New study first to predict which oil, gas wells are actually leaking methane
BURLINGTON, Vermont: Each year brings new research showing that oil and natural gas wells leak significant amounts of the potent greenhouse gas methane.
A new study just published in the journal Environmental Geosciences is the first to offer a profile of which wells are the most likely culprits.
The research, conducted by George Pinder of the University of Vermont and James Montague, a former doctoral student at the university, is based on a study of 38,391 natural gas and oil wells in Alberta, Canada. Companies in that province are required to test wells at the time they begin operating to determine if they have failed and are leaking natural gas, which contains methane, and to keep careful records of each well’s construction characteristics.
The study used a machine learning algorithm to correlate wells that leaked and those that didn’t with a set of 16 characteristics.
The analysis yielded a cluster of traits that was predictive of whether a well would fail and leak.
For a subset of 4,024 wells for which the algorithm had access to more complete information, including the fluid properties of the oil or natural gas being mined, the researchers were able to identify leaking wells with 87 per cent accuracy.
For a larger sample of 28,534 wells, where the fluid property was not known and taken into account, 62 per cent of leaking wells were identified accurately.
“The big picture,” Pinder said of the study’s findings, “is that we can now have tool that could help us much more efficiently identify leaking wells.
“Given that methane is such a significant contributor to global warming, this is powerful information that should be put to use.” — UV News