Berliner Boersenzeitung - In Canada, deserted oil wells are environmental time bombs

EUR -
AED 3.859481
AFN 71.756324
ALL 98.731551
AMD 410.573973
ANG 1.898343
AOA 958.299952
ARS 1057.5828
AUD 1.620305
AWG 1.891382
AZN 1.787514
BAM 1.965786
BBD 2.126704
BDT 125.86941
BGN 1.959578
BHD 0.396069
BIF 3111.577045
BMD 1.050768
BND 1.419397
BOB 7.30511
BRL 6.108936
BSD 1.053351
BTN 88.798959
BWP 14.389096
BYN 3.447011
BYR 20595.049833
BZD 2.123186
CAD 1.482918
CDF 3015.70356
CHF 0.930769
CLF 0.037175
CLP 1025.730425
CNY 7.626681
CNH 7.631617
COP 4607.354324
CRC 536.765442
CUC 1.050768
CUP 27.845348
CVE 110.825881
CZK 25.294035
DJF 187.56281
DKK 7.458928
DOP 63.475202
DZD 140.754561
EGP 52.127224
ERN 15.761518
ETB 131.339448
FJD 2.392545
FKP 0.829389
GBP 0.835949
GEL 2.868323
GGP 0.829389
GHS 16.589273
GIP 0.829389
GMD 74.604443
GNF 9077.02445
GTQ 8.133083
GYD 220.369466
HKD 8.177732
HNL 26.61696
HRK 7.495399
HTG 138.250992
HUF 410.051453
IDR 16731.48153
ILS 3.832965
IMP 0.829389
INR 88.571851
IQD 1379.809363
IRR 44224.189139
ISK 145.100113
JEP 0.829389
JMD 167.167612
JOD 0.745307
JPY 161.712177
KES 136.073015
KGS 91.195508
KHR 4227.434928
KMF 492.757542
KPW 945.690665
KRW 1469.37254
KWD 0.323384
KYD 0.877759
KZT 525.96186
LAK 23132.512015
LBP 94323.056453
LKR 306.507041
LRD 189.587683
LSL 19.044143
LTL 3.102644
LVL 0.635599
LYD 5.155188
MAD 10.582559
MDL 19.254813
MGA 4922.003534
MKD 61.670427
MMK 3412.852984
MNT 3570.509093
MOP 8.44098
MRU 41.88499
MUR 49.722097
MVR 16.234917
MWK 1826.47842
MXN 21.614084
MYR 4.693253
MZN 67.14173
NAD 19.044143
NGN 1768.579028
NIO 38.756512
NOK 11.690218
NPR 142.081414
NZD 1.79828
OMR 0.404533
PAB 1.053351
PEN 3.989366
PGK 4.24307
PHP 62.032083
PKR 292.554261
PLN 4.316456
PYG 8206.689576
QAR 3.842446
RON 4.977699
RSD 117.01459
RUB 110.961597
RWF 1438.192258
SAR 3.946062
SBD 8.816563
SCR 14.31215
SDG 632.036594
SEK 11.54187
SGD 1.415316
SHP 0.829389
SLE 23.854978
SLL 22034.081378
SOS 601.952158
SRD 37.295921
STD 21748.772974
SVC 9.216821
SYP 2640.085594
SZL 19.038716
THB 36.517315
TJS 11.227816
TMT 3.688195
TND 3.340977
TOP 2.461006
TRY 36.403794
TTD 7.154344
TWD 34.123163
TZS 2784.535199
UAH 43.712558
UGX 3902.826164
USD 1.050768
UYU 44.896792
UZS 13512.64356
VES 48.945141
VND 26707.891792
VUV 124.74927
WST 2.933314
XAF 659.299937
XAG 0.034685
XAU 0.000402
XCD 2.839753
XDR 0.805693
XOF 659.306243
XPF 119.331742
YER 262.61318
ZAR 19.049477
ZMK 9458.171236
ZMW 29.044545
ZWL 338.346819
  • RIO

    0.6300

    62.98

    +1%

  • CMSC

    0.0578

    24.73

    +0.23%

  • SCS

    0.4500

    13.72

    +3.28%

  • BCC

    8.7200

    152.5

    +5.72%

  • JRI

    0.1600

    13.37

    +1.2%

  • BTI

    -0.0500

    37.33

    -0.13%

  • BCE

    0.2500

    27.02

    +0.93%

  • CMSD

    0.1200

    24.58

    +0.49%

  • NGG

    0.1500

    63.26

    +0.24%

  • RBGPF

    0.8100

    61

    +1.33%

  • GSK

    0.1900

    34.15

    +0.56%

  • AZN

    0.7700

    66.4

    +1.16%

  • RYCEF

    0.0200

    6.79

    +0.29%

  • BP

    -0.4000

    29.32

    -1.36%

  • VOD

    0.1800

    8.91

    +2.02%

  • RELX

    -0.1800

    46.57

    -0.39%

In Canada, deserted oil wells are environmental time bombs
In Canada, deserted oil wells are environmental time bombs / Photo: Geoff Robins - AFP

In Canada, deserted oil wells are environmental time bombs

With its flaking red paint, broken pressure gauge and cranks fallen to the ground, an oil well sits forsaken in western Canada, like tens of thousands of others that have been out of service for decades -- but never plugged.

Text size:

Activists and experts say the existence of these inactive oil and gas installations -- often dug hundreds of meters (yards) below the surface in Alberta province -- is a ticking ecological time bomb for the vast country.

"Every single one of them is simply steel and concrete. They erode and break down," said Regan Boychuk, the founder of Reclaim Alberta, a group advocating for the clean-up of such wells.

"Every one of these holes needs to be managed, monitored for eternity because of the danger of leaks," he told AFP.

Each one of these wells also emits methane, a potent greenhouse gas that, over a 20-year period, is "86 times more impactful compared to a molecule of carbon dioxide," stresses McGill University professor Mary Kang, who has written a study on the issue.

It's a source of pollution that she believes is likely underestimated and "has a much bigger uncertainty range compared to other methane emission sources," Kang notes.

More than 120,000 oil and gas wells are inactive but not sealed off in Alberta and Saskatchewan provinces, home to more than 90 percent of Canada's wells, according to government data released in 2022.

The oldest of these has not been used since World War I.

Overall, according to that government data, these installations have emitted an average of 16,000 tonnes of methane per year over a century -- the equivalent of 545,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, or what about 237,000 vehicles emit in one year.

- Work postponed indefinitely -

Most of the wells were built sometime between the dawn of the oil and gas era in the 1860s and the end of the 1940s. In some provinces of Canada, which has the world's fourth largest proven oil reserves, they are not even registered.

After decades of industrial expansion, Alberta -- home to most of the country's oil resources, mainly in the form of oil sands -- saw the number of inactive wells increase rapidly since 2010, particularly after crude prices dropped off in 2014.

Under the polluter-pay principle enshrined in Canadian law, energy companies must pay for the plugging of wells and cleanup of the surrounding area, but there is thus far no deadline for that work to be completed.

This allows oil and gas firms to postpone the work indefinitely, or to transfer their inactive wells to smaller companies.

When these companies file for bankruptcy, the environmental burden for orphaned wells falls to provincial authorities -- and creates another bureaucratic nightmare.

Over roughly a decade, the number of orphaned wells in Alberta exploded, from 700 in 2010 to almost 10,000 in 2023.

The government in Ottawa says the cost of cleaning them up will soar from CAN $361 million (US $272 million) in 2020 to $1.1 billion in 2025.

While the Orphan Well Association in Alberta plans to get the job done over the next 10 to 12 years, some say the monumental task has been wildly misjudged.

"There are tens of thousands that fit the common sense definition, but only a few thousand are officially designated," Boychuk says.

- Polluted soil -

Albert Hummel, a farmer in southern Alberta, had seven abandoned wells on his land. But he's one of the lucky ones -- some of them were finally sealed off and "reclaimed," or restored to their original state. There are two left to handle.

"It's a slow process, it takes time," says Hummel, who lost the royalties he was earning for the use of his land once the oil company in question went out of business in 2019.

Once the soil is contaminated, it takes decades for the pollutants to evaporate. Only then can cleanup work begin.

After the ground is purified, the wells must be plugged with cement, each layer of soil carefully replaced, and the area leveled off with the surrounding fields for it to be considered "reclaimed."

Right in the middle of one of Hummel's fields, the remains of a well have prevented the farmer from using part of that land -- "it's just straight loss of production," he says, pointing to the pipes emerging from the earth.

In an effort to offset the loss and render the area at least partially useful, one small company has offered to install solar panels until the ground can be decontaminated.

"It just gives nature more time for the grass to come back, for contaminants to evaporate," says Daryl Bennett from the RenuWell project.

"It'll give a little more time to clean up the land and reclaim it, and it's producing renewable energy too."

But such solutions represent a drop in the bucket when compared to the overall cleanup at hand.

"Emissions from this legacy infrastructure, they're not going to go away," says Kang.

"It's something we're going to have to manage for years and decades to come."

(T.Burkhard--BBZ)