Is now a good time to link Billy Bob’s speech from Landman? Or should we wait.
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I mean if I wanted to watch an old man stroke his pipe…line there are better ways to do it
I was talking with a hydrogeologist on a plane last week. Every time they plug a leaking well, it just helps the pressure build up on the other failing plugs. So for every well they plug, you can guarantee there’s another one that will fail soon enough. Too much produced water being reinjected apparently.
I’m not an oil and gas guy, but as I understand it, much of the produced water is reinjected to help force more oil out of the formations.
However, is it possible for these data centers to use produced water for their high cooling water demands?
That’s sometimes true, but most of the industry’s reinjection today is simply water disposal. Many wells produce multiple barrels of water for every barrel of oil, and the water has to go somewhere.
The pressure from injecting into disposal wells is a factor, but the main problem with of these old leaking wells is that they weren’t properly plugged to begin with. They would all have leaked at some point even if there was no disposal going on.
Nobody wants to spend money on P&A work, and there hasn’t been much accountability for doing shoddy work.
The other misconception people have is that these wells are all connected to wash other and to disposal wells. That can be true on a localized basis for a few wells, but it’s not really the case that most are leaking because of pressure build-ups from connected wells.
This problem is 100 years in the making.
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Can you imagine how nice it would be if for oil and gas there was only one small place negatively affected like this windmill blade dumping ground?
They can clean it up in 6 months. Classic Mountain vs Mole Hill.
PS Here’s the mountain:
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