https://reasonstobecheerful.world/well-done-plugging-oil-wells/
"Curtis Shuck was inspecting wheat crops with farmers in rural Northern Montana
in 2019 when he followed a rotten-egg stench and spotted corroded metal
surrounding a borehole. The discovery he stumbled upon would change his life,
and eventually the trajectory of carbon emissions in the US: He came across an
abandoned oil well that spewed pollution, including methane, into the air and
surrounding fields. Once he realized what he was looking at, he identified
other wells across the surrounding landscape, left behind in the 1990s after
the Gulf War tanked crude prices.
“I couldn’t believe what I saw,” Shuck says with his heavy Texan drawl. “I was
just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or I was at the right place,
depending on how you want to look at it.”
The pollution left such a deep impression on the former oil and gas executive
that he immediately wanted to take action. His plan: to plug as many oil wells
as possible. Before the day was over, he had come up with a name for a
nonprofit, Well Done, and registered the domain name TheWellDoneFoundation.org
from his truck.
What started out as the epiphany of one hard-charging man has since led to the
capping of 45 wells in 14 states. “We just capped our 45th well in Akron,
Ohio,” Shuck says by phone from the departures hall at the airport in Portland,
Oregon, on his mission of crisscrossing the country to find the most urgent
wells. “Through that, we have saved over one million tons of CO2e. That’s
what’s so exciting about our work. It’s literally gas on, gas off. The benefit
is immediate.”
This is the story of one man making a sizable difference, but also of the toxic
legacy the oil and gas boom has left all over the US. Curtis Shuck is
mitigating global warming one well at a time."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
