27,000 abandoned, unattended oil & gas wells in Gulf

[Philosoraptor]

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/07/gulf-awash-abandoned-oil-gas-wells/?test=latestnews

More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one -- not industry, not government -- is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The oldest of these wells were abandoned in the late 1940s, raising the prospect that many deteriorating sealing jobs are already failing.

The AP investigation uncovered particular concern with 3,500 of the neglected wells -- those characterized in federal government records as "temporarily abandoned."

Regulations for temporarily abandoned wells require oil companies to present plans to reuse or permanently plug such wells within a year, but the AP found that the rule is routinely circumvented, and that more than 1,000 wells have lingered in that unfinished condition for more than a decade. About three-quarters of temporarily abandoned wells have been left in that status for more than a year, and many since the 1950s and 1960s -- even though sealing procedures for temporary abandonment are not as stringent as those for permanent closures.
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FUCK!

[liberal N proud]

1. With rotting seals

[slackmaster]

2. They can't all be Bush's fault

:argh:

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Nope. They are the fault of the mistaken line of thinking that

the ocean is so big it can neutralize anything.

I can't even begin to think how we are going to address all those potentially leaking wells.

[MineralMan]

4. This is another reason that the nuclear option is not a viable

choice for sealing the gusher. Any weakness in any of those abandoned wells could result in additional oil leaking into the gulf if a nuclear explosion was used to try to seal the main leaker. The best hope remains the relief wells and plugging the leaking well in that way.