This Retired Oil Exec Wants to Plug Up Millions of Abandoned Wells Across the US

[Music] at first glance you might think these guys were drilling for oil they are oil field workers and this is an oil derrick and in this part of north central montana oil is one of the biggest games in town but they're actually doing the exact opposite they're plugging a well one that's been abandoned for decades but still causing a lot of trouble [Music] curtis shuck is in charge of this operation so what are these what is this here this is a orphan well this is a open wellbore this is a typical condition here in montana he runs a non-profit called the well done foundation which is trying to stop these wells from spewing methane gas into the atmosphere the first step is covering the well bores in a plastic case you smell it over here right oh man that is strong actually i'm writing the white and the waves of it so this is what i literally call our smoking gun video oh wow look at that crazy yeah you can really see [Music] so it's immediately going into alarm state which means it's harmful and it'll climb up to over limit so over limit is a hundred percent right you maxed out the uh machine yeah exactly that's not good chuck isn't an environmentalist although he sometimes sounds like one he's a retired oil and gas executive but a few years ago he noticed these abandoned wells weren't getting the attention they deserved particularly given how much harm they can cause so the average american has a car when they drive that car every year you have emit about somewhere between four to four and a half tons of carbon dioxide equivalent or co2e per year so the well that we're seeing behind us there is not only your car but 499 of your buddies driving around for an entire year wow why did you get into this so i was up uh talking to some of the farmers up here about buying grains and i was walking around chatting with him and we walked by a well like the one behind you over there and i was like what in the world is that pile of junk and they're like oh that's a freaking abandoned well and we got them all over the place out here i'm having to drive around and dodge them and i'm thinking to myself i've never seen anything like this right being around the oil and gas industry i know it's a tough industry to be in you know some people don't like what the industry produces or the way that they do produce it and so something like this is a total black eye it's also surprisingly common across the country there's somewhere between two and three million of these things rusted piles of metal that once produced oil and now just kick out greenhouse gasses the companies that profited from them are often nowhere to be found the wells chuck is replacing were put in by a local firm called cavalier petroleum this was their most recent address in town the companies go under they leave behind a mess for the farmers that own the land [Music] these are just things that were picked up these are just little pieces of the uh yeah they're old collars these are from the wells yeah from the oil field wow how big of an issue are these orphaned wells for you well they're a pain to farm around some of the areas you can tell there's a leakage because it sterilizes the ground yeah so you can't really you just can't even farm on that one yeah i mean they simply didn't clean up after themselves do you blame the oil industry for this problem no i mean we need oil of course you know if people think we're ever going to be running battery-operated tractors they're they're dreaming why'd this happen why did these things get left there it was probably just the oil and gas commission didn't have a plan in place to cap them as they came out of production and how they're not tied to the people that originally pumped them is kind of surprising to me states are supposed to require oil companies to leave a deposit to cover the cost of capping a well in case they go bankrupt but according to the carbon tracker initiative on average they've only collected about one percent of what they need jim halverson is in charge of oil and gas for the state of montana he says the state has it all under control we have 14 000 active wells in the state of montana and without good oversight by the board there is the potential that there could be a plugging liability that we all have to face someday but how do we get in a situation where the thing is just left there and no one no one seemed to be responsible for it well that's when the company goes away and then that's when our plugging and reclamation program is to step in the shelby area is interesting because that's some of the oldest production in the state many of those wells were drilled in the 1920s they've passed through a number of operators over the years perhaps the problem was years ago rather than right now it's just grown to to this level some have said that it was a hundred years to get to where we are it's not going to clean up overnight other places are much worse off in texas alone there are roughly 750 000 unplugged wells requiring an estimated 117 billion dollars in work sue bug is on the board of the northern plains resource council which has been campaigning for states and oil companies to step up who's responsible for these orphan dwells it's pretty much the regulators the board of oil and gas here because they're not making these companies be responsible for the cleanup this is part of their business plan has to be having money put forward in a manner that is recoverable that is commensurate with what the cost of capping and reclaiming is going to be and at the present time pretty much every gas and oil company were all in the red so far already that they have no money for this so you know who's responsible i can't point a finger at one single entity it's the fact that we have let them get into this situation because we have been so excited about the money that we're going to get from all of this development that we kind of forgot what happens on the on the back end you know it's like having a big party and having so much fun and it was so exciting and then turning coming up out of your bedroom the next morning going oh my god how long is it going to take me to clean up this mess what do you think about what the well done foundation is doing i think their concept is really good i'm concerned about their ability to fund because it costs at least 30 000 on average to reclaim a well some of them are up to a million and this is from one wealth and we have this huge number of wells out there so they're a drop in the bus they're a drop in the bucket not only financially but you know they are a tiny tiny operation so far this year well done has capped three wells before kovet they'd hope to do 20. even at that rate it would take them 150 000 years to cap all the abandoned wells in the country this is not something you can do on your own oh my gosh no no way but what we can do and what we are doing is to put this methodology together which will mean then that others can enter into the marketplace and can help us in this fight and and have a revenue stream to help underwrite the work [Music] am i atoning for uh for sins from the past you know i don't know that i necessarily look at it like that but i would tell you that i was a pretty staunch advocate for the oil and gas industry but again at the end of the day you know i'm very much of an outdoors person i want to make sure there's a winter you know not just this year but 10 years from now 20 years from now are you just doing a couple of projects that makes the industry look a little better but ultimately doesn't really have an effect of solving the problem you know this is a commitment for myself right there's obviously plenty of work out there right to your point no this isn't some media play that we're doing out there to try to score a few quick points and then be off to the races we got a lot of work to do you

Channel: VICE News

Views: 1,599,975

Keywords: VICE News, VICE News Tonight, VICE on HBO, news, vice video, VICE on SHOWTIME, vice news 2020

Id: iAf2k9b0drY

Length: 9min 44sec (584 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

We are so fucking stupid.

[u/hitchinvertigo]

“more than 3.2 million abandoned oil and gas wells together emitted 281 kilotons of methane in 2018” in the United States 

[u/caribeno]

This is a must watch video. Nice reporting.

Capitalism and the state don't do pollution control or pricing. It is the George Bush "we don't do body counts" in practice for centuries.

[u/ATXPatient]

This is how the world warms up... methane is 86x as potent as carbon at heat retention... and there is about 4x as much methane that will be released, as there is carbon in the atmosphere.

We are truly fucked.

[u/The_Monocle_Debacle]

Yeah what a shocker that the oil industry didn't bother capping unprofitable wells they abandoned. I wonder if there's any other problems with a purely profit-driven system ... hmmmmmmm

[u/[deleted]]

They should be forced to put it back at their own expense.

[u/Inlander]

Thanks alot Darth Cheney, Bush, and you too Obama. The science was already there, and Dick exempted it, Bush ate it up, and Obama supported it 100%. We didn't start the fire, they did.

[u/pantsmeplz]

If you want to see something "interesting", look at this. All the white dots are wells. Don't know if they're active or dormant.

https://www.google.com/maps/@29.069544,-97.7290781,26308m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en&authuser=0

[u/pantsmeplz]

Couple of big points about this:

1. Like they say in the video, oil exploration and development companies are supposed to set aside money to reclaim the land. It's officials not holding them accountable that are also to blame. Ultimately, we all pay the costs.
2. "We all pay the costs" is another way of saying that extracting and processing the oil into fuel and other products is subsidized. Oil companies and drillers are not paying the full cost of that product and because of that they can sell cheap gas, and we get climate change and pollution.