To plug orphaned oil and gas wells, resulting in immediate elimination of greenhouse gas emissions.
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After founder Curtis Shuck visited a legacy oilfield in 2019 and witnessed firsthand the negative impacts of abandoned oil and gas wells, he knew it was time to take immediate action.
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Ever since then, Well Done Foundation has been fighting climate change, one well at a time.

‍The problem with abandoned oil wells
There are over 3.5M orphaned wells in the US, waiting to be plugged by the government. The average cost to plug and restore a well is $76K -- and the government relies on US taxpayer dollars to do so -- which makes this all a a very costly and slow process when left up to them.

Yet, there’s no time to spare. These wells are high emitters of cancer-causing VOCs, dangerous H2S gases, and potent greenhouse gases like methane, all of which pose a serious health risk to local communities and ecosystems.

Oil and gas well plugging with the Well Done Foundation‍

• Provides immediate time to impact while most nature-based solutions can take years to decades
• Targets methane instead of carbon dioxide which has 84x CO2 warming potential over a 20 year period
• Has low permanence & reversal risk while other nature-based credits are often vulnerable to wildfires, pests, disease, and land-use changes
• Third-party verified

Well Done Foundation plugging A. Lorenzen #15, legacy orphan natural gas well
This legacy orphan natural gas well was reported to be plugged in 1927. It wasn’t until 1991 that the state of Montana discovered it wasn’t. Not only was the landowner forced into the cumbersome process of farming around it, they faced:

• Harmful pollutants like methane, benzene, and other VOCs linked to respiratory, neurological, and carcinogenic risks
• Groundwater contamination from wellbore integrity failures
• Habitat degradation

30 years after the initial discovery of the leaking well, the Well-Done Foundation came with a plan to finally plug it for good. Equipped with local community members as part of the plugging crew, they sealed the well, eliminated its associated methane emissions, and fully restored the impacted surface area -- ultimately reducing 20,366 metric tons of CO2e emissions.