Five years after the Obama administration promised to move swiftly to plug unused oil and gas wells permanently in the Gulf of Mexico, even more shafts are lingering for longer periods with only temporary sealing, an Associated Press investigation shows.
It is not clear how many incompletely sealed wells may have leaked—they generally are not monitored as carefully as active wells—but they contain fewer barriers to pent-up petroleum and rupture more easily. The threat to the environment increases with time.
In July 2010, during the BP oil spill, the AP reported that the Gulf was littered with more than 27,000 unused wells, including 14% left with just temporary seals.
The AP’s new analysis of federal data shows that the neglect of long-idle wells has intensified since 2010, despite the federal push after the BP accident:
- Twenty-five percent more wells have now stayed temporarily sealed for more than a year, jumping from 2,855 to 3,576.
- Wells sealed temporarily for more than a year make up 86% of all temporarily sealed shafts, up from 78%.
- The number of wells equipped with temporary barriers for more than five years has risen from 1,631 to 1,895—a 16% increase.
“I think there are signs of progress, but my God, we got a long way to go,” says Bob Bea, an emeritus engineering professor at the University of California-Berkeley, when told of the AP findings. Bea, who advised the government on safety after the BP spill, says he’d give “a poor grade” to efforts to seal wells since then.
In the aftermath of the BP spill, federal officials rolled out a program to push companies to seal wells permanently “in a timely manner.” That effort, known as the “Idle Iron” program, is beset by loopholes that essentially allow companies to delay permanent closure indefinitely, the AP found.
The AP analysis in May shows that 1,065 wells have been left with temporary sealing for at least a decade, up from 1,009 wells in 2010—a rise of 6%. Such wells are subject to corrosion and intense pressure at depths down to almost two miles below the water’s surface. Shafts penetrate as far as six miles into the seabed.
And the pressure on the Gulf is apt to keep increasing. The overall number of wells has increased by 5% since 2010: from 50,784 to 53,481. The number of temporarily abandoned wells has risen by 11%, from 3,669 to 4,081.
