Oil well abandonment is when a well is shut down and the equipment and materials are removed. This can be voluntary or involuntary.
There are a few different types of oil well abandonment, and each one has its own set of reasons why it might happen. For more information regarding the oil abandonment process, you can navigate to this site.
Pit Stop Abandonment: This is when a company stops drilling an oil well, usually because they've hit the target they were looking for and don't need to keep going down. They'll leave the well plugged and abandoned, with no way to get the oil out.
Drill Stops: When a drill bit comes up against something hard underground, the operator will stop drilling. This happens most often when a pipeline is intersected – the operator doesn't want to risk damaging the pipeline by continuing to drill into it.
Fractures: Oil wells are drilled through several thousand feet of solid rock, but sometimes that rock can become brittle over time. This can cause small fractures in the rock that allow groundwater to escape and pollute nearby soil and groundwater supplies.
Hopefully, the information provided in this article will help you to understand various types of oil well abandonment processes.