New Enbridge CEO says Canada is missing opportunities as world cries out for energy | CBC News

Just an FYI, oil reservoirs and the wells we drill into them are like straws in shaken-up pop bottles. They only produce for so long, and experience production declines (generally) from the moment they are drilled. Consequently, there comes a point where they are sucked dry and must be “retired”, which is where you get an abandoned well. They aren’t really problems, it’s standard practice. Regulators such as the AER set out strict standards about how to plug, cap, and seal a well several meters BELOW the surface so that it affects from up top as if the wells never existed.

The real issue is with orphaned wells. These happen when a company goes out of business before they’ve had a chance to go through the steps I described above, and become a massive environmental liability. There are also thousands of wells from decades past where environmental regs were not as strict as they are now which could be considered orphaned.

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