Locating undocumented orphaned oil and gas wells with smartphones

Majority of the estimated 3 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the U.S. have missing documents and lack surface equipment making them difficult to locate. However, most of them have casings made of iron alloys which are magnetic and can be sensed by magnetometers. Here we utilize an iPhone 12 mini smartphone as a magnetometer to locate two abandoned wells. We designed a simple unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) survey setup where the iPhone 12 mini was hung from an inexpensive small drone. We surveyed the two sites by flying the drone at altitudes, 10 m, 15 m, and 20 m above ground level. Our results show that at altitude of 10 magl the smartphone magnetometer could pick the magnetic anomaly of either of the wells at intensities ≥ 52 μT; sufficient to accurately locate the wells. At altitude of 15 magl the smartphone could locate the wells within ~5 m radius of the actual wells’ location, and it was unable to detect any magnetic anomalies at 20 magl. Simplicity of the setup, minimal required scientific knowledge and low cost of the setup makes this setup an ideal tool for locating orphaned wells by citizen scientists.