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Renewables / Magnetics
Abandoned oil and gas well location
Estimates put undocumented orphaned wells in the United States somewhere between 310,000 and 800,000. Solar and wind developments cover large acreage in precisely the country where they were drilled.
The problem, stated plainly
A solar development drives many thousands of piles. A wind development excavates foundations measured in hundreds of cubic yards. Both happen fast, on open agricultural land, in states that have been drilled for over a century.
Striking an abandoned well casing with a pile is at best a stopped program and a damaged rig. At worst it opens a pathway to a formation that has been sealed for decades — a gas release, a contamination pathway to groundwater, an environmental liability with the developer's name on it, and a regulator involved. Wells plugged before modern standards, or never recorded at all, are the ones that do this.
State records only cover the wells somebody registered. The oldest, shallowest and most numerous predate registration entirely.
How we find them
A well is a steel casing standing vertically in the ground, which makes it close to an ideal magnetic target. We survey with gradiometer arrays on tight line spacing, positioned by RTK GNSS, covering large acreage at a rate that fits a development schedule.
Where the casing has been cut off below plow depth, corroded, or salvaged — and where agricultural and cultural iron produces a noisy background — magnetics alone can be ambiguous. EM61-class metal detection responds to the conductive mass on a different physical basis, and running both separates a real casing from a plow point far more reliably than either does alone.
What it costs against what it prevents
A pre-construction well survey over a solar footprint is a small fraction of one percent of project cost. A single struck well can stop a program, and the remediation and reporting that follows is not a line item anybody has budgeted.
Where the site is being flown anyway, we combine the magnetic survey with UAV LiDAR for terrain on the same mobilization.
What you get
A target list, positioned to survey grade, ranked by how confidently each is a well casing rather than incidental iron — delivered as a GIS layer your civil designer can load directly and lay the pile grid around, and in time to do so.
Equipment and capability
- Vertical gradiometer arrays on tight line spacing
- EM61-class time-domain metal detection
- RTK GNSS positioning throughout
- Large-acreage coverage rates
- Confidence-ranked target lists
- GIS layers for pile and foundation layout
What you receive
Every anomaly positioned, classified and ranked, with the basis for each classification stated. Delivered as GIS and CAD so the layout can be adjusted around them before the piling contractor mobilizes.
Ask before you commission
Tell us the target, the ground and the constraint and we will say whether this method answers it, whether it needs a second method alongside, or whether something else entirely is the better route. That conversation is free and it is usually short.