2023-07-16 11:38:48
Chipped red paint, broken pressure gauge, cranks on the ground… like hundreds of thousands of others, this western Canadian oil well has been shut down for several decades without ever having been shut down.
Most of these small boreholes, often dug hundreds of meters below the surface in search of Alberta’s rich oil and gas deposits, “erode and degrade“, says activist Regan Boychuk.
And they are now an ecological time bomb in Canada where oil and gas remain kings, employing nearly 600,000 people.
“Each must be managed, watched for eternity because of the risk of leaks“gas but also oil in the surrounding groundwater, adds the founder of Reclaim Alberta, an organization that fights for the closure of these abandoned wells.
Even more worrying, they continue to emit a very powerful greenhouse gas: methane.
Over twenty years, this one has “86 times more impact than a molecule of carbon dioxide“, underlines Mary Kang of McGill University, specialist in the subject.
And it’s probably a source of pollution”under estimated“: “the margin of uncertainty is large“given the number of wells, adds the expert.
More than 120,000 wells are inactive and unsealed in Alberta and Saskatchewan, the two provinces that are home to 91% of Canadian wells, according to a 2022 federal report.
Combined, they emit 16,000 tonnes of methane – 545,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide – per year over a century, the equivalent of the annual emissions of around 237,000 cars.
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