Abandoned Oil Wells May Be Leaking Lots Of Potent MethaneAndy Tully
Regulations for temporarily abandoned wells require oil companies to present plans to reuse or permanently plug such wells within a year, but the AP found that the rule is routinely circumvented, and that more than 1,000 wells have lingered in that unfinished condition for more than a decade. ...
Back in 2012 Rick Stewart, then an oil attorney in Houston, led an effort to encourage the General Land Office to do something about abandoned oil platforms. In the byzantine world of Texas regulation, the Railroad Commission is responsible for orphan wells, but the GLO oversees platforms. Ste...
Across the country, there are an estimated 4 million abandoned oil wells. They aren’t all suited for the approach that Premier is taking; the location needs to get enough sun, be near transmission lines, and the reservoirs themselves need to have certain geological characteristics. It should a...
Furthermore, the bond amounts are almost never enough to cover the complete costs of plugging wells and restoring the land. Pennsylvania officials have identified thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells in the state (marked in blue) with no identifiable responsible party to complete ...
Recent work indicates that oil and gas methane (CH 4 ) inventories for the United States are underestimated. Here we present results from direct measurements of CH 4 emissions from 138 abandoned oil and gas wells, a source currently missing from inventories. Most abandoned wells do not emit CH...
Abandoned oil and gas wells can be used as low temperature geothermal resources for heat extraction from geological formations. They can provide valuable potential sources of heat without the extra cost of deep drilling required in traditional geothermal projects. In this study, two oil wells (AZ ...
Abandoned oil and gas wells provide a potential pathway for subsurface migration and emissions of methane and other fluids to the atmosphere. Little is known about methane fluxes from the millions of abandoned wells that exist in the United States. Here, we report direct measurements of methane ...
More than 1 million abandoned wells are scattered across the U.S., left behind when oil and gas companies cease operations. The wells are insidiously becoming an environmental threat as they leak methane, a major contributor to climate change. Jeff Berar
Oil spill: looking back on 100 days of crude The 27,000 decommissioned wells were drilled mostly on federal leases that have now expired. Government rules for expired leases on the sea floor require operators to plug the wells or make plans to reuse them within a year. In its original repo...