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Our first well · Schnitzer #2 · Alfalfa County, Oklahoma

The life of one orphaned well, from 1982 to its plug in 2025.

It produced gas for three decades, passed through six operators and was left leaking on the state’s orphan list. We found it in 2025, measured it, took it on and plugged it. This is its record, from the state filings and our own field file.

Our field surveyor on the Schnitzer #2 site on plugging day, with the plugging rig in the background
Plugging day · 4 September 202540 sec · sound on
Chris, our field surveyor, on site the day the well was plugged, with the rig on the hole.API 35-003-20743
Drilled
October 1982
Total depth
5,649 ft
Formation
Oswego
Lifetime gas
~160 MMcf
Orphaned
2022
Plugged
4 Sept 2025
1982–2013Drilled and producingOCC Forms 1002A, 1001 · production records

Three decades of dry gas from the Oswego, then nothing.

The well was drilled in October 1982 by an independent operator from Midland, Texas, and first gas went to sales on 3 November that year. It was perforated in the Oswego formation at 5,492 to 5,540 feet in the Anadarko Basin and never produced oil. Over its life it made about 160 million cubic feet of gas, and no production was reported after December 2013.

Gas produced, Mcf a month, by year · shape approximate, scaled to the ~160 MMcf total
Schnitzer #2 gas production by year, approximateBar chart, one thin bar per year, of Schnitzer #2 gas production from 1993, when monthly records begin, to 2013: about 2,000 Mcf a month at the start, declining through the late 1990s to a few hundred a month, and near zero by its last reported gas in December 2013. First gas was in November 1982, and the well was plugged in September 2025. Lifetime total about 160 million cubic feet.2k0RECORDS FROM 199319821990200020102020~2,000 A MONTHLAST GAS · DEC 2013PLUGGED 2025
1982–2022Six operators, then the stateOCC Form 1073 transfers

How a producing well becomes the state’s problem.

Each sale moved the eventual plugging bill to a new owner. Two operators took the well on after the gas had stopped, and the last of them, formed in 2018, no longer exists. By 2022 the well was on Oklahoma’s orphan list, leaking from a pinhole in the wellhead adaptor.

  1. 1982Operator 1Drilled it
  2. 1991Operator 2Transfer
  3. 2009Operator 3Transfer
  4. 2011Operator 4Transfer
  5. c. 2016Operator 5After the last gas
  6. 2019Operator 6Now dissolved
  7. 2025CH4mberFrom the orphan list, to plug it
May–Aug 2025Found and measuredCH4mber field file
The Schnitzer #2 wellhead inside a wire fence on the Oklahoma prairie, as found in May 2025As found · 27 May 2025

About 52 litres of methane a minute, measured as found.

We found the leak in May 2025, on a survey made with the landowner’s permission. Our engineering manager, a Professional Engineer, then led four sets of high-flow measurements between May and August 2025, with every valve left closed, and the readings averaged about 52 litres per minute.

measurement sets
4
LPM, as found
~52
valves opened
0
Sept 2025Taken on and pluggedOCC operator #25136

Plugged on 4 September 2025, and verified independently.

We took on the well as its operator of record, which made us responsible for plugging it. ORR Energy Services, a Tulsa plug-and-abandon crew, ran the rig and cement, and we restored the site afterwards. TAQ Energy verified the work independently.

What the plug stopped
27 million L

of gas a year, which is what a leak of about 52 litres a minute adds up to for every year it stays open.

52.22 litres a minute, the average of four measurement sets, May to August 2025
Every well since

Every well we take on now follows the same path, with the same record.

How we workFor buyers