Economy-Resources Extraction Sector

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There’s a Reason Oil Well Sales Are Collapsing In California: Cleanup Costs

by Aaron Cantu 11/20/2024 Capital & Main

For years, large drillers in California sold unprofitable wells to smaller companies willing to wring the last drops of oil out of them. The process essentially kicked the cost of cleaning up oil fields — pumping concrete down well bores, removing tanks and pipelines — to operators with less ability to pay for the eventual cleanup.
Policymakers and advocates predicted that taxpayers — not the oil companies themselves would ultimately have to pay billions for remediation once those oil and gas operations run dry. Unplugged wells emit climate-warming methane and pose long-term hazards to soil and groundwater.

An Indigenous reservation has a novel way to grow food – below the earth’s surface

by Hallie Golden 3/12/22 The Guardian

Near the southern border of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, a curved translucent roof peeks out a few feet above the dusty plains. It’s a blustery November afternoon and the last remaining greens outside are fading fast. But below ground, at the bottom of a short flight of stairs, the inside of this 80ft-long sleek structure is bursting with life – pallets of vivid microgreens, potato plants growing from hay bales and planters full of thick heads of Swiss chard and pak choi. Two people bend over the pallets, using scissors to harvest delicate sprouts of microgreens.

Scientists Create a Material That Makes Salty Water Safe to Drink in Minutes

DAVID NIELD15 AUGUST 2020 [1]

Now, a new innovation developed by scientists in Australia could be the most promising one yet, with researchers using metal-organic framework compounds (or MOFs) together with sunlight to purify water in just half an hour, using a process that's more efficient than existing techniques.

It's cheap, it's stable, it's reusable, and it produces water that meets the World Health Organisation (WHO) standards for desalination. Around 139.5 litres (nearly 37 gallons) of clean water can be produced per day from a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of MOF material, based on early testing.