Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption
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dpack
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well done oilman, a baling thimble on the titanic but every thimble helps
legacy issues are perhaps as important as what has been done and is ongoing if we transfer from fossil carbon to other energy supplies
methane to atmosphere or "fatter" stuff into aquifers or surface hydrogeology or even just making a flaming tar pit after a while might be reduced by effective decommissioning
well failure while in use is quite low, under 0.1%(well done)
historic well failure is averaged between 1% and 2%, some are messier than others(most are fairly minor, but some are awesome)
some fields have a far higher legacy failure rate due to geology and or the way the field was exploited and abandoned
ps i am not picking on oil, minerals and coal etc have similar issues, nuke legacy is off the scale
the folk capping legacy wells as properly as they know how to is rather nice
do it without conflict is wise and hopefully good diplomacy for obtaining means to make it normal practice
a small aside re nuke, afaik sellafield is now an entirely decommissioning operation with a 100yr plan
after the final leak in the THORP unit it was too hot to mend which put a stop to the reprocessing stuff
they have stored stuff, lots of stored stuff, last official Pu number was 350 tons, the high and medium stuff with a box and paperwork is extensive, the tube alloys onwards legacy stuff is a bit random and has planet changing potential(not in a bangy way perhaps but a popped "pond" or a "fire" might challenge most ecosystems short and long term)
other nuke facilities are available and have a variety of protocols in place, that ranges from trying to be safe to "call it a nature reserve"
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Shane
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I very much hope that these are long-abandoned wells and that the US oil industry isn't still just abandoning dry wells. Any responsible operator nowadays plugs their wells before abandonment, which does incur some cost but it's still a small percentage of the lifetime cost of your average well. I can imagine in somewhere like the US, where regulations have been pared down in pursuit of ever greater profit, spending money on a well that will no longer generate revenue is frowned upon by shareholders, but I very much hope that there are no wells nowadays that are just abandoned without being plugged.
"Plugging" is not simply a case of sticking a bung in the top. It is a complex process involving pumping heavy mud (the black gooey stuff in the video) and concrete down the well to counteract any residual bottomhole pressure (a phrase that still makes me chuckle after 25 years) and to restore the integrity of the cap rock.
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Mistress Rose
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Do all wells have bottomhole pressure Shane? We have an oil field under us, but it needs to be pumped out, so assume that there is little pressure.
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Shane
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Not, not all - in fact, many wells require some kind of assistance to produce meaningful quantities. Of course, with no seal between the reservoir and the surface it's a lot easier for methane to make its way up than liquids.
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dpack
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i got the impression these are historic legacy wells rather than ones being shut down now
if current practice is to stuff old holes as you leave with mud and cement etc, are golf balls still included in etc?, that is good.
i wonder what they currently do around baku or in the nigerian delta?
if i understand this stuff, there are plenty of old holes where folk just took the equipment and left for the next field, those are the ones these folk are going for and educating some in the industry about responsibilities and potential employment while they do it
legacy mines be it coal or minerals have different and similar issues with gassing off and leachates, they are even harder to mitigate as a historic and developed/developing problem
for ever chemicals are a cocktail cabinet from hell on many sites and as mentioned nuke is off the scale for legacy issues
re the trend to de fossil and employment, the skills needed for oil extraction might be suited to geothermal and other forms of energy harvest as well
a place full of danger, equipment and buttons is pretty much the same whatever it is attached to 
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Mistress Rose
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Thanks Shane. Yes, of course methane and other gases can get out far more easily than liquids, but I assumed that there was very little methane in the 'pumped' wells.
Dpack, that is not all of it. As far as chemicals are concerned, a number of places round here that have been used as industrial tips are rather toxic.Several new developments on them have cost rather a lot as the topsoil is toxic waste and has to be removed. I think they then put some sort of barrier down before putting clean soil back on top. Of course there is the methane too, and a number of them are still sinking. On the mining side old coal mines are notorious for opening up on the surface, and there are quite a lot of canals in industrial areas with large 'lakes' caused by collapsed mines. Salt extraction without repressurising causes similar problems.
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dpack
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a personal knowledge example of "chemical" legacy is a 30000 lt reaction pan and agitator full of gone wrong sulphonation batch
the batch set, it started as mostly naphaline and oleum, it was over 115% acidic and fuming nicely when it was buried in river flood plain clay
not exceptional as an item, the barrels and buried heaps etc are probably more worrying, that on site dump has 150 yr worth of waste chems and kit in about 20 acres, 2 world wars and a lot of brass n muck making assorted industrial things has created a cocktail cabinet that i do not want to consider too much
there might be a few tons of mustard gas gone wrong in the mix, but nobody has wanted to look for it too hard as it is rumour with no paperwork
the organic stuff is very varied
afaik in that one any radionuclides are incidental from kit etc rather than "process", the chemical stuff covers inorganic and an organic cocktail of mostly unknown nature, what we do know about it is all very bad 
that is perhaps the best monitored/maintained site in that area, some are legacy without responsibility, some are lost and some, old and newer, are "hidden"
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Shane
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I assumed that there was very little methane in the 'pumped' wells. |
There can be a lot of methane down there. The problem with remote wells that have no industrial infrastructure around them is that any gas that comes up with the oil is a nuisance rather than a saleable product. The oil gets dumped into trucks and transported for processing, but you can't do that with the gas so it gets burnt off ("flared") near the wellhead. With these wells, they will have been pumped until the volumes of liquid coming out were no longer commercially viable. There would have been no water or gas injection to maintain pressure in the reservoir, so the more you produce, the more the pressure drops. Once you get to the point at which the well is no longer viable, you have generated a huge amount of vapour in the reservoir due to the much lower pressure. Ergo, old, depleted wells have a lot more gas sitting at the bottom of them than new ones.
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Mistress Rose
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Thanks. We don't have flares from the wells round here, just nodding donkeys. I assume from that there will be little methane, but what there is will just expand as the oil is removed?
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Shane
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Thanks. We don't have flares from the wells round here, just nodding donkeys. I assume from that there will be little methane, but what there is will just expand as the oil is removed? |
There will be some expansion as the pressure drops, yes, but the bigger issue is that once you drop below a certain pressure methane will come out of solution, so you are adding to the amount of methane vapour in the reservoir.
Any idea which companies are running the wells near you? I'm following a couple of developments down that way, and they are currently flaring gas while they design a capture system to monetise it. All oil will have some residual gas in it, so either the wells near you are cold venting the methane (not allowed nowadays) or they've found some other way of dealing with it.
dpack
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umm
anyway binoculars ooh
oooooh
shall we have a look at nuke? i am not picking on oil or coal or even nuke/chem
the seal old holes thing is good, getting that way of thinking expanded is better
we might get extinct from messing with the climate, but we could tidy up a bit before we get to be geological specimens
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Mistress Rose
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I remember the Aberfan disaster. Absolutely awful. Sadly, in the past, things weren't cleared up or even left in a safe state. A number of Victorian household books even tell you how to check if your drinking water contains things like copper, so pollution must have been terrible then.
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gz
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One point about Aberfan is that they knew they were tipping over springs
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Mistress Rose
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I wasn't aware of that. A recipe for disaster. It happened when I was at school, and think I was rather taken up with school work etc. at the time.
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dpack
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I very much hope that these are long-abandoned wells and that the US oil industry isn't still just abandoning dry wells. Any responsible operator nowadays plugs their wells before abandonment, which does incur some cost but it's still a small percentage of the lifetime cost of your average well. I can imagine in somewhere like the US, where regulations have been pared down in pursuit of ever greater profit, spending money on a well that will no longer generate revenue is frowned upon by shareholders, but I very much hope that there are no wells nowadays that are just abandoned without being plugged.
"Plugging" is not simply a case of sticking a bung in the top. It is a complex process involving pumping heavy mud (the black gooey stuff in the video) and concrete down the well to counteract any residual bottomhole pressure (a phrase that still makes me chuckle after 25 years) and to restore the integrity of the cap rock. |
new legacy issues just like old legacy issues
same sort of thing as leaving the disposable bbq and beer bottles on the beach
Mistress Rose
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I don't know how they do this, but I am sure if you are into that sort of thing it is quite easy. If we take out insurance for something, which I assume they have to, it asks if any of the directors have been bankrupt so shouldn't get insurance if they are truthful or the insurance companies do their job, apart from anything else like the rules for incorporating a company.
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dpack
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a few quid and a couple of hours will get a registered company in many jurisdictions
companies house is ok, scottish partnerships are ace, etc
then that firm buys another one etc, banks via private jurisdictions or ones with flexible interpretations of transparency.
separate profit from liability is one of the pillars of exploitation
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Slim
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I do like that the piece you linked had the clear solution in it. Make them post bonds up front that will cover cleanup costs. Simple, and straightforward.
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Shane
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That's what happens out this way - the regulator forces operating companies to pay into an escrow account every year. Payments are calculated to ensure that there is enough in the escrow account to cover the full cost of decommissioning at the end of a facility's lifetime.
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dpack
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for all the anti propaganda re hot place oil states, some have started to be sensible on now, legacy and long future issues seem to matter to the wiser ones
i recon a robovac, (maybe with electrostatic but simple is nice) and venturi combination has potential as automatic fettling
got any dust?
it might be as easy as slurp it off without breaking the vac kit or scratching the panel:wink:
clean a card or clean a panel are very similar tasks in many ways
the engineering is off the shelf stuff
red dwarf scutters that have not got stroppy or slack might be a goal 
this can be done, in a sunny place, mostly sunny with little else, it might be useful
oil and gas will be run out, export leccy or green hydrogen or whatever makes sense for later
the dust thing can be sorted
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dpack
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bit of a swerve but relevant
a new income stream from big sunny sand and rock would more than cover any legacy works
and it might be better than the last 100 yrs or so
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Shane
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I can't really comment in any detail on a public forum, but I would suggest that rebranding and public statements of good intentions should be considered in a more strategic sense.
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dpack
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oh well, comforting words are a comfort
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Mistress Rose
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Certainly the generation of solar power is a potential big money maker. Even back in the early 1970s it was calculated that a country the size of Egypt could make enough electricity for the whole world. Problems come, as we have discussed before, with storage and transmission.
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dpack
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use or export leccy by cable
if there is brine as well as leccy, hydrogen, chlorine and naoh( the latter two may be in over supply but a problem that is solvable, a new salt and water cycle n all that) are easy
we just borrow the hydrogen for a while should work as a closed system
better chemical engineers are welcome to try my hypothesis
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dpack
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legacy needs sorting, i am flexible about how that is funded
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Mistress Rose
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I have read somewhere, but can't remember where, that there is a problem with exporting by cable. Don't remember any details either I am afraid. I do know that the relatively short distance across the English Channel is one thing, across the Mediterranean is a lot further, so far higher losses. And a lot it would need to come from the Middle East and be transported to Western Europe. It might be possible to do some chemical breakdowns and move something like hydrogen by pipeline in an energetically economical way.
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Shane
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Hydrogen is tough because the molecules are so small (and hence like to escape) unless sequestered somehow. Ammonia is being looked at as a potential shipping fuel of the future, although I certainly wouldn't want to be below decks if that leaked.
Moving electricity by cable is similar to moving liquid by pipeline. You can transport liquids short to medium distances without losing too much pressure, but if you tried to move liquid by pipeline from the Middle East to the UK using only one set of pumps at this end, even with a pipeline several feet in diameter there would be hardly any flow due to the frictional pressure losses in the line. Same with electricity - even with a cable 12 feet across there would be hardly any current flowing in a cable that long. As you say, much better to find an intermediate - and preferably liquid - form in which to transport power.
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dpack
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H2 is a nightmare to work with at any scale,
i prefer it to ethylene which is handled quite well by the petrochem folk
temporary sequestration as ammonia is plausible, but would have ammonia handling issues throughout the system and N oxides issues at point of use
other chemistry may be better
re long distance cable, current tech makes more than a couple of hundred miles unviable as a simple source to load system
use the sun locally, in 1830 the ironworks was built near the coal, the iron ore was easier to move than the coal etc
moving and using energy in a reactive chemical system will always have issues, not least combustion of fossil fuels
i am too ignorant, old and unfunded to make sun etc replace fossil but i recon it could be done
if and it is a huge IF humans tried to find ways to do it
journo version and techy version of a few of the reasons it has not yet been done.
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dpack
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i think my reasoning on this is the locals with sun for ever and a reducing fossil income stream that will become zero, no matter how nice it is now, might be persuaded that using some of their income to secure an income for their children/people long term is wise
stewardship and the responsibility of privilege is a powerful emotional argument and useful if manipulating the powerful
family, tribe and "god"(pick whichever might work)
quite often respect for stewardship is the feather on the seesaw
this sort of stuff is not just cash and geopolitics, sometimes it can be a few good words at the right time to the right person.
a grant to a university for transportable hydrogen sequestration research, the experimental sunmade manufacturing company etc
pitch high, pitch well and brutally honestly that they can make good or bad choices
it might be a theme or details
it may be a surprise, combining naked thursday life in a wood with unexpected cabinet level informal diplomacy was hysterically funny and done to the criteria above
ps the second minder who though he was stealth had no idea my stealth mutt was a few meters from him while the principal and minder one were treated as honoured guests. 
it worked in mission terms, and it had a few other good consequences, perhaps including a wee nudge to some personal issues for the principal as well 
personal and politics can be a good combo
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