Rock On, Alberta! Province Home To World's Single Most Methane-Productive Abandoned Gas Well!!! [View all]

[hatrack]

Alberta owns a new record. The province is home to an abandoned and unplugged gas well that leaks methane, an explosive greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere at the highest rate ever recorded in North America. The super-emitter spews approximately nine cubic metres of gas per hour, or 78,840 cubic metres of gas a year. That’s enough to heat an average Canadian residence for nearly 34 years. The leak is two to three times higher than the previously published record emission rate from an unplugged well in Pennsylvania in 2014.

McGill University researchers made the discovery while undertaking, for the first time, direct measurements of methane emission rates at 238 abandoned and unplugged wells in the oil-dependent provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Based on these findings, the researchers now estimate that some 400,000 inactive and unplugged wells in Canada probably pollute the atmosphere with 85 to 93 kilotonnes of methane every year. That’s equivalent to the emissions of 1.5 million cars. Those suspended wells, a major financial liability for the province (see sidebar), represent just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to industry’s methane pollution. A recent Carleton University study found that the industry released at least 1,922 kilotonnes in B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan in 2021 and that regulators had underestimated the sheer volume of the problem by 50 per cent.

Scientists admit there is a high degree of uncertainty about the contribution of abandoned and unplugged wells to methane pollution because industry and their regulators assumed for years that they didn’t leak much. But Mary Kang, a civil engineer at McGill and one of the study’s co-authors, demolished those claims in a previous study in Pennsylvania, where the oil age began in the 1850s. After directly measuring the rate of methane emissions from abandoned wells, Kang discovered that some were super-emitters. She concluded that thousands of abandoned wells in that state accounted for anywhere from four to seven per cent of methane emissions in Pennsylvania.

Super-emitting wells are a problem in Alberta and Saskatchewan. According to the McGill study, one in 20 unplugged wells were “super high emitters” of methane. Researchers also found the greatest leakage rates in Grande Prairie, an area of high fracking activity. The area’s abandoned wells leaked at levels 13 times higher than for leaking gas wells around Medicine Hat, an area of historic gas production, and for heavy oil wells in Lloydminster.

EDIT

https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/12/11/Alberta-Methane-Super-Emitter/