Time to pile on. Today's big headline is that there are some 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells under the Gulf of Mexico. Oh the horror. These are the same 27,000 wells (assuming that the number is even close to true) that were there six months ago. They did not leak then and they do not leak now. Because of the current BP disaster, however, the big scare headline is out there to get everyone excited. Well here is a newsflash: the reason the wells are abandoned is because they no longer produce oil or gas. In other words, the oil and gas in the ground under the ocean is gone, or at least so far gone that absent the injection of pressurized fluids from the surface, no oil or gas comes out. Oh there may be a few wells that will cough up a barrel or two of oil per month (if there were leaking), but that is about it. A barrel of oil a month is nothing in the Gulf. Much more than that seeps naturally from the ground under the Gulf.
So the media is now pushing a new horror of wells without oil that may leak oil. don't they think before they write?
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