Increase in inactive oil and gas wells could cost Saskatchewan $4B in future cleanup:

[chuckChuck]

When oil and salt water spill, the oil may disappear but the salt water contamination will last for a very long time and it will grow no crop. It may never grow another crop.

When leases and roads are made they use compacted clay with gravel on top. Tell me how many bushels you expect to grow with out that clay being removed and the top soil being replaced? Zero!

Even on leases that are well reclaimed you can see the effect of compaction from heavy equipment on the subsoil and top soil for lots of years afterwards.

The land and soil is worth far more than the oil underneath it because it will have to remain productive for thousands of years to produce food.

Yes some farmers enjoy some compensation if the company stays viable enough to continue paying their lease payments. But as we know some of these companies are not viable and they get sold or go into receivership leaving taxpayers and landowners with the cleanup liability which in many cases will exceed the value of all the lease payments they receive over the lifetime of a lease.

For example 30 year lease at $3500 per year equals $105,000. The Saskatchewan Auditor estimated cleanup costs on 24,000 suspended and orphaned wells at $166,000 per well totaling $4 Billion.

Who is going to pay for the cleanup?

[sumdumguy]

A lot of good points Chuck. That all should be considered before signing the lease. $3500 is peanuts for going around the site for 30 years, not to mention restoring it back to original condition in 30 years. When the rights are sold, there should be a legislated limit as to how long an oil company can leave it on your title if they haven’t done anything with the rights.

[chuckChuck]

Thanks Sum I appreciate your support. I know I clash with lots of guys on here, but I also know that many of us would agree on lots of issues as well.

In the old days when farms were smaller, oil surface lease revenues were very significant sources of family income. They are not that significant anymore on a good sized farm unless you have a lot of them. There are some big farms that don't want them at all because the hassle of farming around them with big equipment is more of a pain that it is worth.

[Happytrails]

Chuckchuck "Who is going to pay for the cleanup?" If we insist on a clean up that costs more than the original well the answer is NOBODY. To pretend that we can support 6 billion people on this earth without leaving a trace of our activities is folly. We should address the hazardous situations first and everything else as finances allow. The poor homesteaders left quite a mess behind in this country a hundred years ago. Somehow we coped.

[checking]

cc.
The world doesn't require the extra production from damaged soils caused mainly by field operators that place more importance on their tee off time than keeping packing in stuffing boxes, and flipping valves. This really doesn't need to be an expensive huge issue when you consider that on most quarters there is lots of unproductive land. It may not be nice for the moose, but where do you think the replacement material comes from to fix most so called "unavoidable accidents", or necessary lease roads that become unnecessary later.
Below the root zone, salt does no damage. Track hoes with deep reaches could easily out of sight, out of mind, pill dispose that material, and I would not object to this method on my ground. A hundred feet of blue clay before a sand seam shows up, isn't going to be affected.
Anybody can make things cost more than they should, as proves the $166 K/well theory.