{"id":48540,"date":"2015-07-22T19:25:47","date_gmt":"2015-07-22T23:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/?p=48540"},"modified":"2015-07-22T19:27:07","modified_gmt":"2015-07-22T23:27:07","slug":"despite-federal-push-after-bp-oil-spill-number-of-aging-temporarily-sealed-wells-grows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/2015\/07\/despite-federal-push-after-bp-oil-spill-number-of-aging-temporarily-sealed-wells-grows\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite federal push after BP oil spill, number of aging temporarily sealed wells grows"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nola.com\/environment\/index.ssf\/2015\/07\/share_of_aging_temporarily_sea.html\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"  aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/18348836-standard.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"356\" height=\"233\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Five years after the Obama administration promised to move swiftly to permanently plug unused oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico, even more shafts are lingering for longer periods with only temporary sealing, an Associated Press investigation shows.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">It is not clear how many incompletely sealed wells may have leaked \u2014 they generally are not monitored as carefully as active wells \u2014 but they contain fewer barriers to pent-up petroleum and rupture more easily. The threat to the environment increases with time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In July 2010, during <a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nola.com\/news\/gulf-oil-spill\/\" target=\"_blank\">the BP oil spill<\/a>, the AP reported that the Gulf was littered with more than 27,000 unused wells, including 14 percent left with just temporary seals.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The AP&#8217;s new analysis of federal data shows that the neglect of long-idle wells has intensified since 2010, despite the federal push after the BP accident:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Twenty-five percent more wells have now stayed temporarily sealed for more than a year, jumping from 2,855 to 3,576.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Wells sealed temporarily for more than a year make up 86 percent of all temporarily sealed shafts, up from 78 percent.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The number of wells equipped with temporary barriers for more than five years has risen from 1,631 to 1,895 \u2014 a 16 percent increase.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">&#8220;I think there are signs of progress, but, my God, we got a long way to go,&#8221; said Bob Bea, an emeritus engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, when told of the AP findings.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read Full Article: <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nola.com\/environment\/index.ssf\/2015\/07\/share_of_aging_temporarily_sea.html\" target=\"_blank\">Despite federal push after BP oil spill, number of aging temporarily sealed wells grows<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Five years after the Obama administration promised to move swiftly to permanently plug unused oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico, even more shafts are lingering for longer periods with only temporary sealing, an Associated Press investigation shows. It is not clear how many incompletely sealed wells may have leaked \u2014 they generally&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[111,257,22],"tags":[848,1722,939,1890],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48540"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48540"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48543,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48540\/revisions\/48543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}