About the data

Terrabillion grew out of DataCastle research idea orphan-well-plugging-bid-queue — the #1 ranked of 2,066 tested ideas at 71/100 (conditional, medium confidence). This page summarizes the evidence; the full record lives in plans/idea-orphan-well-plugging-bid-queue.md.

The buying decision

Well-plugging and reclamation contractors decide whether to bid state orphan-well plugging packages. West Virginia alone plugged 220 wells in 2023 under $100M-plus IIJA grant programs, and states keep awarding formula and matching grants — but bid notices scatter across state procurement portals with no national queue. A consolidated feed of packages, deadlines, and awards is the product.

The collection

Collection agents map each state's regulator, procurement portal, tracker, and award disclosures, then preserve and extract records across eight families: opportunities, bid documents, wells, awards, payments, funding, requirements, and outcomes. The library holds every record; the bid queue shows the procurement-facing slice. The source directory lists every tracked source and when it was last checked.

Each record shows its review status — verified, portal record, or still unreviewed — and every extracted field links back to the page it came from. Unreviewed rows are leads, not confirmed bids.

The record

One queue row carries the sellable fields where the source publishes them:

Well or API number · county · depth class · package ID · bid deadline · award status · funding program · source URL

States publish different fields under different names, so blanks mean unpublished — never guessed. Deadlines appear exactly as the source wrote them.

Provenance

• Primary: the WV DEP well-plugging tracker — a record system with search fields for API, county, grant, contractor, and total paid, plus permits, completions, inspections, payments, and downloadable results.
• Demand: the WV DEP IIJA page — grant table ($25M initial complete, $116.9M formula phases), 220 wells plugged in 2023, explicit contracting of specialized well-plugging services.
• Adjacent: IOGCC publishes Idle and Orphan Well reports and state strategies — policy-level only, with no per-well bid queue, deadlines, or awards.
• Corroboration: Mississippi MSOGB plugging-package invitations for bid, Ohio ODNR federally funded awards (e.g. $2.4M for 12 wells), and the $4.7B federal orphaned-well allocation.

Rights and limits

Rights were assessed clear: state tracker facts and grant disclosures republished with source links, and bid documents are public procurements. Two gaps stay open and gate any launch: bid deadlines on procurement portals and depth classes still need per-package verification (agent feasibility 13/20), and contractor demand for a multi-state queue is unverified — the next research step is tracing 10 opportunities across at least three state systems.

Research score

71/100 — buyer value 19/25 · assembly friction 14/20 · agent feasibility 13/20 · competitive room 14/20 · distribution 7/10 · recurring value 4/5. Status: conditional, eligible for the T2 dossier round.