More unused oil, gas wells linger without permanent seals increasing risk

Business News/Analysis, Opinions, Policy, Sustainability

July 20, 2015

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by Jeff Donn (Associated Press/Los Angeles Daily News) Five years after the Obama administration promised to move swiftly to permanently plug unused oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico, even more shafts are lingering for longer periods with only temporary sealing, an investigation by The Associated Press shows.

It is not clear how many incompletely sealed wells may have leaked — they generally are not monitored as carefully as active wells — but they contain fewer barriers to pent-up petroleum and rupture more easily. The threat to the environment increases with time.

In July 2010, during the BP oil spill, the AP reported that the Gulf was littered with more than 27,000 unused wells, including 14 percent left with just temporary seals.

The AP’s new analysis of federal data shows that the neglect of long-idle wells has intensified since 2010, despite the federal push after the BP accident: …

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“I think there are signs of progress, but, my God, we got a long way to go,” said Bob Bea, an emeritus engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, when told of the AP findings. Bea, who advised the government on safety after the BP spill, said he’d give “a poor grade” to efforts to seal wells since then.

In the aftermath of the BP spill, federal officials rolled out a program to push companies to permanently seal wells “in a timely manner.” That effort, known as the “Idle Iron” program, is beset by loopholes that essentially allow companies to delay permanent closure indefinitely, the AP found.

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The AP analysis in May shows that 1,065 wells have been left with temporary sealing for at least a decade, up from 1,009 wells in 2010 — a rise of 6 percent.

Such wells are subject to corrosion and intense pressure at depths down to almost two miles below the water’s surface. Shafts penetrate as far as six miles into the seabed.

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There were 25,928 permanently sealed wells in mid-May, up 10 percent from 23,468 at the end of the BP spill, according to the AP analysis of federal data. READ MORE

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