coffeeshopgoth

Sounds like they ain't so major then.

I don't know if it is still a thing, but you can get ArcGIS, access to all of it, for $100/year under the "ArcGIS for Personal Use" program.

It is totally cheaper to dump some cement (it is mostly gel with a topping of cement). To P&A older wells maybe runs $12-25K (assuming, like, a 5-8k ft. depth conventional well)...and I may be running a little high on that number. That gets a small truck out there with a small crew to pull tubing and dump alternating layers of cement and gel (cement goes on the top and across formations that would be ground water bearing). Fun fact, if you have to go back into an abandoned well and you come across red cement at the top, that is indicative of someone losing a nuclear based well tool in there and to call someone before going further. A typical 7.5-10k foot lateral unconventional well (horizontal wells) down that way will run about $7-8 million depending (and 6 wells on average on a well pad), but aren't really the issue, but just giving you some numbers to sort of show that fining someone $100K for something serious isn't that big an expense and not really a deterrent. Natural gas lines are always a big deal to oil and gas companies - if you build it they will come. Most space in pipelines for operators is spoken for before they even dig the first trench.

Natural gas isn't stored on site, it needs to be piped to the nearest plant to be processed and put into a sales line. Capturing methane from insufficiently capped old wells would not be economic in most cases. If a company was called out on it, they would just go dump more cement in it to make sure the gas is contained. 90% of the time, wells that are plugged are plugged well, the ones that aren't and are just abandoned maybe leak only 1-5 thousand cubic feet per day - nothing worth doing anything about (to the company financially). Fines typically mean nothing to E&P with where they are now - though some have gotten clever about it - example being North Dakota keeps flaring down by whatever you are flaring you have to cut your oil production in some proportionate manner (oil is the more desired product) - though that was rescinded during the last big price down turn and am not sure if that is back in effect. To your statement about APIs - that is one thing the oil industry is terrrrrrible with. Our data collection and cleaning is abysmal. I agree with your statement, and I would be all for it, but E&P companies can't even get their own production numbers right - a good example is if you check out the fracfocus database where companies volunteer up their fracturing job compositions. Generally it is useful, but the people who input the data, similar to who would probably be handling this can barely spell and data cleaning would be a nightmare. waste to energy facilities are great, and there are some interesting things out in the oilfield but, like everything else, there needs to be more financial incentive for companies to build them/use them.

Companies do have health and safety groups out there working on these things. Of course, the bigger the company the slower, more inefficient, and incompetent they tend to be. Prices can range - some things can be patched, but many times the reason for the leak is age and it requires a new piece of equipment. So, there you would have permitting to handle, expensing the equipment at either the field level or, most likely, well level, which would kill the "economic-ness" of said well/well pad which never sits well with a company and may make them rethink it and just plug the wells - equipment could be low to high hundreds of thousands - really depends on the piece and size. In terms of frequency, People are fixing these things daily, small projects to fieldwide initiatives. In terms of someplace like Turkmenistan, anything can be fixed with money. In that part of the world, your best bet is financial incentive. I mean, it is unethical, but just pay the "expediting fee" for the local warlord/mayor/president - usually a "donation" to an orphanage or fund that doesn't really exist. The cancer rates thing is interesting - the well in question is possibly a Marathon well. Their record isn't the greatest (Look into Paw Creek, NC and Marathon's "small leak" at their terminals there). No scientific data on this at hand, but as a person who works in oil and gas and chemicals with an oddly high number of friends who have had some type of severe cancers, I would say this would be hugely helpful to the general public.

I hear what you are saying, and there is a ton of room in the E&P space for improvements of all kinds. You would be shocked at how incredibly we are behind technologically (I remember just last year over hearing someone say, "We just figured out our cloud strategy."). In terms of a dome over fields or units to collect stray methane, that may be an issue. We are loathe to construct "enclosed spaces" for gases as that can be a safety issue. It doesn't take much stray anything to kill you out there. We have all sorts of stories of people going into an enclosed space, passing out and dying, only to have more people die trying to get them out. Sounds bad, I know, but this is coming from someone who has come across a few dead bodies out in the field for various reasons - mostly just being stupid. Fees are funny in oil and gas - we complain about how much money we don't have and then spend it frivolously elsewhere. That inflation act, at the state level there are all sorts of those out there and some companies care and some don't. If you want to see something crazy, check out the NDIC (North Dakota Industrial Commission). In terms of oil and gas data, theirs is the most centralized, easily accessed, and complete in the country (NM isn't bad, CA used to be better, TX is garbage-which is odd, LA is god awful, and PA is meh). The NDIC keeps really good track of flaring, so to see how much natural gas is just burned up at the cost of getting the oil out (not such a great infrastructure for moving gas and historically the price hasn't been a good inducement to build any). To get the well level data, it is $150/year, but well worth it if you are working that basin and also in comparison to all of the data services out there. https://www.dmr.nd.gov/oilgas/stats/statisticsvw.asp

True story. I have worked oil and gas for a while and am familiar with this area. It can easily be a well not properly P&A'd (plugged and abandoned) - quite common down there. It is most likely a Marathon well (HARROUN COM #002), or it could be Eastland Oil (HARROUN A #007). If you want to get a better idea for yourself, you can check the EMNRD - https://ocd-hub-nm-emnrd.hub.arcgis.com/