Primary Research Organization: Millennium EMS Solutions Ltd. (in association with Hers Environmental)
Start Date: August 2022
Anticipated End Date: March 2024
Project Summary and Scope of Work
Well integrity failure is an expensive historic and ongoing issue associated with a subset of oil and gas wells. Failure manifests as surface casing vent flow (SCVF; inside casing leakage) and/or gas migration (GM; outside casing leakage) whereby natural gas (comprised primarily of methane) is potentially emitted to atmosphere causing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Remediation of integrity failure is challenging and expensive. Currently, to attain a certificate of restoration, there is no practical alternative to full abandonment or re-abandonment for a well exhibiting integrity failure and emitting methane to atmosphere. There is need for cost effective alternative options for mitigation of leaking oil and gas wells, particularly for marginal leakage, where emissions pose a low risk to the environment and are contributing only minimally to GHG emissions.
We propose to address this gap through applied R&D of engineered biocovers as a passive, low-cost and sustainable technology for mitigation of leaking oil and gas wells. Aerobic biodegradation of methane occurs naturally in soils via methanotrophic bacteria, which are highly efficient and widely distributed in the environment.