation addresses the preparation that Black parents must provide their children for potential encounters with the police.

World capitals

The words "Sunday Puzzle" over a white background. The name "Will Shortz" is under the Sunday Puzzle title, etched into red dice.

NPR

It's time for the Sunday Puzzle! For today's on-air challenge, every answer is the name of a world capital, followed by its country. NPR Puzzlemaster Will Shortz will provide some words and the starting letter or letters of the word will be the start of the capital's name. The rest of the word will be the start of the country's name. The dividing point of the word is up to you to determine. For example, with the word “manic,” the answer would be “Managua, Nicaragua.” Test your skills here. Check this page later to hear the answers, or catch them live on Weekend Edition at 8:41 a.m.

This is a two-week creative challenge, and it's tough. Most people are familiar with palindromes, which read the same backward and forward. Two examples are “Madam, I'm Adam” and “Do geese see God?” The object is to write a palindrome that contains the letter Q. Entries will be judged on sense, naturalness of syntax, and overall elegance. Submit your answer here. The person whose answer Shortz considers to be the best palindrome containing the letter Q will get to play the puzzle on the air in two weeks.

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