First CO2 Well in Gaylord, Michigan; How Safe is It?
Back in February before the flu bug got me I read an article in the Detroit Free Press called “Beneath state: A warming solution, Friday, February 22, 2008, Section A, by Tina Lam, about Michigan being the first state to inject CO2 into the earth somewhere around Gaylord. The article said Michigan’s bedrock is perfect for storing the CO2 between layers of the rock. It also said 3 times that it is experimental.
The well head is about 8 feet high with all type of sensors and an underground pipe that sends the CO2 from DTE’s Turtle Creak natural gas plant to the well. The article said CO2 is a by-product of natural gas extracted from underground. The injection process will stop by the end of this month (March). The well will hold 10,000 tons of CO2. There are many of these wells that were already used for oil and gas, some 55,000 of them in Michigan! Who knew? And there’s a push to drill for more oil in the lakes? It looks like someone has been busy at it all along. How many wells are there like this in the country? Add over 500,000 abandoned mines too and it truly is a “Swiss Cheese Nation” as I called it before. The term “rape and pillage” comes to mind. Some of these wells are a mile deep. Ouch.
The gas is well below 3,000 feet of any layer from which drinking water comes and spokesman John Austerberry said the CO2 is harmless, that “even if it somehow escaped, it wouldn’t harm anyone.”
Anybody remember a blog I did with the title: “CO2 Buildup Causes Lake to Explode?” Might want to read that again. http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?p=226. It’s the first thing I thought about.
American and European opinion differed greatly on that explosion in Africa’s Lake Nios in Cameroon. It happened in 1986. The lake exploded from 1.6 million tons of CO2 gas being released that had settled on the bottom. Over 1700 people were asphyxiated up to 16 miles away along with all their livestock, some 3000 head of cattle. I’m thinking about the “experimental” word again and lucky us.