‘Artificial magma’ sealing leaky gas wells

CALGARY New technologies employing brute force as well as artificial volcanic action are being developed to better seal thousands of inactive oil and gas wells in Canada that are leaking methane, a greenhouse gas with an outsized impact on global warming.

The technology is advancing as federal and provincial governments embrace new goals to cut fugitive methane gas emissions that the industry concedes are difficult to measure, much less control.

A Norwegian company is working in B.C. and Alberta with a technology that creates a pool of volcano-inspired “artificial magma” underground to plug wells by melting and fusing the steel pipe with surrounding rock.

Michael Skjold said he came up with the idea to use thermite — a metal-chemical powder that burns at around 3,000 C — to seal oil and gas wells about eight years ago. It has advanced from backyard testing to a full-scale commercial test program to plug oil and gas wells.

“The reaction lasts for maybe two or three minutes and then it acts like magma that’s erupting from a volcano. A small man-made volcano. Very controllable,” said the innovation and business development manager for Interwell Norway AS during an interview in Calgary.

“Actually, we’ve used the volcano as inspiration because ... we are creating something very similar to igneous rock and basalt formations.”

Thermite has been used for decades in exothermic bonding, a welding technique used to join railway track segments together by melting the steel ends. It’s considered safe to handle and store because it requires a substantial amount of electrical energy for ignition.

The Interwell technology was targeted at Norway’s offshore oil and gas industry but Skjold said Alberta’s inventory of nearly half a million wells, compared with Norway’s cumulative total of about 5,000 wells, convinced the company to focus on Canada instead.

The leaking well problem is also better known in Alberta than in Norway because it is more visible, he said, pointing out it’s hard to tell whether wells hundreds of metres deep in the cold and stormy North Sea might be leaking small amounts of natural gas.