T231 Quantifying and Addressing the Environmental and Health Impacts of Active, Orphaned, and Abandoned Oil & Gas Wells

Wednesday, 25 September 2024
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
208B

THE NATIONAL LABS' MULTI-SCALED SEARCH FOR UNDOCUMENTED OIL AND GAS WELLS

Paper number: T231-4
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 8:45 AM – 9:00 AM

Authors

Abstract

The Consortium Advancing Technology for Assessment of Lost Oil & Gas Wells (CATALOG) is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Undocumented Orphan Well Program (UOWP), which is focused around reducing the impact of undocumented orphaned wells (UOWs). Within UOWP-CATALOG, the Field Team plans, collects, and interprets UOW field surveys in new areas or for underserved communities. The Field Team affords UOWP-CATALOG the ability to have a direct and beneficial impact on communities through rapid deployment and educating the public on best practices and value in identifying and characterizing UOWs. Additionally, the Team provides UOWP-CATALOG with much-needed large data sets that can be used to test and validate machine learning efforts and methane plume models.

The Team’s objectives are two-fold: find undocumented wells, quantify methane emissions from wells. The former is done through magnetic, LiDAR and synthetic aperture radar surveys and “boots-on-the-ground” confirmation of wells identified through desktop analyses. The latter is done with ground- and UAV-based methane sensing, as anomalous methane concentrations can be evidence for a UOW, and established and novel point-source quantification techniques to determine flow rates from “leaky” wells. The Team has complete two campaigns for Osage Nation in Oklahoma and campaigns are underway for Navajo Nation in the Four Corners Region.

A major objective of the Field Team is developing a best practices workflow that integrates desktop and field techniques to efficiently and effectively identifying UOWs and deliver data to the stakeholder. Desktop efforts, such as historical topographic map analysis, image classification or segmentation, production history analysis, and geospatial modeling, can return high priority areas to focus field efforts on. Field efforts may take a scaled approach starting with manned aircraft surveys and then moving to more focused UAV and ground surveys. Alternatively, aspect like season, terrain, and site access may dictate the order and selection of field techniques. The Team’s own experiences and expertise as well as outside successes and challenges will be the basis for this workflow, which will serve as a guide for stakeholders and relevant practitioners.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 56, No. 5

doi: 10.1130/abs/2024AM-404403

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