Official (Alberta) Oil Discussion Thread

[The Fonz]

Random question, but maybe someone in here is familiar. How long can a gas company go without paying their well lease to a land owner, before the land owner can legally deny that gas company site/well access?

[Geraldsh]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

No.
There is a lot of confusion here about orphaned, vs inactive, vs abandoned well.

Inactive wells are just wells that aren't flowing. They still belong to and are the responsibility of the owner.

Abandoned wells, are wells that have been properly sealed up and capped. Abandoned wells don't require much, if any further work or action. The next step would be reclamation of the surface site, which is usually not expensive.

Orphan wells are wells that need to be abandoned, but the owner is no longer in business. This is what the orphaned well fund is for.

So no, even if there is no hope of wells ever being reactivated, they do not go onto the "Abandoned" pile, and I'm sure what you really meant was "Orphaned", and I assume you also meant are taxpayers on the hook for the costs to abandon them. No, whoever the owner is would be required to abandon them, provided they still exist.

Hope that helps.

I stand corrected. Thank you for clarifying the difference in word usage.

[HockeyIlliterate]

Originally Posted by The Fonz

Random question, but maybe someone in here is familiar. How long can a gas company go without paying their well lease to a land owner, before the land owner can legally deny that gas company site/well access?

Depends on what the underlying oil and gas lease would provide or state in respect of the matter, would it not?

If you are asking an Alberta-specific question, then I don't have the answer for you.

But in some jurisdictions, notably in the US, failure to pay royalties is not a grounds for lease termination, only for breach of contract and a suit for damages for the unpaid royalties, but the underlying oil and gas lease can provide otherwise.

That said, if the lease is no longer producing in paying quantities (which is a legal term of art), then the lease terminates and the land owner would typically be allowed to deny access to the oil company, except in order for the company to conduct abandonment and remediation operations in connection with the well.

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

I was just hoping for more info.

For instance is there a la our limitation on what it takes to shut down these well sites?

Say I'm the Acme Oil and Gas company and I operate Wells in Canada and all of a sudden I'm looking at the situation and thinking 'i need to shutter 100 well sites', I'm probably not the only company having to do that. Am I figuring right that sealing off or otherwise pausing an operation is a different man power concern outside of the usual steam chief , electrical engineer etc operating crew? Is it possible to physically shutter these well sites if this lingers for a long time or even gets worse?

Is there a situation where the need to limit or stop production reaches some urgency?

I'm trying to understand how it works operationally.

If your question is where will these Operators get the people to actually shut the wells off, the answer is they don't require additional workers for the most part. The wells are either operated remotely as mentioned so it's the click of a mouse, or they all have well operators who are people who visit the sites daily and they would do it. But either way those people are already on staff/contract.

[Husky]

Originally Posted by The Fonz

Random question, but maybe someone in here is familiar. How long can a gas company go without paying their well lease to a land owner, before the land owner can legally deny that gas company site/well access?

Surface owners can apply to surface rights board and be paid by them. Any surface owner who denies access (for non psyment) is a bad idea because now you are on the hook for any liabilities that may occur as operator cannot get to well.

[Fuzz]

Some really interesting stuff going on in the geothermal world...might be a good use of our idle oil equipment. 3 examples atthe article.


https://energynow.ca/2020/04/how-the...r-david-yager/


I've read about the Eavor loop before. Pretty cool they were able to connect the well bores below ground, and have it circulating without pumps.

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I've read about the Eavor loop before. Pretty cool they were able to connect the well bores below ground, and have it circulating without pumps.

That sounds really cool! Any idea how costs play out for that? Or is it way too early to say?

[Bownesian]

I'm not very excited by the Deep Earth model - drilling new wells in an ideal location temperature-wise (deepest part of the Williston basin). It takes a ton of power generation to make up for that initial drilling expense and risk. Their one positive is that they are in a part of Saskatchewan that would lend itself to well to greenhouses which could use the waste heat.

I'm more excited by the idea of using old fields and flooding water from one horizontal wellbore to another to get fluid return because infrastructure is already in place. There are lots of deep gas wells in NE-BC that are very hot.

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by Bownesian

I'm not very excited by the Deep Earth model - drilling new wells in an ideal location temperature-wise (deepest part of the Williston basin). It takes a ton of power generation to make up for that initial drilling expense and risk. Their one positive is that they are in a part of Saskatchewan that would lend itself to well to greenhouses which could use the waste heat.

I'm more excited by the idea of using old fields and flooding water from one horizontal wellbore to another to get fluid return because infrastructure is already in place. There are lots of deep gas wells in NE-BC that are very hot.

The shale wells with basically no permeability?

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Weitz

The shale wells with basically no permeability?

There's got to be a few where someone screwed up the fracs and connected adjacent wells with frac permeability.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

That sounds really cool! Any idea how costs play out for that? Or is it way too early to say?

Ya, sorry, no idea on that.

[Bownesian]

Originally Posted by Weitz

The shale wells with basically no permeability?

Thinking more the old deep paleozoic foothills gas wells - Sukunka, Bullmoose, Brazion, etc. Fracture + matrix perm.

[PostandIn]

Irving Oil seeks permission to move oil by foreign tanker to their St. John refinery. I mean, what's more Canadian than this?

https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/irving-a...john-1.4914417

[CaptainCrunch]

So fracking stupid that we got to this point.



Thanks Quebec.

[CaptainCrunch]

https://globalnews.ca/news/6888324/c...medium=Twitter

The Petroleum Services Association of Canada has revised its 2020 Canadian drilling forecast to an almost 50-year record low of 3,100 oil and gas wells, a level not seen since 2,900 wells were drilled in 1972.


PSAC interim CEO Elizabeth Aquin says more than $7 billion of capital investment in the energy sector has been cancelled to date this year thanks to demand destruction from measures to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and a supply surplus due to an oil price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia.

She said blockades of the Coastal GasLink Pipeline and cancellation of the Frontier oilsands project have also hurt investor confidence in the Canadian oil and gas industry.

PSAC chairman Mark O’Byrne says the industry appreciates government assistance such as $1.7 billion in federal funding to clean up orphan and inactive wells in Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia, but will need more help to ensure survival.
The new forecast represents a decrease of 1,400 wells, or 31 per cent, from PSAC’s original forecast of 4,500 wells announced in October.

[CaptainCrunch]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...ium%3Dsharebar

CN Rail has filed a lawsuit against protesters who allegedly blocked dozens of its trains in northern B.C. in February in support of the Wet'suwet'en First Nation.
In a claim filed in B.C. Supreme Court this week, the railway said a two-day protest action in New Hazelton affected nearly 5,000 freight cars, stranding the Port of Prince Rupert and backing up rail traffic as far east as Winnipeg.

Probably won't go anywhere, but the RCMP and the government did a lousy job of it, so maybe going after the protesters monetarily is the way to go.


Hopefully this sets a precedence so that when we get the inevitable protests against Trans-X, we can sue them into oblivion.

[Mr.Coffee]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...ium%3Dsharebar





Probably won't go anywhere, but the RCMP and the government did a lousy job of it, so maybe going after the protesters monetarily is the way to go.


Hopefully this sets a precedence so that when we get the inevitable protests against Trans-X, we can sue them into oblivion.

this is fantastic and I wondered why it didn't happen earlier. Damages would be easily calculated, and I think they will win this easily with the award reduced due to the nature of the defendants. I hope this gives people pause for the future frivolous protesting that will be inevitable here.

Protesting Gaslink was the stupidest thing possibly in modern history. Not just Canadian history, modern history. I struggle to think of stupider things. It's like listening to a Trump speech, thinking about this.

Literally the whole world is multitudes worse off- listening and trying to accommodate these protesters. If these protesters could somehow be wrangled up, put on a plane to space forever- the world would be better off.

When a natural gas pipeline leaks, what happens? Nothing. That is exactly what happens.

[Mazrim]

You know 2020 has been strange when it feels like the protests were a year ago already.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Mazrim

You know 2020 has been strange when it feels like the protests were a year ago already.

Anything before Hanks/NBA is from a different time period.

[Regorium]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

this is fantastic and I wondered why it didn't happen earlier. Damages would be easily calculated, and I think they will win this easily with the award reduced due to the nature of the defendants. I hope this gives people pause for the future frivolous protesting that will be inevitable here.

Protesting Gaslink was the stupidest thing possibly in modern history. Not just Canadian history, modern history. I struggle to think of stupider things. It's like listening to a Trump speech, thinking about this.

Literally the whole world is multitudes worse off- listening and trying to accommodate these protesters. If these protesters could somehow be wrangled up, put on a plane to space forever- the world would be better off.

When a natural gas pipeline leaks, what happens? Nothing. That is exactly what happens.

Speaking of CGL and protests..

Elected chiefs of a First Nation that’s split over a natural gas pipeline through their territory say they will not sign a deal on rights and title, a day after the hereditary chiefs backed the agreement.

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