GULF MAY HAVE 27,000 ABANDONED WELLS - JULY 11, 2010 - shreveporttimes.com
By Jeff Donn
and Mitch Weiss
More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one — not industry, not government — is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.
The oldest of these wells were abandoned in the late 1940s, raising the prospect that many deteriorating sealing jobs are already failing.
The AP investigation uncovered particular concern with 3,500 of the neglected wells — those characterized in federal government records as "temporarily abandoned."
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.
About three-quarters of temporarily abandoned wells have been left in that status for more than a year, and many since the 1950s and 1960s — even though sealing procedures for temporary abandonment are not as stringent as those for permanent closures.
As a forceful reminder of the potential harm, the well beneath BP's Deepwater Horizon rig was being sealed with cement for temporary abandonment when it blew April 20, leading to one of the worst environmental disasters in the nation's history. BP alone has abandoned about 600 wells in the Gulf, according to government data.
There's ample reason for worry about all permanently and temporarily abandoned wells — history shows that at least on land, they often leak. Wells are sealed underwater much as they are on land. And wells on land and in water face similar risk of failure. Plus, records reviewed by the AP show some offshore wells have failed.
Experts say such wells can repressurize, much like a dormant volcano can awaken. And years of exposure to sea water and underground pressure can cause cementing and piping to corrode and weaken.
"You can have changing geological conditions where a well could be repressurized," said Andy Radford, a petroleum engineer for the American Petroleum Institute trade group.
Whether a well is permanently or temporarily abandoned, improperly applied or aging cement can crack or shrink, independent petroleum engineers say. "It ages, just like it does on buildings and highways," said Roger Anderson, a Columbia University petroleum geophysicist who has conducted research on commercial wells.
Despite the likelihood of leaks large and small, though, abandoned wells are typically not inspected by industry or government.
Oil company representatives insist the seal on a correctly plugged offshore well will last virtually forever.
"It's in everybody's interest to do it right," said Bill Mintz, a spokesman for Apache Corp., which has at least 2,100 abandoned wells in the Gulf, according to government data.
Officials at the U.S. Interior Department, which oversees the agency that regulates federal leases in the Gulf and elsewhere, did not answer repeated questions regarding why there are no inspections of abandoned wells.
State officials estimate tens of thousands are badly sealed, either because they predate strict regulation or because the operating companies violated rules. Texas alone has plugged more than 21,000 abandoned wells to control pollution, according to the state comptroller's office.
State versus federal
Offshore, but in state waters, California has resealed scores of its abandoned wells since the 1980s.
In deeper federal waters, though — despite the similarities in how such wells are constructed and how sealing procedures can fail — the official policy is out-of-sight, out-of-mind.
The U.S. Minerals Management Service — the regulatory agency recently renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement — relies on rules that have few real teeth. Once an oil company says it will permanently abandon a well, it has one year to complete the job. MMS mandates that work plans be submitted and a report filed afterward.
Unlike California regulators, MMS doesn't typically inspect the job, instead relying on the paperwork.
The fact there are so many wells that have been classified for decades as temporarily abandoned suggests that paperwork can be shuffled at MMS without any real change beneath the water.
With its weak system of enforcement, MMS imposed fines in a relative handful of cases: just $440,000 on seven companies from 2003-2007 for improper plug-and-abandonment work.
Companies permanently abandon wells when they are no longer useful. Afterward, no one looks methodically for leaks, which can't easily be detected from the surface anyway. And no one in government or industry goes underwater to inspect, either.
Government regulators and industry officials say abandoned offshore wells are presumed to be properly plugged and are expected to last indefinitely without leaking. Only when pressed do these officials acknowledge the possibility of leaks.
Despite warnings of leaks, government and industry officials have never bothered to assess the extent of the problem, according to an extensive AP review of records and regulations.
That means no one really knows how many abandoned wells are leaking — and how badly.
Hidden dangers
The AP documented an extensive history of warnings about environmental dangers related to abandoned wells:
# The General Accountability Office, which investigates for Congress, warned as early as 1994 that leaks from offshore abandoned wells could cause an "environmental disaster," killing fish, shellfish, mammals and plants. In a lengthy report, GAO pressed for inspections of abandonment jobs, but nothing came of the recommendation.
# A 2006 Environmental Protection Agency report took notice of the overall issue regarding wells on land: "Historically, well abandonment and plugging have generally not been properly planned, designed and executed." State officials say many leaks come from wells abandoned in recent decades, when rules supposedly dictated plugging procedures. And repairs are so routine that terms have been coined to describe the work: "replugging" or the "reabandonment."
# A GAO report in 1989 provided a foreboding prognosis about the health of the country's inland oil and gas wells. The watchdog agency quoted EPA data estimating up to 17 percent of the nation's wells on land were improperly plugged.
If that percentage applies to offshore wells, there could be 4,600 badly plugged wells in the Gulf of Mexico alone.
# According to a 2001 study commissioned by MMS, agency officials were "concerned that some abandoned oil wells in the Gulf may be leaking crude oil." But nothing came of that warning either.
The study targeted a well 20 miles off Louisiana that had been reported leaking five years after it was plugged and abandoned. The researchers tried unsuccessfully to use satellite radar images to locate the leak.
But John Amos, the geologist who wrote the study, told AP that MMS withheld critical information that could have helped verify if he had pinpointed the problem. "I kind of suspected that this was a project almost designed to fail," Amos said. He said the agency refused to tell him "how big and widespread a problem" they were dealing with in the Gulf.
Amos is now director of SkyTruth, a nonprofit group that uses satellite imagery to detect environmental problems. He still believes that technology could work on abandoned wells.
MMS, though, hasn't followed up on the work. And Interior Department spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said agency inspectors would be present for permanent plugging jobs "only when something unusual is expected." She also said inspectors would check later "only if there's a noted leak." But she did not respond to requests for examples.
Costly to fix
Companies may be tempted to skimp on sealing jobs, which are expensive and slow offshore. It would cost the industry at least $3 billion to permanently plug the 10,500 now-active wells and the 3,500 temporarily abandoned ones in the Gulf, according to an AP analysis of MMS data.
The AP analysis indicates that more than half of the 50,000 wells ever drilled on federal leases beneath the Gulf have now been abandoned. Some 23,500 are permanently sealed. Another 12,500 wells are plugged on one branch while being allowed to remain active in a different branch.
Government records do not indicate how many temporarily abandoned wells have been returned to service over the years. Federal rules require only an annual review of plans to reuse or permanently seal the 3,500 temporarily abandoned wells, but companies are using this provision to keep the wells in limbo indefinitely.
Petroleum engineers say abandoned offshore wells can fail from faulty work, age and drilling-induced or natural changes below the seabed. Maurice Dusseault, a geologist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, says U.S. regulators "assume that once a well is sealed, they're safe — but that's not always the case."
Even fully depleted wells can flow again because of fluid or gas injections to stimulate nearby wells or from pressure exerted by underlying aquifers.
Permanently abandoned wells are corked with cement plugs typically 100-200 feet long. They are placed in targeted zones to block the flow of oil or gas. Heavy drilling fluid is added. Offshore, the piping is cut off 15 feet below the sea floor.
Wells are abandoned temporarily for a variety of reasons. The company may be re-evaluating a well's potential or developing a plan to overcome a drilling problem or damage from a storm. Some owners temporarily abandon wells to await a rise in oil prices.
and Mitch Weiss
More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one — not industry, not government — is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.
The oldest of these wells were abandoned in the late 1940s, raising the prospect that many deteriorating sealing jobs are already failing.
The AP investigation uncovered particular concern with 3,500 of the neglected wells — those characterized in federal government records as "temporarily abandoned."
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.
About three-quarters of temporarily abandoned wells have been left in that status for more than a year, and many since the 1950s and 1960s — even though sealing procedures for temporary abandonment are not as stringent as those for permanent closures.
As a forceful reminder of the potential harm, the well beneath BP's Deepwater Horizon rig was being sealed with cement for temporary abandonment when it blew April 20, leading to one of the worst environmental disasters in the nation's history. BP alone has abandoned about 600 wells in the Gulf, according to government data.
There's ample reason for worry about all permanently and temporarily abandoned wells — history shows that at least on land, they often leak. Wells are sealed underwater much as they are on land. And wells on land and in water face similar risk of failure. Plus, records reviewed by the AP show some offshore wells have failed.
Experts say such wells can repressurize, much like a dormant volcano can awaken. And years of exposure to sea water and underground pressure can cause cementing and piping to corrode and weaken.
"You can have changing geological conditions where a well could be repressurized," said Andy Radford, a petroleum engineer for the American Petroleum Institute trade group.
Whether a well is permanently or temporarily abandoned, improperly applied or aging cement can crack or shrink, independent petroleum engineers say. "It ages, just like it does on buildings and highways," said Roger Anderson, a Columbia University petroleum geophysicist who has conducted research on commercial wells.
Despite the likelihood of leaks large and small, though, abandoned wells are typically not inspected by industry or government.
Oil company representatives insist the seal on a correctly plugged offshore well will last virtually forever.
"It's in everybody's interest to do it right," said Bill Mintz, a spokesman for Apache Corp., which has at least 2,100 abandoned wells in the Gulf, according to government data.
Officials at the U.S. Interior Department, which oversees the agency that regulates federal leases in the Gulf and elsewhere, did not answer repeated questions regarding why there are no inspections of abandoned wells.
State officials estimate tens of thousands are badly sealed, either because they predate strict regulation or because the operating companies violated rules. Texas alone has plugged more than 21,000 abandoned wells to control pollution, according to the state comptroller's office.
State versus federal
Offshore, but in state waters, California has resealed scores of its abandoned wells since the 1980s.
In deeper federal waters, though — despite the similarities in how such wells are constructed and how sealing procedures can fail — the official policy is out-of-sight, out-of-mind.
The U.S. Minerals Management Service — the regulatory agency recently renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement — relies on rules that have few real teeth. Once an oil company says it will permanently abandon a well, it has one year to complete the job. MMS mandates that work plans be submitted and a report filed afterward.
Unlike California regulators, MMS doesn't typically inspect the job, instead relying on the paperwork.
The fact there are so many wells that have been classified for decades as temporarily abandoned suggests that paperwork can be shuffled at MMS without any real change beneath the water.
With its weak system of enforcement, MMS imposed fines in a relative handful of cases: just $440,000 on seven companies from 2003-2007 for improper plug-and-abandonment work.
Companies permanently abandon wells when they are no longer useful. Afterward, no one looks methodically for leaks, which can't easily be detected from the surface anyway. And no one in government or industry goes underwater to inspect, either.
Government regulators and industry officials say abandoned offshore wells are presumed to be properly plugged and are expected to last indefinitely without leaking. Only when pressed do these officials acknowledge the possibility of leaks.
Despite warnings of leaks, government and industry officials have never bothered to assess the extent of the problem, according to an extensive AP review of records and regulations.
That means no one really knows how many abandoned wells are leaking — and how badly.
Hidden dangers
The AP documented an extensive history of warnings about environmental dangers related to abandoned wells:
# The General Accountability Office, which investigates for Congress, warned as early as 1994 that leaks from offshore abandoned wells could cause an "environmental disaster," killing fish, shellfish, mammals and plants. In a lengthy report, GAO pressed for inspections of abandonment jobs, but nothing came of the recommendation.
# A 2006 Environmental Protection Agency report took notice of the overall issue regarding wells on land: "Historically, well abandonment and plugging have generally not been properly planned, designed and executed." State officials say many leaks come from wells abandoned in recent decades, when rules supposedly dictated plugging procedures. And repairs are so routine that terms have been coined to describe the work: "replugging" or the "reabandonment."
# A GAO report in 1989 provided a foreboding prognosis about the health of the country's inland oil and gas wells. The watchdog agency quoted EPA data estimating up to 17 percent of the nation's wells on land were improperly plugged.
If that percentage applies to offshore wells, there could be 4,600 badly plugged wells in the Gulf of Mexico alone.
# According to a 2001 study commissioned by MMS, agency officials were "concerned that some abandoned oil wells in the Gulf may be leaking crude oil." But nothing came of that warning either.
The study targeted a well 20 miles off Louisiana that had been reported leaking five years after it was plugged and abandoned. The researchers tried unsuccessfully to use satellite radar images to locate the leak.
But John Amos, the geologist who wrote the study, told AP that MMS withheld critical information that could have helped verify if he had pinpointed the problem. "I kind of suspected that this was a project almost designed to fail," Amos said. He said the agency refused to tell him "how big and widespread a problem" they were dealing with in the Gulf.
Amos is now director of SkyTruth, a nonprofit group that uses satellite imagery to detect environmental problems. He still believes that technology could work on abandoned wells.
MMS, though, hasn't followed up on the work. And Interior Department spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said agency inspectors would be present for permanent plugging jobs "only when something unusual is expected." She also said inspectors would check later "only if there's a noted leak." But she did not respond to requests for examples.
Costly to fix
Companies may be tempted to skimp on sealing jobs, which are expensive and slow offshore. It would cost the industry at least $3 billion to permanently plug the 10,500 now-active wells and the 3,500 temporarily abandoned ones in the Gulf, according to an AP analysis of MMS data.
The AP analysis indicates that more than half of the 50,000 wells ever drilled on federal leases beneath the Gulf have now been abandoned. Some 23,500 are permanently sealed. Another 12,500 wells are plugged on one branch while being allowed to remain active in a different branch.
Government records do not indicate how many temporarily abandoned wells have been returned to service over the years. Federal rules require only an annual review of plans to reuse or permanently seal the 3,500 temporarily abandoned wells, but companies are using this provision to keep the wells in limbo indefinitely.
Petroleum engineers say abandoned offshore wells can fail from faulty work, age and drilling-induced or natural changes below the seabed. Maurice Dusseault, a geologist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, says U.S. regulators "assume that once a well is sealed, they're safe — but that's not always the case."
Even fully depleted wells can flow again because of fluid or gas injections to stimulate nearby wells or from pressure exerted by underlying aquifers.
Permanently abandoned wells are corked with cement plugs typically 100-200 feet long. They are placed in targeted zones to block the flow of oil or gas. Heavy drilling fluid is added. Offshore, the piping is cut off 15 feet below the sea floor.
Wells are abandoned temporarily for a variety of reasons. The company may be re-evaluating a well's potential or developing a plan to overcome a drilling problem or damage from a storm. Some owners temporarily abandon wells to await a rise in oil prices.
Views: 75
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by ur dern tootin' on
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if you have wells on your property that are supposed to br plugged but are "leaking", you should call
mr jim Broussard in the Office of Conservation"s Shreveport District Office. He will send inspectors out to check the wells out. Call 318/676-7585.
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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on
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Associated Press article:
Technology's disasters share long trail of hubris
By SETH BORENSTEIN (AP) – 8 hours ago
WASHINGTON — It's all so familiar. A technological disaster, then a presidential commission examining what went wrong. And ultimately a discovery that while technology marches on, concern for safety lags. Technology isn't as foolproof as it seemed.
Space shuttles shatter. Bridges buckle. Hotel walkways collapse. Levees fail. An offshore oil rig explodes, creating the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
The common thread — which the new presidential oil spill commission will be looking for — often is technological arrogance and hubris. It's the belief by those in charge that they're the experts, that they know what they're doing is safe. Add to that the human weaknesses of avoidance, greed and sloppiness, say academics who study disasters.
Even before the oil spill commission holds its first meeting Monday in New Orleans, panel co-chairman William Reilly couldn't help but point out something he's already noticed.
The technology to clean up after an oil spill "is primitive," Reilly said. "It's wholly disproportionate to the tremendous technological advances that have allowed deepwater drilling to go forward. It just hasn't kept pace."
Then he added that government regulation also hasn't kept pace. And something else hasn't kept up either, Reilly said: how the oil industry assesses and works with the risk of catastrophic damage from spills.
Cutting-edge technology often works flawlessly. People are amazed. At first, everyone worries about risk. Then people get lulled into complacency by success and they forget that they are operating on the edge, say experts who study disasters. Corners get cut, problems ignored. Then boom.
Technological disasters, like the BP oil spill, follow a well-worn "trail of tears," said Bob Bea, a University of California Berkeley engineering professor who has studied 630 disasters of all types. Bea is also an expert on offshore drilling and is consulting with the presidential commission.
Bea categorizes disasters into four groups. One such group is when an organization simply ignores warning signs through overconfidence and incompetence. He thinks the BP spill falls into that category. Bea pointed to congressional testimony that BP ignored problems with a dead battery, leaky cement job and loose hydraulic fittings.
It's that type of root cause — not the equipment failure alone — that the oil spill commission will focus on, including looking at the corporate and regulatory "culture" that led to bad decisions, Reilly said.
Disasters don't happen because of "an evil empire," Bea said. "It's hubris, arrogance and indolence."
And disasters will keep on happening. In the future, watch out for problems with the U.S. power grid, Sacramento levee failures, flood protection problems along coastal cities and even some of the newest high-tech airplanes, said Rutgers University professor Lee Clarke, author of the book "Worst Cases."
"There's nothing safe out there," said Yale University professor Charles Perrow, author of the book "Normal Accidents." "We like to pretend there is and argue afterward, 'That's why we took the risks because it hadn't failed before.'"
Technological improvements have gradually led to more daring offshore drilling attempts.
"It kind of creeps up on you," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in an interview with The Associated Press. Then suddenly you realize that now only robots can do what people used to do because the drilling is so deep, he said.
Clarke put it this way: "We've been doing this every day, every year, week in, week out, so next week when we go to 5,000 feet, it will be like last week when we went to 300 feet," Clarke said. "It's just the arrogant presumption that you have got the thing under control, whatever the thing is. In this case, it's drilling beyond your depth."
Paul Fischbeck, a professor of decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, said the existence of a blowout preventer — a final backup system which in this case didn't work — often encourages people to take extra risks.
But the oil industry was so confident in its safety that it used to brag when compared to another high-tech gold standard: NASA.
"They looked more successful than NASA," said Rice University oil industry scholar Amy Myers Jaffe. "They had less mechanical failures."
The oil rig explosion "reminds me an awful lot of the NASA accidents," said Stanford physics professor Douglas Osheroff, who was on the commission that examined the causes of the space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003.
"Obviously none of these systems are fail-safe," Osheroff said. "People don't spend enough time thinking about what could go wrong."
And because people are so sure of themselves, when they see something go wrong that they can't fix, they accept it, Osheroff said. The Columbia accident investigation board called it "normalization of deviance." Pieces of foam insulation had broken off the shuttle external fuel tank six previous times before that problem proved fatal with Columbia when a piece of foam knocked a deadly hole in a shuttle wing. Hot gas had singed "O" rings in space shuttle boosters well before the problem led Challenger to explode at launch in 1986.
Yale's Perrow pointed to NASA's shuttles and another BP disaster — the 2005 Texas City refinery explosion that killed 15 people — as cases of simply ignoring "heavy warnings" from experts.
When the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazards Investigation Board looked into the 2005 refinery fire it noted that BP had the same problems with "safety culture" that NASA had before Columbia.
"The Texas City disaster was caused by organizational and safety deficiencies at all levels of the BP Corporation," the board's final report said. "Warning signs of a possible disaster were present for several years, but company officials did not intervene effectively to prevent it."
There have been times when warnings of disaster are heeded. The Y2K computer bug is noteworthy for prevention, Clarke said. Many people scoffed and criticized the government for making such a big deal of something that turned out to be a fizzle. But that's because of all the effort to prevent the disaster, Clarke said. It worked.
Unfortunately, safety costs money, so it's usually not a priority, Clarke said. Most of the time "you can't get anybody to listen," he said. "We're very reactive about disasters in the United States."
People don't think about them until afterward, he said, and then they say: "You should have seen that coming."
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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Permalink Reply by sesport on -
Out just this morning, an interview with Michael Bromwich, new head of BOEMRE (formerly MMS).
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100712/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_d...
"But Michael Bromwich says he is not an anti-drilling zealot and will probably take actions that upset both industry groups and those who oppose drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and other sites."
80)
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Permalink Reply by sesport on
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Since this is only SPECULATIVE RUMOR for now, I'll deposit it here.
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/company-news-story.aspx?storyid=20100711...
"The U.K.'s Sunday Times said that Exxon had sought clearance from Washington DC to examine a takeover bid for BP.
The newspaper cited oil industry sources as saying the Obama administration had told Exxon and one other U.S. oil company, thought to be Chevron, that it would not stand in the way of a deal that could value BP at up to GBP100 billion"
Read more: http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/company-news-story.aspx?storyid=20100711...
hmmmm??? 80)
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Permalink Reply by drilltheshale on
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Thanks for posting, Skip. This is a sobering article.
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Permalink Reply by drilltheshale on
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haha
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Permalink Reply by sesport on
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LOGA news about the protest the moratorium rally (July 21 @ Cajundome).
http://loga.la/loganews/?p=487
"The event will feature local, state and national speakers who share the same concern that the moratorium will create a seismic economic ripple effect that will negatively impact every citizen of the United States."
I know I've seen a news report that even local businesses are filing claims for impact(s) they've felt.
http://www.ktbs.com/news/24175903/detail.html
"Madison Square Garden's owner has even filed a claim against oil giant BP to help cover the $2 per pound price increase on shrimp."
80)
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