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I am not familiar with the environmental laws in India but in Canada you are often on the hook for closing down and cleaning up a site once it is abandoned (tha
by Permit 5y ago
I am not familiar with the environmental laws in India but in Canada you are often on the hook for closing down and cleaning up a site once it is abandoned (that is, you can't just walk away from it). My understanding is this can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I recently met someone who was leasing oil wells (edit: natural gas, not oil) that lacked sufficient pressure to pump gas into a pipeline. The wells still had enough pressure that you could use them as an immediate fuel source so they were hooking up a few cryptocurrency mining rigs to a generator there. Apparently the companies who own the wells like this because they don't immediately have to declare the wells abandoned and pay the cleanup fees.
- gruez 5y ago>so they were hooking up a few cryptocurrency mining rigs to a generator there The generators can run off crude oil directly?
- erik_seaberg 5y agoIt does burn so a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crude_oil_engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crude_oil_engine works okay, it’s just not as clean or efficient as an engine with tight temperature/pressure tolerances for very specific fractions of the fuel.
- Animats 5y agoProbably a natural gas well, not an oil well. Few oil wells generate oil under pressure. (Those "gusher" were found and drained decades ago, most of them more than a century ago. See "Spindletop")
- Permit 5y agoYou're right, I was mistaken in the original post. I should have said natural gas, not oil.
- hef19898 5y agoI saw the same with old chemical plants in Germany. Some companies preferred to keep an office active, just to keep the site open. Closing it would have meant clean up costs in 10s of millions.
- bredren 5y agoIn the US there is regulated process, soil testing and cleanup costs in decommissioning underground gasoline storage containers. Average cleanup is $130k. This does affect property values and can take a while. https://www.epa.gov/ust/frequent-questions-about-underground-storage-tanks#clean5 https://www.epa.gov/ust/frequent-questions-about-underground...
- cmeacham98 5y agoSeeing the responses to this, maybe governments should require people opening these types of places to put down a deposit for the cost of the cleanup in advance.
- adrianN 5y agoStep 1: Form an LLC Step 2: Buy the mine Step 3: Go bankrupt Maybe that would work?