Old pipe on land , is it a well ? (lease, buying)

[Wyomiles]

Hello all, I was looking at a piece of land last week and found a steel pipe, standing about 5 feet above ground, on it was welded a name of a land company, the date 7-23-1953, the number TD 4000 and the section ,range and township numbers. There appeared to be a cement pad poured around it .
I was wondering if this may be an old well of some sort, hopefully a water well that I might be able to use?

I went to the Wyoming state engineers webpage to attempt a search but it was not very user friendly.

Anybody have any helpful advise for finding out about this?

[Froggie Legs]

Do you have the name of the land company and which county/town/area? You have me curious! I found some similar listings on an Oklahoma oil and gas drilling site and here is a definition of TD.

TD
1. n. [Drilling]
Abbreviation for total depth. The depth of the bottom of the well. Usually, it is the depth where drilling has stopped. Alternate Form: total depth

[SD4020]

How big is the pipe? Is it capped?

Range, township and section are things usually associated with permits for wells. The clues point towards a well. It might take a call to the state with the legal description to ascertain whether it is a well. What it was intended to be used for.

A 62 year old hole in the ground might not be a water producer. If it is it may not be fit for humans.

[sunsprit]

At 4,000' depth, unlikely to be a potable water well for domestic use.

The state engineer will have the well on file in the groundwater division if it was a water well. Take the information to them and they can look it up for you.

[SD4020]

4000? Missed that. No way anything out of that hole would be potable.

[Wyomiles]

Thanks all !
Ya 4000 ft is probably not worth looking into. I thought maybe that it might have been some sort of well identification number. There are a lot of recent oil and gas activity in the area so maybe an old test well.
I couldn't find anything on the web for the company name so probably long gone or absorbed by someone bigger.
The pipe was about 6 inch, I didn't mesure it, and it was capped.

I will be checking in with the state water folks about other water issues if I decide to move forward with buying the land so will verify at that point.

I just knew I would get some good info here !

[Froggie Legs]

Could it be a natural gas test drill, that deep?

[eiafjam]

I would start here " + theTitle + " This is the Wyoming Gas and Oil Commission. In the second column is the map server.

[InWyo]

What you have is a dry hole marker. Name on pipe is the company who drilled it and the date is when. TD is depth of well. Also there should be a lease number and also say if it is a federal lease or private. Most company's that drilled wells that long ago have long gone under. You can get on WY Oil and Gas web page and find the facts by doing some searching. You can search by legal, lease number, name of company, or maybe even date. It is probably not worth messing with for a water well. These are cemented and filled with mud. Another issue is the drill hole has surface casing that cases off surface ground water. Someone with equipment would have to shoot the casing to develop any water and generally, you would be just guessing as to where to shoot, and that is not cheap.

I have several dry hole markers on my land, but when I want a water well, I opt to hire a licensed driller to do the job right and drill my well. I have heard of land owners getting permits to reenter and convert to water but I can't believe it costing less. On a side note, if the marker is on private land, I have been told that those markers can be removed after a few years. Generally takes a backhoe and dig down below ground level and cut off with torch. Biggest problem, there is generally a little water inside the pipe that keeps the steel cold as you try to cut it. As I said before, the hole is filled so there really is no hole under the marker.

Also, since there is a dry hole marker, it does not mean that it was really a dry hole. Some holes were plugged years ago because companies had too many investors in the well. Meaning they over sold the well and had more than 100% investment. Later on, a re-organized company would come back and drill. Or they might just determine that it was not economically good enough to produce. Now that horizontal drill is going on, a lot of those locations tell a story to the geologists and they can lay out road maps on where to drill their horizontals.

[Wyomiles]

Thanks, In Wyo ! great info ! It is on land that was once owned by the Union Pacific but is now owned by an investor who has been slowly selling off their properties.