This paper, examines the potential to boost US employment in the oil and gas workforce while also reducing pollution through a federal program to plug orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells....
To begin, workers and communities in oil and gas producing regions have been hit hard in recent months, as falling energy prices quickly translate into lost jobs, struggling businesses, and plunging tax revenue....
There are already tens of thousands of “orphaned” wells spread across U.S. oil-producing states, left abandoned by failed companies that did not have the cash to plug them before walking away. Now, the oil crash that is threatening to trigger a spate of bankruptcies could make that problem worse, sticking states with the bill to seal up the new orphan wells that pose pollution risks, Pro’s Zack Colman reports this...
Methane emissions from the Permian basin of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico, one of the largest oil-producing regions in the world, are more than two times higher than federal estimates, a new study suggests....
Approximately twice as much methane is seeping into the atmosphere than the Environmental Protection Agency estimates from oil and gas facilities in the south central U.S., according to a series of measurements taken by meteorologists using NASA aircraft....
Specifically, BLM identified 89 new orphaned wells between July 2017 and April 2019, and BLM offices identified to GAO about $46 million in estimated potential reclamation costs associated with orphaned wells and with inactive wells that officials deemed to be at risk of becoming orphaned in 2018....
An emissions inventory that identifies and quantifies a country's anthropogenic1 sources and sinks of greenhouse gases is essential for addressing climate change. This inventory adheres to both (1) a comprehensive and detailed set of methodologies for estimating sources and sinks of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, and (2) a common and consistent format that enables Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to compare the relative contribution of...
EPA identified and reviewed available emissions data to characterize emissions from abandoned wells, including data from the Kang et al. and Townsend-Small et al. studies. The Kang et al. 2014 study made direct measurements of methane flow rates from 19 wells in Pennsylvania during 2013 and 2014. The wells were not well-documented in state records, so researchers categorized each studied well as plugged or unplugged based on surface observations. The study...
“When a state sees a well is plugged, they typically put a checkmark by that well in a database, or in a file somewhere, and they don’t do anything [else],” said Rob Jackson, a scientist at Stanford University....
What GAO found: Bureau of Indian Affairs’ (BIA) management shortcomings and other factors— such as a complex regulatory framework, tribes’ limited capital and infrastructure, and varied tribal capacity—have hindered Indian energy development....