The Rebellion Knowledge Hub
New to methane abatement projects? No problem.
The Rebellion Knowledge Hub exists to provide easy access to information about the key elements of our work. We focus on plugging orphan oil and gas wells and regenerating the surrounding land bases – abating methane emissions, restoring spoiled ecosystems and generating high-quality carbon credits as a result.
But what is an orphan well? How is it different to a marginal well? What is the Voluntary Carbon Market? What are co-benefits? We answer these questions and more with data from our engineers and links to external third party expertise.
Have a question we don’t answer below? Email info@rebellionenergy.com and we will get an answer to you and add to our Knowledge Hub.
What is an Orphan Well?
An orphan well is an unplugged, inactive well with no solvent operator of record responsible for its maintenance or remediation. Orphan wells are considered “wards of the state” and are the responsibility of the government entity with regulatory authority. Because of this, many orphan wells are in a state of advanced disrepair, resulting in dangerous pollutant leaks into the air, degrading soil, damaging ecosystems, and posing a significant risk to human health and the well-being of surrounding communities.
According to the U.S. Department of the Interior millions of Americans across the country live within a mile of an orphaned oil and gas well. These legacy pollution sites are environmental hazards and jeopardize public health and safety by emitting noxious gases like methane, littering the landscape with rusted and dangerous equipment, and harming wildlife.
Methane is the second largest contributor to climate change, and its warming effect over the course of 20 years is 28 times greater than CO2, making it our top abatement priority.
The scale of the methane-leaking, orphan well problem is enormous – according to the Environmental Defense Fund, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates millions of wells that need to be plugged, and millions of metric tons of CO2e leaking into the atmosphere each year.
Six Types of Wells
A producing or an active will is currently producing oil, gas, or both.
A well that is capable of producing but is temporarily closed (often due to low prices, lack of infrastructure, or maintenance).
Produces small volumes — usually less than 15 barrels of oil/day or less than 90,000 cubic feet of gas/day. Economically marginal but still operational.
Temporarily non-producing, often awaiting workover, regulatory approval, or abandonment.
A well that is a non-producing, non-maintained oil or gas well left without a responsible operator.
An abandoned oil or gas well that the state has officially documented as having no solvent operator often due to bankruptcy, death, or dissolution.
Learn More
The Orphan Well Cooperative brings all of the necessary parties to the table, working together to bring awareness, data-driven understanding, and finally solutions and action to the forefront.
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission provides a list of Orphan Wells and a Data Dictionary which you can download from their website.
Marginal Wells vs. Orphan Wells
Two types of wells are currently being addressed in the Voluntary Carbon Market: plugging orphan wells and the early decommissioning of marginal wells.
Understanding the difference between orphan and marginal wells is essential for buyers, investors and policymakers who want to evaluate the real impact of carbon-credit projects.
Orphan Wells: The Unfunded Liabilities
Orphan wells are abandoned oil or gas well that the state has officially documented as having no solvent operator often due to bankruptcy, death, or dissolution. Orphan wells are left to leak methane or other contaminants. Because there’s no viable owner, financial responsibility falls to the state – and state orphan-well programs are already stretched to their limits.
Rebellion’s work brings private capital into this gap. Generate verified carbon credits for permanently stopping methane leaks. These projects convert environmental liabilities into measurable climate benefits while also restoring land and protecting nearby communities.
Marginal Wells: Voluntary Early Decommissioning
Early decommissioning projects address a different class of wells – those that are still producing small amounts of oil or gas but are nearing the end of their economic life. In these projects, the well has an owner who voluntarily agrees to shut down the well ahead of schedule.
Carbon-credit revenue helps offset the lost production value and pays for plugging costs.
While these projects can help prevent future emissions, they do not address the ongoing emissions from already leaking orphan wells. Their financial model is also different: the operator participates voluntarily because carbon finance makes early closure economically feasible. In contrast, orphan wells have no operator and would remain unaddressed without private-sector involvement like Rebellion’s.
Leak Rate vs. Flow Rate
Leak Rate
The Leak Rate represents the emissions leaking from the well in its untouched state.
Leak rate will naturally increase over time as internal and external factors continuously degrade and corrode the well’s interior and exterior. Leak Rate tests are possible on specific low-pressure wells by using a dynamic or static chamber method.
However, for wells with higher pressure, a flow rate is required as conducting methane measurement using the dynamic or static chamber method is not feasible and dangerous.
Flow Rate
Flow Rate represents the emission potential from a given project well.
The maximum flow rate is measured over an extended period – between 2 and 24 hours – dictated by the well’s volume, while ensuring pressure and stability are within the confines of the methodology.
Following multiple flow rate tests and against available historic production data, a decline curve is applied to reflect a well’s reduced emissions leak once the max flow rate is reached.
On the front-end a corrosion model is applied, assuming the leak test occurred at day zero, and analyzed to capture whether the Max Flow Rate would be achieved within the methodology’s crediting period.
Any emissions outside of the crediting period would not be reflected in project documentation.
Surface Rights vs. Mineral Rights
Definitions
Surface Rights Owner: owns everything on the surface of the land. Surface Rights Owner can:
- Build homes, barns, fences, businesses
- Farm, ranch, hunt, graze livestock
- Control access to the surface
- Sell or lease the surface property
The Surface Rights Owner does NOT automatically own what is below the ground.
Mineral Rights Owner: owns the subsurface resources, such as oil, natural gas, coal, metals and other commercially valuable minerals. Mineral Rights Owners can:
- Extract or develop the minerals
- Lease the minerals to oil/gas companies
- Receive royalties from production
- Sell or transfer the mineral rights separately
The Mineral Rights Owner does NOT automatically own what is below the ground.
Who has more Power?
Typically, mineral rights are considered dominant over surface rights. That means:
- A mineral owner (or the company they lease to) has the legal right to use the surface as reasonably necessary to access the minerals.
- The surface owner cannot block mineral extraction.
However:
- They must minimize damage
- States often require notice
- Compensation may be required depending on laws or contracts
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What happens when the rights are split?
A: This is called a Split Estate.
- Example:
- You buy a house on 20 acres you own the surface,
- but someone else owns the mineral rights beneath it.
- Result:
- They can lease or develop the minerals.
- You may be impacted even though you never sold anything.
Q: Can someone own both?
A: Yes. When you buy land, you might get both land and mineral rights.
- Unless:
- Mineral rights were reserved by a prior owner
- The rights were sold separately
- The state controls certain minerals (common in some regions)
- Always check the title, deed, or a landman’s report to know for sure
The Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM)
- What it is: A market where companies, organizations, and individuals voluntarily purchase carbon credits to offset their emissions.
- How it works: Credits are generated by projects that reduce, avoid, or remove greenhouse gases. These projects can include renewable energy development, forestry, and other climate-related activities like methane-abatement from plugging orphan wells.
- Purpose: To fund climate-action projects that might not otherwise receive financing.
What does a carbon credit represent?
Why purchase carbon credits?
What is a carbon credit?
What is a carbon project?
Learn more about the Voluntary Carbon Market
- The Integrity Council for the voluntary carbon market provides Core Carbon Principles to help you identify high-integrity carbon credits and channel finance to climate solutions that are good for people and planet.
- Climate Focus provides a free VCM primer.
- Read “The ABCs of Carbon Credits” on the Rebellion blog.
Credit Ratings & How Independent Agencies Evaluate Quality
Why carbon-credit ratings matter
Independent ratings bring a needed layer of accountability
to the voluntary carbon market. They help buyers understand whether a credit truly represents one tonne of greenhouse-gas emissions avoided or removed — and at what level of confidence. Ratings also influence pricing: higher-rated credits typically command higher value, while lower-rated ones may trade at discounts or require additional due diligence.
How can the same carbon project receive different ratings?
That question surfaces more often as independent carbon-credit rating agencies become central to how buyers and investors assess quality. Each agency uses its own framework — built around integrity, additionality, and permanence — but with different lenses, data sources, and risk weightings. The result: sometimes the same project earns distinct scores, even when the underlying science and verification are identical.
What do rating agencies measure?
Most rating agencies analyze projects after they’ve been validated and verified by a carbon-credit registry such as the American Carbon Registry (ACR), Verra, or Gold Standard. Rather than replacing the registry process, they layer on an external view of risk — the probability that the emission reduction or removal claimed by the project will fully materialize and endure.
Key factors usually include: additionality, quantification, permanence, monitoring and verification, safeguards and co-benefits.
Three established agencies
There are three established rating agencies and each one weighs these criteria differently, which explains why ratings can vary. In addition to rating agencies, The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market provides principles for building integrity and transparency in the VCM.
MSCI
Known for its long history in financial and ESG analytics, MSCI entered carbon-credit ratings in 2024 and has already evaluated more than 4,000 projects. Its Carbon Project Ratings system applies six scored dimensions — additionality, quantification, permanence, co-benefits, legal and ethical risk, and delivery risk. MSCI’s approach is broad and quantitative, drawing on extensive market data to compare projects across sectors. A rating of AA or AAA indicates a “high likelihood” that each credit represents a genuine, additional and durable emission reduction.
BeZero Carbon
BeZero Carbon, based in London, was among the first independent rating agencies devoted exclusively to carbon projects. It has rated roughly 650 projects worldwide using a probability-of-quality model. BeZero’s framework centers on credit integrity — additionality, baseline accuracy, quantification, permanence, leakage, and policy environment — assigning letter grades from AAA to D. Its analysts perform deep technical reviews and publish detailed “rating briefs,” often citing specific methodological concerns such as baseline leakage modeling or permanence assumptions.
Calyx Global
U.S.-based Calyx Global provides subscription-based access to its project ratings and underlying data. Utilizing publicly-available information, it evaluates the likelihood that a credit equals one tonne of real emission reduction, focusing on additionality, quantification, and permanence.
Calyx emphasizes transparency and consistency, publishing short summaries that benchmark projects against peers in the same category (for example, methane-abatement or nature-based removals).
The Calyx process involves a comprehensive analysis of publicly available project documentation, such as project design documents, monitoring reports and verification reports from carbon-crediting registries. Additionally, Calyx uses external sources such as academic papers, reports and media articles. The ESR assessment is conducted against Calyx Global’s ESR questionnaire, which covers the ten environmental and social safeguard areas.
Learn more about rating agencies:
Beyond these three, the ratings landscape continues to expand. Sylvera uses satellite imagery and AI-driven analytics to evaluate land-use projects. Renoster emphasizes open data and blockchain transparency. Research groups such as Trove Research and S&P Global are developing comparative indices that track the overall quality distribution of the market. Together, these initiatives are creating the feedback mechanisms that any mature marketplace requires.
For project developers and credit buyers alike, the existence of multiple rating systems is healthy. Different frameworks highlight different dimensions of risk, encouraging continuous improvement and more informed purchasing decisions. Divergent scores don’t necessarily mean disagreement on quality — they often reflect different starting assumptions, datasets, or weightings.
At Rebellion Energy Solutions, our methane-abatement projects have been independently rated by multiple agencies. We welcome that scrutiny. Independent evaluation validates the robustness of our measurement, reporting and verification practices — and helps advance the broader conversation about how to assess carbon-credit integrity. Transparency, data sharing and open dialogue with rating agencies are essential steps toward a more trusted, high-functioning carbon market.
The diversity of carbon-credit rating agencies isn’t a flaw in the system — it’s a sign that the market is maturing. Each perspective adds depth to the collective understanding of what “high-quality” means. As methodologies evolve and converge, the entire market moves closer to its goal: ensuring that every carbon credit purchased truly represents measurable, durable climate impact.
What are Co-Benefits?
Co-benefits are ways to describe additional environmental and community benefits that arise from the original carbon project. Co-benefits of the Rebellion method of plugging orphan oil and gas wells include environmental and community benefits such as regenerating the surrounding land bases, restoring spoiled ecosystems and returning the land to its original, natural state.
Hear about the co-benefits the Packard family experienced through their work with us.
Do you work on Tribal Lands?
Yes! Oklahoma is home to 39 Federally Recognized Tribes and we are committed to ensuring that Tribal Nations are included as active participants and partners in our efforts to ensure responsible completion of the oil and gas well lifecycle. Our engagement, inclusion, and partnership with Indigenous Peoples will ensure that Indigenous social and environmental values are reflected in our work and the role it plays in changing the Nation’s energy equation.
Rebellion developed an Indigenous Peoples Policy as part of our preparation to become a trusted partner for Indigenous communities and governments. This Policy sets the stage for our engagement, communicates our organization’s values, and lays out our commitments to future partners. Read more, here.
What does it mean to "restore the land"?
For Rebellion Energy Solutions, land restoration is the work of taking orphaned oil and gas well sites that are leaking methane, scarring the landscape, and posing risks to nearby communities, and returning them to safe, stable, and productive use. In practice, that means plugging orphan wells, removing obsolete infrastructure, remediating contaminated soils, re-grading locations, and re-establishing vegetation so ecosystems can function again.
In the carbon market, these activities fit squarely within recognized “land restoration” and broader natural climate solutions pathways that reduce emissions and restore degraded land, as reflected in American Carbon Registry (ACR) methodologies and standards for high-quality, verified carbon projects.
This work also advances the UN Sustainable Development Goal 15: Life on Land, which calls on the world to “halt and reverse land degradation” and protect terrestrial ecosystems and biodiversity.
For Rebellion and its partners, land restoration is therefore both a climate solution and a justice-oriented investment in healthier land, safer communities, and long-term environmental resilience.
Land restoration supports monarch migration. Monarch butterflies inspire awe through migrations that span thousands of miles across North America—a cycle repeated generation after generation. Their long-term survival, however, depends on a network of year-round habitats that support breeding, feeding, and overwintering populations. As these habitats decline, so does the resilience of the species.
Across parts of the United States, land degraded by methane-leaking orphan oil and gas wells presents both an environmental challenge and an opportunity. Reclamation and restoration efforts can play a role in addressing emissions while also supporting ecological recovery.
What benefits occur when land is restored to native ecosystems?
The Tucker 2 white paper highlights how restoring land around orphaned oil and gas wells can deliver meaningful environmental and community benefits – and quickly.
At this Oklahoma site, years of unchecked Eastern Red Cedar growth had overtaken native prairie, drying out the soil, reducing wildlife habitat, lowering agricultural productivity, and accelerating ecological decline. After Rebellion Energy Solutions safely plugged the orphaned well, the team partnered with SnapLands to restore the surrounding landscape, beginning with the removal of dense cedar trees and followed by strategic seeding of diverse cover crops and native plants. In less than two years, the site transformed from a depleted woodland understory into a thriving mix of native grasses, flowers, and legumes. The restored area now shows a 39% higher ecological function score and 950% increase in plant species diversity compared to the unrestored control area.
This restoration work doesn’t just improve how the land looks, it improves how the land works. Soil tests show higher carbon content, better water-holding capacity, and healthier microbial activity in the restored area, important factors that help rebuild resilient landscapes. These improvements also support climate goals: healthy soils and native plants capture carbon, while plugging the orphaned well eliminates methane, a super-pollutant responsible for fast, near-term warming. The return of diverse plant species also strengthens habitat for pollinators, birds, and other wildlife: key co-benefits that ripple far beyond a single acre.
Ultimately, Tucker 2 demonstrates that pairing well plugging with ecological restoration creates compounded value: safer communities, healthier land, reduced emissions, improved water retention, and long-term ecological resilience. Rather than allowing landscapes to revert to cedar-dominated woodlands, which degrade soil, increase wildfire risk, and reduce agricultural potential, active restoration ensures that native prairies can recover and persist.
For landowners, policymakers, and community members exploring the bigger picture of methane abatement and restoration, this site offers a practical, measurable example of how targeted interventions can repair damaged land and create lasting environmental benefits.
Still have questions we didn’t answer?
Email info@rebellionenergy.comand we will get an answer to you and add to our Knowledge Hub.