Ticking time bombs - What risk do abandoned oil and gas wells pose? | DW Documentary
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Published 2024-01-31
Oil companies invest little in securing the former boreholes. Environmental activists are among the few on the lookout for this invisible danger: Of the 20 to 30 million former drilling sites worldwide, only a few are regularly and carefully monitored. From the North Sea to the Alsace region in France to the USA, abandoned extraction sites can be silently causing significant harm to both the environment and human health.
Take Bradford, USA: Here, several residents fell ill with mysterious symptoms including hair loss and nosebleeds. Eventually, medical doctor Jeffrey Nordella discovered they were all suffering from chronic benzene exposure caused by methane and crude oil. The substances had escaped over a long period of time from a disused borehole. Elsewhere, gas explosions from leaking production facilities cause enormous damage.
In many countries, oil and gas companies are legally obliged to seal abandoned wells immediately. However, the implementation and monitoring of these regulations is sporadic. Activists and whistleblowers are constantly trying to draw attention to this abuse.
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All Comments (21)
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These residual clean up costs should be included in the lifetime cost of producing oil and natural gas to give a complete cost for comparison to the cost of, say, solar or nuclear
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The oil and gas industry makes record profits but they leave their waste for the state to clean up. Its so wrong!
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This is an important reminder that corporations aren't our friends and that real evil exists in the world.
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Thankfully DW brings these important documentaries to life. It's heartening to know someone cares to do this type of selfless work. High kudos and all the Best energies to those fighting oil companies
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Ive said for years that im willing to let oil and gas execs run their operations wherever and however they like AS LONG AS they are willing to live, and let their grandchildren live, in the immediate proximity of their company's operations. If they are not willing to live there, then something is obviously unsafe about the operations.
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There was a viral video of this lady's dog going crazy and digging holes into the sidewalk. She said her Husky never dug holes because they live in a big city but they had a small yard. Sure enough that Husky was going crazy. She goes outside with her gas meter that a lot of residents would keep to check their stoves and heaters. The detector was beeping like crazy and blinking red. There was a gas leak underground
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My dad was a roughneck at TOSCO (Now Martinez Oil and Gas Co in Martinez, CA) and I'm almost positive pollutant exposure is why we both have health problems. I used to do his laundry for him as a kid
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Without DWs investigative journalism we would still be walking around thinking at least we are not having war so we are safe 😮 this is insightful
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To be absolutely corrupted means they are evil beyond belief!!! That's what power does to these oil companies!
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This is a scandal; these things must be closed immediately
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They should be forced to return the site to the state it was in before drilling. Plugging a site is not a solution if the metal can corrode and leak. Monitoring the wells is not a solution either because the oil and gras industry has no interest in monitoring and maintaining the sites.
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DW again with another insightful documentary
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If fossil fuel products and their derivatives (incl. your car's gasoline, your heating, plastics, food, ..) were priced to include the external costs those industries inflict on society and the biosphere as a whole, then most of these products would be priced out of the market. The prices of all these goods and services are pure illusion, a bookkeeper's slight of hand.
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As a Petroleum Engineer, seeing wells with water flowing to surface is tough to watch. Most countries would not allow this - and especially not here in Canada. It’s sad that US Regulations don’t have a mechanism to resolve this issue. As a consumer, source your natural gas responsibly! We all use it - whether as fuel for heating, electricity for our EVs, or plastics at our hospitals.
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And we are being told it's the cows producing all the methane and we have to get rid of them. Lmfao
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I live in Pennsylvania. This is like watching a horror movie. Makes me feel like the earth is already beyond the tipping point.
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Superb report. Very well done DW. Plenty of work for the future. Five stars
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People complain windmills kill a couple birds…oil and gas has damaged and killed literally millions of animals and humans 😯
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a big problem with chevron is they bought out gulf oil and with that buyout almost nothing was up to spec. gulf oil left a 50 million gallon tank of benzene near my town to rot and it all leaked out into the ground water which most people in the area had shallow water wells that got ruined. the state had to build a water pipeline because everyone lost their wells do to the benzene
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Make billions on selling this stuff, but it's too expensive to take care of the maintenance cost. It's like saying you're rich but still rely on food stamps
