In 1971 Orlo Childs was speaking at the annual Underground Waste Management symposium and posed the following question about the practice of using injection wells to dispose of America’s toxic waste.  “Where will the waste reside 100 years from now?” Orlo Childs at the 1971 conference Underground Waste Management

It has been known for a long time that injection wells are not a permanent solution and that what we blast underground will come back to us. Will it take 100 years? Fifty? One? We don’t know until we try and boy have we tried. And in the case of the oil industry we can see how that is failing in the Permian in Texas. And in Ohio. And across the country where we have more than 180,000 injection wells. I wrote about some of these failures in July.

The thing about the oil industry’s plan to capture carbon and store it underground is that it only works if the storage is permanent. And yet we know that is impossible. When will we learn that blasting carbon dioxide underground is a failed strategy? Earlier this month, actually. The very first carbon storage project has already failed. We tried again, we hoped, we failed.

  • Dorkyd68@lemmy.world
    7·
    11 days ago

    I work in oil and gas. Have for 10 + years now. Specifically directional drilling. See the drill bit needs to be steered in order to hit certain targets/ pay zones laid out by geologists and engineers. We steer the bit by relying on mwd (measurement while drilling) tools. This is my area of expertise. These tools give you azimuth (direction), inclination so you can calculate build( vertical vs horizontal) as well as gamma readings so you know what formation you’re in. I drilled salt water disposal wells for 5 ish years. Drill a well then pump it full of salt water excess from other wells. These wells are ALL over Oklahoma. About 2010 or so Oklahoma started experiencing “freak” earthquakes. We don’t have a history of earthquakes. The oil industry tried saying it was all natural and that the wells we were drilling had nothing to do with the quakes. Lies, straight lies. You can’t pump thousands upon thousands of gallons of water into the earth and expect nothing to happen. I’ve been on active drill sites when earthquakes happened. What we were doing to the earth is a DIRECT result of those earthquakes.

    I hate the industry I work in. I love this earth however I can’t pay the bills working the trades. I tried as an electrician but it’s not a liveable wage. Anyway cause and effect ya know

    Sorry for the rant