The Orphan Wells Mitigation Enterprise board, convened under the Energy and Carbon Management Commission, voted unanimously Oct. 21 to keep existing operator mitigation fees for the orphan well and marginal well plugging programs.

Board members said staff presentations showing current fund balances, federal grant awards and uncertainty about future federal funding supported holding fees steady. “ECMC staff is not recommending a change to the existing fees,” Deputy Director for Policy Lauren Mercer Gilman told the board at the start of the meeting.

The vote followed detailed staff briefings on two programs administered by the enterprise: a new Marginal Well Plugging Program and the more-established Orphan Well Program. The marginal well effort, funded primarily by the federal Methane Emissions Reduction Program (MERP) and ECMC marginal-well funds, ran its first application round this year and exceeded expectations. Dita Osborne, who led the marginal well presentation, said 34 operators submitted applications for 211 locations; 175 of those were wells and 36 were non-well locations. After eligibility screening, 145 wells were determined eligible for MERP, 55 of which also met criteria for the enterprise marginal-well assistance program. Staff offered MERP funding to 118 wells and enterprise support to 27 wells in the first round.

Osborne described program mechanics: applicants must sign contracts (operators have until Oct. 31 to sign), field work must finish within a 15-month contract term, and projects will include pre- and post-plugging methane measurements. She said staff expects to publish a public Power BI dashboard—showing methane mitigated, project status and spending—within about a month to track program progress daily.

Dave Andrews, orphan well program manager, reviewed federal grant activity, program staffing and the orphan-site backlog. ECMC has received two Department of the Interior grants totaling $50 million under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA); work on the initial $25 million grant ran July 2022–Nov. 2024 (closed March 2025), and formula grant phase 1 began fall 2024 and runs through Dec. 2026. Andrews said three additional IIJA-related grant applications remain under DOI review, including a $29 million formula phase 2 request and two matching-grant applications totaling roughly $12 million.

Andrews reported that at the end of fiscal year 2025 (June 30) the orphan program backlog stood at 1,897 orphan sites with 948 remaining wells to plug; the current backlog presented during the meeting was 1,906 orphan sites with about 929 wells remaining. The enterprise fund balance was about $16.5 million at fiscal year end. Under staff modeling, anticipated enterprise spending tied to federal matching requirements (about $6.5 million per year to satisfy a five-year performance match scenario) could reduce the fund balance; staff estimated the fund could drop to roughly $9.5 million before 2026 fee collections. Projected 2026 fees were estimated at about $6.4 million, which staff said would bring the balance to approximately $15.9 million by the end of fiscal year 2026.

Staff emphasized operational limits and uncertainties underpinning the fee recommendation: recent increases in program staff (Andrews said the orphan program was staffed with 19 full-time technical employees as of September) will raise capacity over the next 6–12 months, but demand is uncertain and federal grant awards remain in process. “We recently increased our staff levels, and that’s meant to try and get up to a higher level to help address that,” Andrews said during discussion about capacity. Board members repeatedly asked for midyear or end-of-fiscal-year updates to monitor fee collections, federal award progress and spending rates; staff agreed to provide those updates.

After discussion, Board Member Murphy moved to maintain the established fee rates for the coming fee cycle; the motion was seconded (second not specified in the transcript) and carried unanimously by voice vote with all five present board members voting yes. The board did not set new fee levels and directed staff to monitor collections and spending, return information to the board as federal grant awards and program data mature, and revisit the question at its next statutorily required annual review.

The board’s discussion also previewed program changes for 2026: a joint marginal- and orphan-well application round to gain administrative efficiencies, continued outreach to small operators, and an expanding public data dashboard for tracking plugging progress and methane mitigation. Staff noted limits to what enterprise funds can cover and that some work—such as decommissioning, environmental sampling and reclamation—adds to total site costs beyond plugging.