Methane Emissions from Abandoned Oil and Gas Wells in Canada and the United States

Citations Over TimeTop 10% of 2020 papers

Abstract

Abandoned oil and gas wells are one of the most uncertain sources of methane emissions into the atmosphere. To reduce these uncertainties and improve emission estimates, we geospatially and statistically analyze 598 direct methane emission measurements from abandoned oil and gas wells and aggregate well counts from regional databases for the United States (U.S.) and Canada. We estimate the number of abandoned wells to be at least 4,000,000 wells for the U.S. and at least 370,000 for Canada. Methane emission factors range from 1.8 × 10-3 g/h to 48 g/h per well depending on the plugging status, well type, and region, with the overall average at 6.0 g/h. We find that annual methane emissions from abandoned wells are underestimated by 150% in Canada and by 20% in the U.S. Even with the inclusion of two to three times more measurement data than used in current inventory estimates, we find that abandoned wells remain the most uncertain methane source in the U.S. and become the most uncertain source in Canada. Understanding methane emissions from abandoned oil and gas wells can provide critical insights into broader environmental impacts of abandoned wells, which are rapidly growing in number around the world.

Related Papers

• → Consistent Metrics Needed for Quantifying Methane Emissions from Upstream Oil and Gas Operations(2021)26 cited
• → Measuring methane emissions during the installation of residential and commercial natural gas meters in China(2023)3 cited
• Estimating Global Natural Wetland Methane Emissions Using Process Modeling: The Spatiotemporal Patterns and the Contributions to Atmospheric Methane Fluctuations(2014)
• Variability in wetland methane emissions simulated by CLM4Me¢ and its contribution to atmospheric methane concentration in CAM-chem(2015)
• Methane Emission from Seagrass Disturbance and its Impact on Global Atmospheric Methane Budget(2018)