WorldWide Drilling Resource

33 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® JUNE 2013 way, we started pumping the mud, dirt, and oil from the hole. It soon became a crater. About 10 feet from the surface, we encountered a big rock covering the abandoned well. Preferring not to lose the rock down the hole, my dad told me to get the rope sling. He would let me down the hole with the rig hoist. When I had hold of the rock, I was to call to him and he would pull me and the rock up! Secondary wells have CO 2 (no oxy- gen)! If there’s no oxygen you can’t breathe, and therefore you can’t holler. After a fashion, Dad decided he had better pull me up anyway. I made it up okay...and with the rock! We ran drill stem to nearly 800 feet without encountering any more prob- lems. We cemented the well and back- filled the hole with soil. The farmer could work his land again. I lived to share a valuable lesson - never enter a confined space, or go down a well - nothing is worth risking a life. Porky Porky Cutter may be contacted via e-mail at admin@ worldwidedrillingresource.com Abandoned Oil Wells by Porky Cutter Guest contributor, Master Ground Water Certified, and a National Ground Water Assoc. “Green Jacket” All too often, we read about people dying from asphyxiation (lack of oxygen) in a confined space or well. At a young age, I plugged aban- doned oil wells in southeastern Kansas with my dad. Many of these wells had been abandoned due to low production. Oil companies often turned the leases over to the pumpers (lease manager/ pumper). When this limited production ceased to be profitable, all casing, tub- ing, and pump rods were removed from the wells and sold for scrap. Before reg- ulations were passed, these now aban- doned holes were filled by just dropping in fence posts or railroad ties, then cov- ered over with soil. Many times, a farmer’s plow would tangle with the abandoned power lines that had fallen - leaving only the wire exposed. Farmers were known to tie the end of the wire to a window weight and drop the wire and window weight into the abandoned hole. Oil companies discovered “second- ary recovery”. This was various methods of injecting CO 2 (carbon dioxide) into newly drilled holes, which forced more oil from the formations. This allowed an abandoned well to start producing oil again...thus secondary recovery. All abandoned leases could be brought back into production. Since all well records were lost, the abandoned wells had to be plugged and new wells drilled. Our company was con- tracted by the state of Kansas to clean out these shallow wells to 600-800 feet, and cement them from the bottom to just below plow depth. We plugged some 800 of these wells, and many of them took weeks due to the problems encoun- tered as previously stated. One personal experience in Kansas was when the state contracted us to plug a well which had been leaking oil onto a farmer’s field. The man had been farming this property for years with no problem, when all at once his tractor became stuck in a large oil-saturated spot due to secondary recovery. After getting the tractor out of the