What it costs to plug a well in Colorado
Reported costs of publicly funded plugging in Colorado, 2022 to 2026: a median of $85,728 per well.
BModerate confidence
The middle of reported costs is $85,728. Most wells cost between $34,175 and $182,260 (the 10th to 90th percentile). The median is typically within 40% of what individual wells cost. It rests on 322 wells.
How Colorado compares
Colorado's median is above the middle of published states ($43,622) and is number 8 from the bottom of the 10 states with a published figure. State differences reflect well depth, terrain, the age of the wells and how each program buys the work, so a higher number does not by itself mean a less efficient program.
Looking only at years with enough data to publish, the median reported cost was $85,464 in 2023 and $52,036 in 2026, a change of -39%. Part of any change is a different mix of wells from year to year, so use the Plugging Cost Index for like-for-like movement.
The wells behind the figure are mostly gas wells.
Funding
Colorado's orphan well program has received at least $84.5 million in federal infrastructure-law grants that we could match in federal award records. Program tracker for Colorado.
The documented backlog
Colorado lists about 650 documented orphan wells. At the published range that would cost roughly $22.2 million to $118.5 million to plug, middle estimate $55.7 million. It is an estimate built from the figures above, not a program budget.
Using the figure
These are costs of orphan wells plugged with public money, mostly shallow vertical wells. A deep, horizontal or offshore well, or a well with a collapsed casing, can cost far more. For a specific well, use the estimator; for the full state page, charts and sources see Colorado costs.