Oklahoma-based Rebellion Energy Solutions has said its plugging project for orphan oil and gas wells has become the first of its kind to be listed by the American Carbon Registry (ACR).
Its methane abatement and land restoration project has been recognized by the ACR for generating “durable, verifiable carbon-offset credits under ACR’s recently finalized methodology”, the company said in a press release.
Rebellion’s Heartland methane abatement and land restoration project “immediately and permanently abates” approximately 74,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the plugging of methane-emitting orphan wells in a historic Oklahoma oilfield, the company said. According to the USA Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas equivalencies calculator, the value is equivalent to roughly 8.3 million gallons of gasoline consumed.
Rebellion’s business model for methane abatement and land restoration projects provides a “sustainable platform for project funding through sales of durable, verifiable carbon-offset credits generated under the ACR framework”, the company further said.
“Rebellion’s Heartland Methane Abatement and Land Restoration Project was ideally positioned to become the first-of-its-kind methane-abatement project listed by the American Carbon Registry,” Rebellion CEO Staci Taruscio said. “We developed and completed operations of this project with the American Carbon Registry framework in mind – having participated in its development and observed the public comment and scientific peer review stages over the last two years.”
“We are passionate about creating structures that are inclusive of the oil-and-gas industry while driving discipline and responsibility. By employing both the economic incentive of carbon markets and oil-and-gas expertise, the ACR framework will lead to the permanent clean-up of legacy wells that otherwise would not be addressed”, Taruscio added.
Rebellion said that the wells plugged into its project were over 40 years old and had been unattended for more than a decade. The company assumed ownership of the wells and privately funded the project to plug the wells.
Carbon credits are certificates that represent the reduction, avoidance, or removal of one ton of carbon by a specific activity. They can “help get wells plugged and permanently halt decades of methane emissions, providing an incentive to target the worst offenders”, Rebellion said.
Rebellion’s Heartland project also involves regenerative agriculture practices by creating customized ecological hotspots designed to return the sites to tall-grass prairie habitats, according to the release.
“Rebellion has set the gold standard in orphan-well plugging and land remediation by building verified co-benefits to landowners and the community,” Rebellion COO Eric Perner said. “By design, we are restoring productive, grazeable lands and drought-resilient native wildlife habitat – with optimal nature-based carbon storage and drawdown. And we are underscoring our commitment to sustainable co-benefits by utilizing a third-party land-management-impact program to track success.”
Carbon Markets
According to its website, the ACR was founded in 1996 as the first private voluntary greenhouse gas registry in the world.
In May, the ACR published what it said is the world’s first methodology to leverage carbon market finance to plug orphaned oil and gas wells in the USA and Canada.
The USA Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates methane emissions from abandoned wells, of which orphaned wells are a subset, to be up to 20 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent annually, according to a separate news release.
Proper plugging and remediation of oil and gas wells in the USA and Canada “is now an extremely large financial burden for local and federal governments, and there are significant backlogs because of lack of resources, equipment, and experienced personnel,” the ACR said. While roughly $4.7 billion in funding was made available through the REGROW Act (part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act), a Columbia University report cited by ACR estimated that the cost of plugging a mere 500,000 wells could reach $24 billion.
“While not a silver bullet, carbon finance can provide an innovative contribution by offering an additional source of funding. It will prioritize plugging the wells that are emitting the highest levels of methane, promoting a long-term solution with results that are measured, monitored, and verified over the course of decades”, ACR Director of Industrial Solutions Maris Densmore said in an earlier statement.
To contact the author, email rteodoro.editor@outlook.com
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