Oh Look, It Gets Even Worse In The Gulf

So, apparently the AP's been checking around with all those other wells out in the Gulf of Mexico, and it turns out...well...nobody seems to know exactly what's going on with any of them.

More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one — not industry, not government — is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The oldest of these wells were abandoned in the late 1940s, raising the prospect that many deteriorating sealing jobs are already failing.

The AP investigation uncovered particular concern with 3,500 of the neglected wells — those characterized in federal government records as "temporarily abandoned."

Regulations for temporarily abandoned wells require oil companies to present plans to reuse or permanently plug such wells within a year, but the AP found that the rule is routinely circumvented, and that more than 1,000 wells have lingered in that unfinished condition for more than a decade. About three-quarters of temporarily abandoned wells have been left in that status for more than a year, and many since the 1950s and 1960s — eveb though sealing procedures for temporary abandonment are not as stringent as those for permanent closures.

As a forceful reminder of the potential harm, the well beneath BP's Deepwater Horizon rig was being sealed with cement for temporary abandonment when it blew April 20, leading to one of the worst environmental disasters in the nation's history. BP alone has abandoned about 600 wells in the Gulf, according to government data.

So, if I'm reading this right, there are hundreds, potentially thousands more Deepwater Horizon time bombs down there, and we have no clue what the status on them is.  None.  Zilch.  Bupkus.  And nobody's watching them to check.

And this has been going on for years, a graveyard of old, leaky cement plugged old wells.  Yes, these wells aren't filled with millions of gallons of oil anymore, but that doesn't mean they're safe, either.  The ones being slated for temporary abandonment that still DO contain oil...like Deepwater Horizon...are still out there and primed like land mines.

Great.  I needed some good news today.