Tuesday, July 27, 2010

27,000 time bombs?

That’s the number of abandoned oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico.  I’m sure they’ve been entombed once they were no longer useful, but they seem to always be leaking some oil and natural gas in the water.
From an article following the latest placement of a cap on the ruptured oil well:
The government's oil spill chief tried to tamp down fears Tuesday that BP's capped well is buckling under the pressure, saying that seepage detected along the sea floor less than two miles away is coming from an older well no longer in production.
[…]
The seepage is closer to the older well than to the one that blew out, Allen said. Also, he said, "it's not unusual to have seepage around the old wells."
There are two wells within two miles of BP's blowout off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico. One has been abandoned and another is not in production. Around 27,000 abandoned wells in the Gulf aren't checked for leaks, an Associated Press investigation showed this month.
Let’s just hope that nothing ever happens, but 27,000 is a lot of holes drilled on the sea floor.  Also, how long do these “tombs” stay stable for?  10 years?  100 years?  Forever?  Let’s not forget that we breached the integrity of the sea floor to suck whatever was keeping it stable with immense pressure out.  Then we plugged said holes with a substance that is different from what’s surrounding it.
Is it really that far fetched that some of these plugs would deteriorate or simply break down?  I doubt it.

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