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  • These rolling hills high in the north-east  of the United States may seem unspoiled

  • But this region is the birthplace  of the American oil industry

  • The country's first commercial  oil well wasn't sunk in Texas,  

  • but here in Pennsylvania, way back in 1859. 

  • It was the first of a vast number of wellsdrilled and worked dry across the state

  • Hey good morning Myles. When their wells are no longer viable,  

  • responsible companies employ experts like Luke  Plants to seal them up, preventing any leaks  

  • or contamination in the future. I'm gonna give you one of these,  

  • then we'll go take look around the site. That'd be great, thank you very much

  • But in the pioneering, unregulated oil rush  days, many drill sites went unrecorded,  

  • unplugged and abandoned and now honeycomb  the ground, including under cities and towns

  • Many wells exist in places that have grown up  around them so suburbs and urban areas that  

  • were developed long after the well was drilledand now they present a threat to human life

  • These images from Pennsylvania's Department  of Environmental Protection show toxic gas  

  • and liquids belching from old wells, contaminating  the air and threatening to poison drinking water

  • One study has estimated that the methane  emissions from the US's tally of abandoned wells,  

  • is equivalent to the annual  CO2 output of 2.1 million cars

  • Some forgotten well heads have even  been uncovered under people's homes

  • Plugging and sealing off a disused well  is hazardous, highly specialised work  

  • that can take a lot of time and money. Watch your step

  • The idea sounds simple enough: insert pipes  into the well using this towering rig,  

  • then link them up to inject concrete  into all the nooks and crannies below

  • So we're going from the bottom, all the  way up to the top until finally you've  

  • completely sealed off your well bore. But not every job is the same

  • Old bores that have crumbled or collapsed  can take a month to excavate and plug,  

  • and the sheer number of abandoned wells  in this state alone is staggering

  • Since the country's first oil well was drilled  in Titusville, Pennsylvania 70 miles to my west,  

  • there have been hundreds of thousands of  oil and gas wells drilled across the state

  • A DEP map shows the extent of the problem  in Pennsylvania. The locations of plugged  

  • wells in blue, swamped by the uncappedabandoned wells found so far in red and green

  • Many more disused and undiscovered  wells lie scattered across the country

  • To tune into the wider scale of the problem,  I've crossed state lines to Washington DC  

  • to meet Daniel Raimi, an academic  and expert on the subject at  

  • environmental think-tank Resources for the Future

  • Daniel how are you? I'm doing well, nice to see you

  • Nice to see you too. Thanks for having us in. What kind of scale of problem are we talking here

  • The scale is actually pretty staggering. The US  EPA estimates that there are about 2.1 million  

  • abandoned, unplugged oil and gas scattered  across the country. These are wells that  

  • aren't being used for production or injection  or other productive purposes, and they also  

  • haven't been plugged, they haven't been sealed  off. In addition to those 2.1 million wells,  

  • there are estimates that there are up to one  million orphaned oil and gas wells. These are  

  • also abandoned, but they don't have a legal owner. The dilemma surrounding so-calledorphanedwells  

  • is that their original owners have  either disappeared or gone bankrupt

  • Orphans effectively become wards of the state,  

  • meaning taxpayers are left to cover  the costs of making them safe

  • One estimate puts the average cost of plugging  and cleaning up an open well at $76,000,  

  • but contractors say that figure can vary  from $10,000 to $1.5m depending on the well

  • Before breaking ground on any new well-plotoil companies generally pay a bond up front  

  • to the relevant state or federal authority. In theory, it's there to cover the cost of any  

  • future clean-up should the company go bust, but in  practice, any securities paid are rarely enough

  • The problem is, almost all of the regulations  at the state level don't give regulators enough  

  • money to actually plug the wells that would  become orphaned when a company goes bankrupt

  • Help for cash-strapped states may be on the way

  • Around $5bn has been specifically set  aside for cleaning up old wells in  

  • a bipartisan infrastructure bill  making its way through Congress.

  • That figure falls short of proposals put  forward by President Biden. But I wonder  

  • whether a share of the funds would makereal difference for states like Pennsylvania

  • Its pioneering history of unfetteredunrecorded drilling means that the  

  • Keystone State is thought to have by  far the most abandoned wells in America

  • On the way home I drop by the state  capital of Harrisburg to meet Scott Perry

  • It's his team at the Department  of Environmental Protection  

  • who arrange the plugging of problem  wells when no one else can or will pay

  • The budget is tight and clean-up  jobs have to be prioritised

  • Every well we find we rank it, according to its  threat to public safety, to the environment

  • So would a slice of the infrastructure  bill money make a significant dent  

  • in the long list of leaky wells to be fixed

  • If we're only able to plug say 10 wells a yearand we've got 8,500 to go, we're in for a long  

  • haul. But the federal stimulus money could  potentially enable us to clear that ledger

  • Much has been made of the potential for new  jobs as politicians weigh the benefits of the  

  • multi-billion dollar clean-up bill. But many experts say policymakers  

  • need to think longer term. To tackle the root of the problem, they argue,  

  • any federal handouts should be tied to commitments  from states to reform their bonding systems,  

  • so that they can better afford  to deal with the issue in future

  • That will become all the more critical  as a transition away from oil and gas in  

  • the coming decades risks a dramatic rise  in the number of wells being abandoned

  • And unless states force the industry  to shell out the cleanup costs upfront,  

  • taxpayers could be left once  again footing a hefty bill.

These rolling hills high in the north-east  of the United States may seem unspoiled

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Who will clean up America's abandoned oil wells? | FT Energy Source

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    joey joey に公開 2021 年 10 月 26 日
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