These wells are already inactive; destroying them doesn’t do anything for safety or the environment. The government is demolishing the wells to prevent a future government from reconsidering its decision to stop producing gas.
Call me a dummy, but wouldn’t the cement stay beneath the gas, given it’s way denser, even accounting for the high pressure? Filling it with cement sounds like it’d keep the remaining gas accessible.
Also, the earthquakes are only part of the problem, the ground can sink and destroy infrastructure without a proper earthquake. The city of Maceió, in Brazil, has recently had to deal with that kind of problem due to rock salt mining
Not to mention that the whole “huge numbers of winners and small numbers of concentrated losers” speaks for itself on whose side this article is on: the money. The “winners” are the companies and the rich, the “small losers” are everyone else. I’m surprised it didn’t even call them “just a bunch of poor idiots who should know better than to stay in the way of profit”. Exhibit A:
Destroying the wells does not change the likelihood of additional earthquakes. It does not change the world’s emissions pathway either, given that production had stopped.
This is the whole “Oh well, climate change has already fucked everything, so we might as well continue on 'til the end!” bullshit
They’re not filling the entire gas bubble, just the “neck” of the gas well. The problem is that with the well sealed, gas will acumulate, making it extremely hard to redrill it in a new spot.
The thing is, we COULD just stop extracting, but keep the wells around for some kind of emergency, like a giant war or something. But instead, we decided to fill in the well, changing nothing, but making it impossible to access in case of emergency.
Granted, I DO see how some future rightwing government might go “Raising taxes by 0.01% is an emergency, drill baby drill!”, and that’s mostly hampered by this move. But it doesn’t exactly show tremendous foresight.
Call me a dummy, but wouldn’t the cement stay beneath the gas, given it’s way denser, even accounting for the high pressure? Filling it with cement sounds like it’d keep the remaining gas accessible.
Also, the earthquakes are only part of the problem, the ground can sink and destroy infrastructure without a proper earthquake. The city of Maceió, in Brazil, has recently had to deal with that kind of problem due to rock salt mining
Not to mention that the whole “huge numbers of winners and small numbers of concentrated losers” speaks for itself on whose side this article is on: the money. The “winners” are the companies and the rich, the “small losers” are everyone else. I’m surprised it didn’t even call them “just a bunch of poor idiots who should know better than to stay in the way of profit”. Exhibit A:
This is the whole “Oh well, climate change has already fucked everything, so we might as well continue on 'til the end!” bullshit
They’re not filling the entire gas bubble, just the “neck” of the gas well. The problem is that with the well sealed, gas will acumulate, making it extremely hard to redrill it in a new spot.
The thing is, we COULD just stop extracting, but keep the wells around for some kind of emergency, like a giant war or something. But instead, we decided to fill in the well, changing nothing, but making it impossible to access in case of emergency.
Granted, I DO see how some future rightwing government might go “Raising taxes by 0.01% is an emergency, drill baby drill!”, and that’s mostly hampered by this move. But it doesn’t exactly show tremendous foresight.