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Alec Jacobson

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'Zombie' Oil Wells For The New York Times

alec jacobson

Oct 31, 2020

Location: Alberta, Canada

For the last couple months, I've been digging into this story. In Alberta, a backlog of almost 100,000 oil and gas wells has built up that is neither alive nor dead but instead licensed as suspended. Though it's intended to be temporary, nearly 30,000 of those wells have been in suspension for 10 years or more. As they sit in fields around the province and age, some of them are leaking methane and other gases. No one knows how many are leaking or how much, but, given the number of wells, the net effect on Canada's carbon footprint is may be substantial.

These Zombies Threaten the Whole Planet
Canada’s oil patch has nearly 100,000 suspended wells, neither active nor capped, and they’re a worrying source of planet-warming methane.

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