Orphan Wells as an Energy Storage Solution

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Alberta is full of abandoned and orphan wells; there are 97,000 wells that have not been closed and 71,000 not reclaimed, orphaned and left. When oil and gas wells are no longer productive, if the facility does not have any legal responsibility or is financially unable to pay for abandonment and reclamation costs, wellbores become orphaned and/or abandoned. Current regulatory regimes require projects to be reclaimed, both downhole and at the surface, with significant cost and liability to oil and gas producers. The federal government of Canada plans to spend $1.7 billion to clean up wellbores that have been orphaned and/or abandoned in Western Canada. This is part of their COVID-19 Economic Response Plan for the energy sector to create jobs and clean up the environment. This billion-dollar investment manage inactive wells in Canada is designed to reduce the amount of liabilities that come with the alarming number of inactive wells. In Alberta, these wells are under the jurisdiction of Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) who then delegates clean up responsibilities to the Alberta Orphan Wells Association (OWA) for the continuation of their work of successfully decommissioning wells. From 2002 to 2018, the OWA decommissioned approximately 2,200 orphan wells and reclaimed 800 others. Their work is still ongoing as more than half of Alberta's wells are no longer in production and have been abandoned and left uncleaned. Warner Business Park Ltd. (Warner) has presented a unique solution for Canada's oil and gas industry; to convert inactive wellbore liabilities into renewable energy storage systems through gravitational potential energy. This project will build and implement the first prototype for a downhole well using a training well on site at SAIT.