A new report highlights the risk 120,000 abandoned oil and gas wells pose to carbon dioxide storage in Louisiana, home to more proposals to pump the greenhouse gas underground than any other state.
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OIL CITY, LOUISIANA – MARCH 8: Ricky Jordan inspects an orphaned well with a temporary cap sits in the backyard of a home owns in Oil City, Louisiana on March 8, 2023. (Photo by Cooper Neill for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
From the article:
Texas has also applied to regulate CO2 injection wells, a prospect that troubles Paige Powell, policy manager at Commission Shift, an energy watchdog group in that state. Her organization recently sent a letter to the EPA asking it to revoke Texas’s oversight of wastewater injection wells—Texas and most other states already have primacy for wastewater injection wells—citing the recent blowouts and leaks from abandoned wells.
“There’s things happening in the subsurface that they don’t know about,” Powell said, adding that she was skeptical of claims that CO2 injection wells won’t leak. “I think it’s audacious to say it’s not going to happen.”
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