well done oilman, a baling thimble on the titanic

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well done oilman, a baling thimble on the titanic
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dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46207
Location: yes

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 21 5:18 am Post subject: well done oilman, a baling thimble on the titanic

but every thimble helps

legacy issues are perhaps as important as what has been done and is ongoing if we transfer from fossil carbon to other energy supplies

methane to atmosphere or "fatter" stuff into aquifers or surface hydrogeology or even just making a flaming tar pit after a while might be reduced by effective decommissioning

well failure while in use is quite low, under 0.1%(well done)
historic well failure is averaged between 1% and 2%, some are messier than others(most are fairly minor, but some are awesome)
some fields have a far higher legacy failure rate due to geology and or the way the field was exploited and abandoned

ps i am not picking on oil, minerals and coal etc have similar issues, nuke legacy is off the scale

the folk capping legacy wells as properly as they know how to is rather nice
do it without conflict is wise and hopefully good diplomacy for obtaining means to make it normal practice

a small aside re nuke, afaik sellafield is now an entirely decommissioning operation with a 100yr plan
after the final leak in the THORP unit it was too hot to mend which put a stop to the reprocessing stuff
they have stored stuff, lots of stored stuff, last official Pu number was 350 tons, the high and medium stuff with a box and paperwork is extensive, the tube alloys onwards legacy stuff is a bit random and has planet changing potential(not in a bangy way perhaps but a popped "pond" or a "fire" might challenge most ecosystems short and long term)
other nuke facilities are available and have a variety of protocols in place, that ranges from trying to be safe to "call it a nature reserve"

Shane

Joined: 31 Oct 2005
Posts: 3467
Location: Doha. Is hot.

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 21 4:38 am Post subject:

I very much hope that these are long-abandoned wells and that the US oil industry isn't still just abandoning dry wells. Any responsible operator nowadays plugs their wells before abandonment, which does incur some cost but it's still a small percentage of the lifetime cost of your average well. I can imagine in somewhere like the US, where regulations have been pared down in pursuit of ever greater profit, spending money on a well that will no longer generate revenue is frowned upon by shareholders, but I very much hope that there are no wells nowadays that are just abandoned without being plugged.

"Plugging" is not simply a case of sticking a bung in the top. It is a complex process involving pumping heavy mud (the black gooey stuff in the video) and concrete down the well to counteract any residual bottomhole pressure (a phrase that still makes me chuckle after 25 years) and to restore the integrity of the cap rock.

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15966

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 21 8:38 am Post subject:
Do all wells have bottomhole pressure Shane? We have an oil field under us, but it needs to be pumped out, so assume that there is little pressure.

Shane

Joined: 31 Oct 2005
Posts: 3467
Location: Doha. Is hot.

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 21 11:11 am Post subject:
Not, not all - in fact, many wells require some kind of assistance to produce meaningful quantities. Of course, with no seal between the reservoir and the surface it's a lot easier for methane to make its way up than liquids.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46207
Location: yes

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 21 1:07 pm Post subject:

i got the impression these are historic legacy wells rather than ones being shut down now

if current practice is to stuff old holes as you leave with mud and cement etc, are golf balls still included in etc?, that is good.
i wonder what they currently do around baku or in the nigerian delta?

if i understand this stuff, there are plenty of old holes where folk just took the equipment and left for the next field, those are the ones these folk are going for and educating some in the industry about responsibilities and potential employment while they do it

legacy mines be it coal or minerals have different and similar issues with gassing off and leachates, they are even harder to mitigate as a historic and developed/developing problem

for ever chemicals are a cocktail cabinet from hell on many sites and as mentioned nuke is off the scale for legacy issues

re the trend to de fossil and employment, the skills needed for oil extraction might be suited to geothermal and other forms of energy harvest as well
a place full of danger, equipment and buttons is pretty much the same whatever it is attached to

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15966

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 21 10:42 am Post subject:

Thanks Shane. Yes, of course methane and other gases can get out far more easily than liquids, but I assumed that there was very little methane in the 'pumped' wells.

Dpack, that is not all of it. As far as chemicals are concerned, a number of places round here that have been used as industrial tips are rather toxic.Several new developments on them have cost rather a lot as the topsoil is toxic waste and has to be removed. I think they then put some sort of barrier down before putting clean soil back on top. Of course there is the methane too, and a number of them are still sinking. On the mining side old coal mines are notorious for opening up on the surface, and there are quite a lot of canals in industrial areas with large 'lakes' caused by collapsed mines. Salt extraction without repressurising causes similar problems.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46207
Location: yes

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 21 12:38 pm Post subject:

a personal knowledge example of "chemical" legacy is a 30000 lt reaction pan and agitator full of gone wrong sulphonation batch

the batch set, it started as mostly naphaline and oleum, it was over 115% acidic and fuming nicely when it was buried in river flood plain clay

not exceptional as an item, the barrels and buried heaps etc are probably more worrying, that on site dump has 150 yr worth of waste chems and kit in about 20 acres, 2 world wars and a lot of brass n muck making assorted industrial things has created a cocktail cabinet that i do not want to consider too much
there might be a few tons of mustard gas gone wrong in the mix, but nobody has wanted to look for it too hard as it is rumour with no paperwork
the organic stuff is very varied
afaik in that one any radionuclides are incidental from kit etc rather than "process", the chemical stuff covers inorganic and an organic cocktail of mostly unknown nature, what we do know about it is all very bad

that is perhaps the best monitored/maintained site in that area, some are legacy without responsibility, some are lost and some, old and newer, are "hidden"

Shane

Joined: 31 Oct 2005
Posts: 3467
Location: Doha. Is hot.

Posted: Sun Jan 02, 22 4:12 am Post subject:

Mistress Rose wrote:

I assumed that there was very little methane in the 'pumped' wells.

There can be a lot of methane down there. The problem with remote wells that have no industrial infrastructure around them is that any gas that comes up with the oil is a nuisance rather than a saleable product. The oil gets dumped into trucks and transported for processing, but you can't do that with the gas so it gets burnt off ("flared") near the wellhead. With these wells, they will have been pumped until the volumes of liquid coming out were no longer commercially viable. There would have been no water or gas injection to maintain pressure in the reservoir, so the more you produce, the more the pressure drops. Once you get to the point at which the well is no longer viable, you have generated a huge amount of vapour in the reservoir due to the much lower pressure. Ergo, old, depleted wells have a lot more gas sitting at the bottom of them than new ones.

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15966

Posted: Sun Jan 02, 22 9:27 am Post subject:
Thanks. We don't have flares from the wells round here, just nodding donkeys. I assume from that there will be little methane, but what there is will just expand as the oil is removed?

Shane

Joined: 31 Oct 2005
Posts: 3467
Location: Doha. Is hot.

Posted: Sun Jan 02, 22 11:46 am Post subject:

Mistress Rose wrote:

Thanks. We don't have flares from the wells round here, just nodding donkeys. I assume from that there will be little methane, but what there is will just expand as the oil is removed?

There will be some expansion as the pressure drops, yes, but the bigger issue is that once you drop below a certain pressure methane will come out of solution, so you are adding to the amount of methane vapour in the reservoir.

Any idea which companies are running the wells near you? I'm following a couple of developments down that way, and they are currently flaring gas while they design a capture system to monetise it. All oil will have some residual gas in it, so either the wells near you are cold venting the methane (not allowed nowadays) or they've found some other way of dealing with it.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46207
Location: yes

Posted: Sun Jan 02, 22 4:43 pm Post subject:
umm anyway binoculars ooh oooooh shall we have a look at nuke? i am not picking on oil or coal or even nuke/chem the seal old holes thing is good, getting that way of thinking expanded is better we might get extinct from messing with the climate, but we could tidy up a bit before we get to be geological specimens

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15966

Posted: Mon Jan 03, 22 9:49 am Post subject:
I remember the Aberfan disaster. Absolutely awful. Sadly, in the past, things weren't cleared up or even left in a safe state. A number of Victorian household books even tell you how to check if your drinking water contains things like copper, so pollution must have been terrible then.

gz

Joined: 23 Jan 2009
Posts: 8916
Location: Ayrshire, Scotland

Posted: Mon Jan 03, 22 3:57 pm Post subject:
One point about Aberfan is that they knew they were tipping over springs

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15966

Posted: Tue Jan 04, 22 7:13 am Post subject:
I wasn't aware of that. A recipe for disaster. It happened when I was at school, and think I was rather taken up with school work etc. at the time.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46207
Location: yes

Posted: Tue Feb 08, 22 6:53 am Post subject:

Shane wrote:

new legacy issues just like old legacy issues

same sort of thing as leaving the disposable bbq and beer bottles on the beach

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