The Dead Sea of West Texas | Hacker News Reader

The Dead Sea of West Texas

texasmonthly.com

79 pointsterrycody31 comments

As a Canadian this reminds me of Alberta. They will have an abandoned well problem to deal with but are in denial. They are also in denial about their tailing ponds from the tar sands. They love to show their one example of how the cleaned up an area and made it grow grass again but the fact is they never dealt with the mess they simply moved it to other ponds far away from sight and put some fresh dirt on top and called it a success. But in reality they are growing more and more and I am willing to bet once the oil industry fails and it becomes no longer profitable these companies will bail ship leaving clean up to future generations. The only way these companies are profitable is at the expense of the environment. A lot of people from Alberta are in denial and will criticize any talk of such things. Here is just one of many articles that outline the billions it will take to clean up the sands and the problems around it. https://theconversation.com/how-plants-can-help-clean-up-oil... Albertans know that without the oil industry they have no jobs so turn a blind eye.

Not all Albertans. Just a vocal and powerful portion of the population.

(Grew up there, family is still there.)

Someone wrote an entire book about how the oil industry bought out the Alberta govt: https://www.amazon.com/Oils-Deep-State-petroleum-undermines/...

Alberta is doing just fine thanks. Oil sands are opening new reserves. Old wells are being shut down.

It’s helping make North America oil independent from the Middle East which is a good thing not a bad thing.

Alberta will continue to provide the energy the rest of country needs for a lot longer.

With approx. 71,000 abandoned wells and 91,000 inactive wells even if you closed 500 a month, and let me tell you this is no where near the rate of how many are being closed, it would take 27 years. The fact is however that even more are being created annually. Alberta is not doing fine they have a future crisis that will be abandoned as soon as it becomes unprofitable leaving the burden up to future generations Long after we stop burning fossil fuels.

I’m not sure closing inactive wells over decades is a problem?

Well the problem, which is well documented is that the owners of the wells have no incentive to close down a non profiting well. So instead they are abandoning them. So yes taking decades to close a well is a problem. The money to close them down should be put upfront so the minute they are no longer needed they get shut down in a timely manner. This is a problem that will be dumped on future generation of kids. I assume you don't have any kids or this would definitely concern you. The rate of wells is accelerating not declining. But thank you for confirming my first post that Albertans are in denial.

Looks like the issue is being addressed. Regardless, the company was always responsible for clean up.

https://globalnews.ca/news/8416893/alberta-regulator-oil-gas...

Far bigger issues to deal with and some abandoned wells in the middle of nowhere.

If my kid can’t afford to put a house over their head or feed their family I’m not sure I care much some abandoned wells.

That is far from addressing the issue. They are putting 4% of liability down. That won’t even keep up with current inflation and like your article states will still take 25-30 years. Critics in the same article don’t believe their assessment is correct and that the cost will be much higher and as with every project the costs are always much higher. If market crashes where will they come up with the other 96%? This is all based on best case scenario. Also stated in the article only if no new wells are created in the mean time will this take 25-30 years. If the problem was addressed it would not be a 30 year problem.

The wells aren’t doing any harm sitting dormant as long as they get cleaned up eventually.

The US has a ton of superfund sites it’s still making progress on. Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.

North America isn't remotely oil independent of the Middle East and we will experience either the heat death of the universe or the complete banning of oil production before that is a reality.

And that's not even mentioning that every time we pull that crap out of the ground, we virtually guarantee we will be poisoning said ground for centuries afterward because nobody wants to be on the hook for securing and maintaining those wells after they've dried up.

What makes plugging and abandoning a well so expensive?

> about $3 million plugging about 120 wells

So about $25,000 .. seems ballpark reasonable for anything that requires specialists and heavy construction equipment. The wells are pressurized, so you can't just dump concrete on it and call it a day.

There's a definite "if that wasn't a bad idea it would be done already" attached to this, but my first thought would be to put a few hundred kilograms of explosives down the well and let gravity do the rest.

Seems like a sensible thing to try but unfortunately it's the 2020s and not 1970s.

The only other sensible thing would be to take off and nuke it from orbit. It's west Texas, I doubt anyone would notice a difference ;-)

The Soviets did close at least one oil well with a nuke, so the idea isn't entirely detached from reality.

Let gravity do what, exactly?

The water is flowing out of the well because its internal pressure is enough to overcome gravity. Increasing the well-bottom surface area would increase the flow rate.

I think the idea is to collapse the well walls.

Pressurized water isn't stopped by rubble, it's stopped by solid materials. Explosions turn solid material into rubble. Seems like a terrible idea.

Well, this had been a valid way to deal with oil wells that couldn't be capped. Why wouldn't it work for water?

Why are there so many absent landowners?

Much of West Texas is barren wasteland not suitable for human habitation.

It's a trapdoor function--intentionally so.

Ownership is buried beneath layers and layers of transfers in the hope that you can't reverse the chain if liability pops up.

Of course, if something like, say, the fracking boom in Pennsylvania comes along instead, suddenly all the owners magically appear and start asserting their ownership rights.

Is the Google Earth timelapse link working for anyone else? It just takes me to the globe, spinning.

Works for me on Firefox.

Okay, that works. Chrome didn't do the timelapse for me, but does show much higher resolution imagery of the lake.

Calling a toxic artificial body of water the “dead sea” seems to give the actual Dead Sea a bad name. The Dead Sea while salty is a natural formation that supports some microbial life [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea#Fauna_and_flora

Personally it feels the other way around to me? The Dead Sea happened into it naturally, long ago, but the idea of un-aerated water, or toxic water, a sea that has fallen into a lifeless husk, seems pretty general & deserving of the scorn & harshness of the name "dead sea", regardless of cause.

Then the problem is that the Dead Sea is a misnomer.

Toxic sea?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com