It’s a good bit of infrastructure to capture, compress, transport, and sell methane on the market. Since these are “non-producing” wells, I would assume that the leakage is (relatively) low and maybe not be worth the cost of all the setup and maintenance.

Looks like the cover to Supermassive Black Hole

The page seems down. Could someone forward the study to me

Seems to work for me, but here’s the direct link for the study https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.4c05602

A more correct title would be “7 to 8 times more than originally reported”

Turns out that all the site for McGill don’t want me to enter

Just put a methane generator on them and sell the power onto the grid. Its what many landdfills do with their methane.

Lots of industries just flare it when the winds are blowing the right way, ie: downwind of any Environment Canada sensors.

Who is going to prison over that?

If only those companies were wealthy enough to do something about it. I guess our only choice is let the tazpayer handle it.

Flaring is much better than just letting the methane escape so it would be a better solution than doing nothing and would be a great stepping stone to a more permanent option. Flaring would be much cheaper than a methane generator or capture device.

Garbage dumps are close to the grid and the users.

Many of the worst offenders are very old wells, as much as a century old. Their original owners are long gone which is how governments ended up being burdened with capping them.

Like many old toxic mines, the creators of the problems have evaded legal liability by going out of business. Legal frameworks may be more rigorous now but the old wells and mines remain.

Some of the oldest wells, like the ones near Petrolia in SW Ontario, might be economically viable for methane power generation. Others in Saskatchewan and Alberta are likely not.