The Ontario government is investing more money into the effort to locate, plug, and secure old and inactive oil and gas wells across the province.
Minister of Natural Resources Mike Harris was in Essex Tuesday, where he announced the provincial government is investing an additional $7.8 million to bring this year’s investment to $10.8 million to help municipalities.
The investment this year includes $6 million for the Abandoned Works Program to safely plug more wells; $3 million for the Municipal Legacy Wells Transfer Payment Program, enabling municipalities to purchase specialized equipment, deliver critical training programs and enhance emergency response to keep communities safe; and $1.8 million for science and research to better understand and mitigate risks posed by oil and gas wells.
Harris says there are 27,000 old and inactive oil and gas wells across the province, the majority in southwestern Ontario, that they know about, but they’re also working to locate and map out the legacy oil and gas wells they don’t know about, many that could be 100 years old, deep in the ground, and on private property.
“From what we’ve seen over the last little while, the gas wells seem to be a little bit more of an emerging issue that we’re looking to take care of. I don’t want to scare anybody; there’s no imminent danger or anything along those lines,” he says. “It is something we are really trying to be proactive with. Obviously, we saw the situation a few years ago in Wheatley; it was very troubling times for that community.”
A gas explosion in downtown Wheatley in August 2021 injured 20 people, destroyed two buildings, and damaged several others.
A legacy well was later discovered at the site during an excavation in the search for the cause of the explosion.
Amherstburg Fire Chief Michael Mio and the Amherstburg Fire Department have played a key role in specialized regional symposiums with other municipal partners across the area to train emergency responders on how to plug legacy wells and safely handle underground gas emissions.
Mio says Amherstburg has 20 oil and gas wells with hundreds more across Essex County, and they’ve used previous funding to buy equipment to address the issue.
“We’ve tried to procure equipment that the municipality can use and leave on site and deal with that emergency. Air monitoring equipment: We have a robot that can take the monitors into an immediately dangerous to life or health environment where we don’t want to put a responder in to be injured,” he says.
Mio says getting information on where all the wells are is the hardest part in the mapping process, and there is a danger if they’re not identified.
“If we have infrastructure that’s built around them and then we identify that there’s a problem with that well, to be able to go and cap that well, we need the room. We want to make sure we’re planning out our areas properly to be able to manage those well, especially the ones we know about. As Mr. Harris said, even though we don’t know and they’re not a problem today, in the next 10 to 15 years, they could be,” he says.
Essex County has received more than $1.2 million over the past three years under the Municipal Legacy Wells Transfer Payment Program to purchase communication, decontamination, and gas detection equipment; conduct health, safety, and emergency management training for staff; develop public awareness and education materials; and update emergency response plans.