All good things come to an end: your long-awaited vacation -- away from that frigid Polar Vortex winter -- where your biggest worry is remembering to apply sunscreen every 30 minutes, that $85 concert you attend where, within what feels like minutes, your voice is gone and your ears are ringing. Just like each car sputters its last mile, each oil or gas well ends its production life. In 2018, worldwide CO2 emissions reached an all-time high, increasing 2.7 percent in just one year. While the approach to limiting greenhouse emissions has garnered more attention, the plugging and abandonment of oil and gas wells has changed insignificantly over the past century. Oil and gas companies continue to work to minimize emission amounts, yet not enough attention has been paid to wells left idle decades ago. More than 1 million oil and natural gas wells were drilled in this country before anyone really knew how to plug them. Traditional yet inferior plugging methods from the 1970s are still being used. Today, however, integrating the concerns of environmental impact have added another variable into the timeline of these wells.
Unplugged or poorly plugged wells are an environmental hazard, as they provide the potential for natural gases or fluids to escape into the atmosphere, creating health or fire hazards and contaminating freshwater zones. In 2011, a Groundwater Protection Council study found that abandoned wells caused 41 incidents of groundwater contamination in Ohio between 1983 and 2007, and another 30 in Texas between 1993 and 2008. None of the incidents were related to fracking. Scientists from Princeton University conducted research on wells in the Pennsylvania region from 2013 to 2014. Observing CO2 emissions, the scientists also detected methane, a component that in a period of 20 years could be 86 times more damaging than CO2. During observation, the unplugged well samples emitted nearly 56 milligrams/ hour on average -- a rate that could be responsible for up to 7 percent of the state's recorded emissions. Sadly, where an active well can produce for 10-15 years, an unplugged well can pollute the environment for decades.
Although deemed uneconomical in previous years, many abandoned fields are being re-entered using new technologies, creating a problem. Before a new well is drilled, neighboring idle wells must be plugged to prevent oil and gas fluids from migrating up-hole and possibly contaminating the newer formations. Additionally, due to pre-existing wells not being properly documented, it is hard to plug wells you cannot find. For example, by the year 2000, over 325,000 oil and gas wells were drilled in the state of Pennsylvania. However, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has no documentation of the locations of more than half -- about 184,000 wells. Properly plugged and located wells help operators avoid lost production during recovery projects and can also prevent cross-contamination from other zones in a production field. Advancing the technology of plugging wells can decrease the overall cost of plugging. In addition, newer plugging materials and methods may reduce plugging failures and problems associated with leaking well plugs.
Well plugging and abandonment is often seen by some entities as a cost that provides little benefit to the company's bottom line. This work takes capital to complete and provides no return on investment for companies. Regardless, monetary motivation cannot be relied on as a compromise for environmental impact. Living in a society with other human beings is both a blessing and a responsibility. We become better workers, friends and people when we share what we have learned and are open to new ideas and suggestions for improvements.
Yes, good things must come to an end, but the good news is, bad things will end as well. All things must come to an end in order for better things to happen.
For more information, contact Terry Gromes Jr. at tgromesjr@terydon.com.
