38 Applied Geoscience Approaches for Legacy Oil and Gas Wells

This technical session will highlight the applied work to address the complex environmental challenges of legacy oil and gas exploration including  location, data management, monitoring, risk assessment, and remediation of orphaned and abandoned wells.

Tuesday, 24 March 2026
8:00 AM - 9:30 AM
CCC, Room 26

Lost, Then Found: Undocumented Wells Revealed by Maps Old and New

Paper number: 38-1
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 8:05 AM – 8:25 AM

Authors

Abstract

Though extensive work has been completed surrounding identification and plugging of oil and gas wells through Pennsylvania, many of these well locations remain undocumented. To bridge that gap, students and staff working at Harrisburg University are analyzing over 30,000 maps and other data sources. One of the primary map sources is a vast collection of coal mine maps dating back to the late 1800’s, showing the geospatial and geologic relationship that coal and oil/gas have had throughout history. Other sources consist of key well project files, historic maps from various oil and gas well drilling companies, and property maps that exist in the oil and gas regions of Pennsylvania. This presentation will highlight several of the methodologies used in this multi-year study. With maps and datasets coming in all varieties, from modern-day, easy to read maps that may even be georeferenced to old, hand-drawn images that need scanned and then brought into a digital format, the methodologies employed to capture meaningful location and attribute data from each is vast. While some data sources are standardized and clear, enabling modern-day AI and machine learning algorithms to be employed, other sources are so poorly depicted that time sensitive manual digitization within GIS software is required. Additionally, even the act of getting some of these datasets into geospatial software is unique, as some maps can simply be georeferenced, while others require data creation using northing/easting from given key well locations. Finally, this presentation will outline the output attribute data that is able to be delivered from these valuable, historic data sources and discuss the challenge of data standardization efforts when dealing with multiple types of data sources, as well as reconciliation challenges when determining which wells are unique and which are duplicated.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 58, No. 2

doi: 10.1130/abs/2026NE-411188

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