Waves of Abandonment

The Permian Basin is ground zero for a billion-dollar surge of zombie oil wells.

This repository contains data and code to accompany the Grist and Texas Observer investigation into abandoned oil and gas wells in the Permian Basin. A further methodological brief and interactive app to explore the model can be found here. The piece was reported by Naveena Sadasivam of Grist and Christopher Collins of the Texas Observer. Clayton Aldern of Grist authored this repository.

The main file is src/abandoned-wells.rmd. This notebook has also been rendered as an HTML file for easier viewing (abandoned-wells.html).

Two datasets exceed the size limit of GitHub's standard file-storage policy and must be downloaded separately. (Note that for this reason, these files appear in the .gitignore file.) They are:

1. This dataset, called OG_LEASE_CYCLE_DATA_TABLE.dsv, which should be placed in data/TX/lease/PDQ/, and
2. This dataset, called ic.csv, which should be placed in data/TX/well/.

Questions? Email caldern@grist.org or reach out on Twitter.