Gas well explosion in Pennsylvania

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

Well, this happened this morning about a fifteen minute drive from my place.


http://www.wtae.com/news/local/explosio ... y/24407710



1 injured, 1 missing at Greene County gas well fire

Half-mile perimeter formed around well in Dunkard Township

UPDATED 3:52 PM EST Feb 11, 2014

DUNKARD TOWNSHIP, Pa. —One worker was injured and another went missing after a natural gas well exploded and caught fire Tuesday in southwestern Pennsylvania, near the West Virginia border.

"We had a blowout on this well. We're just hoping and praying everyone is OK," said Todd Toland of Pacific Process Systems.

Chevron spokesman Trip Oliver said the fire was reported about 6:45 a.m. at the Lanco 7H well in Dunkard Township, near Bobtown, about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh. Oliver said one person was hospitalized for minor injuries and another was unaccounted for.

"Our officers have been there all morning doing interviews with everyone who did make it safely out of the site area but that person has not been located," Trooper Stefani Plume said Tuesday afternoon.

Department of Environmental Protection spokesman John Poister said the well was located in a rural area where there were no nearby homes or schools. He said a DEP team at the site found no signs of threats to public health, noting that the fire was burning off volatile organic compounds in the gas.

"I do know the well is out of control and they're trying to get crews here to get the well back under control," said Toland. "(There's) no immediate danger to the community. It's contained to that location. It's built in a location that's away from the community."

State police established a half-mile perimeter around the well.

"They knew, basically from the get-go, it wasn't going to be something they could extinguish," said Plume. "At that point, their training basically tells them to get out as safely as possible and set up a perimeter."

Plume said there's nothing being done to put out the fire at this point.

"What we're being told from investigators as Pennsylvania State Police is that site itself, that fire will not be contained and we will not have access to that property for at least a few days," she said.

Poister said Chevron had previously completed drilling and hydraulically fracturing, or fracking, the well and was in the final stages of using steel pipe to hook it up to a pipeline distribution network for production.

"We want to find out how this happened and why," Poister said, adding that the explosion was the first serious Marcellus Shale well blowout in western Pennsylvania.

The Marcellus Shale formation lies under large parts of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and other neighboring states; it's currently the country's most productive natural gas field.

Poister said well blowout experts from Wild Well Control in Houston arrived at the Pittsburgh airport around noon and headed to the site to work out a plan to extinguish the fire. The Texas company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It said on its website that Wild Well responds to more than 85 percent of blowouts in the U.S.



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