Crews continue to assess well fire in Dunkard
DUNKARD TWP. — A worker missing from a natural gas well fire site in Greene County has been identified by a Texas company as one of its employees.
The worker’s name has not been released to the media. Cameron International is based in Houston and is a flow specialist company for gas wells.
“We don’t have any information about what caused the incident, but we are working with Chevron, state and local officials to locate our employee,” said Cameron International spokeswoman Sharon Sloan.
The Cameron International worker was one of 19 people working at the site at the time of the blast.
Natural gas well fire-suppression experts continued to assess the uncontrolled fire on Wednesday as the blaze held emergency officials at bay from accessing the well pad.
Lee Ann Wainwright, a spokeswoman for Chevron, who leases the gas well on Water Tank Road, said the fire began at 6:45 a.m. Tuesday when an explosion rocked the Lanco 7H Marcellus shale well pad and resulted in a fire that continued through the night and into Wednesday.
The gas well is one of three situated at the site, and Wainwright said the well was “in the final stages of preparation before being placed into production” when the blast occurred.
In a press release to the media Wednesday afternoon, Wainwright said that representatives from Chevron and Wild Well Control, gas well fire experts based in Texas with an office in Canonsburg, are working to develop a containment plan for the blaze, which will focus on cutting off the supply of natural gas.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with this family and with all of our employees, contractors and emergency responders,” Wainwright stated in the press release.
Wainwright said that no drilling or hydraulic fracturing was occurring at the time of the blast Tuesday and that, at the time of the incident, crews were preparing to run a line of tubing at the site. She said such actions are routine in well preparations.
Officials for one of the crews working at the site, Pacific Processing Systems of Houston, Texas, said all their employees were able to escape the blast and fire unharmed. One person for another company that was working at the location suffered minor injuries, according to state police Trooper Stefani Plume. That worker’s identity also has not been released.
The cause of the blast remains unknown.
Wainwright said that in addition to developing a strategy to combat the fire, crews are also monitoring two adjacent wells at the site and have started to monitor the air and water for possible problems as a result of the blaze. She said that she cannot offer an estimate on how long the fire might continue to burn.
Wainwright thanked state police and local volunteer fire departments for their assistance at the scene and said that the company has reduced their local operations to divert all necessary personnel and resources to the scene.
“Chevron would like to express our sincere regret to those who may be affected by the incident. We’re working to contain the fire and ensure the safety of our employees, contractors and the surrounding community,” Wainwright stated in the release.
Plume said that investigators are still waiting for the “all-clear” from Chevron officials so they can get to the well site and conduct their investigation and look for the missing worker.
Plume said that no one has been evacuated as a result of the blaze and that a quarter-mile working perimeter has been established around the fire.
The Lanco 7H well was permitted to Chevron in January 2012 and drilled two months later, according to Greene County statistics.
According to the website fracktrack.org, Chevron maintains 22 of the 46 Marcellus shale gas wells in Dunkard Township.
Marcellus shale is a rock formation that underlies about two-thirds of the state, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. The rock formation holds trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. Extracting natural gas from Marcellus shale requires both vertical and horizontal drilling, combined with a process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The Lanco 7H well is a horizontal gas well, according to permitting records.
Jon Poister, spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said that the fire may burn for days and that it will take time for multiple investigations to determine its cause.
“I have directed DEP to work with key authorities to find out exactly what happened and how we can learn from it,” Gov. Tom Corbett said Wednesday in a statement regarding the blaze.
In the wake of the fire, Marcellus Outreach Butler issued a press release calling for gas well sites and drilling to be kept at least one mile away from schools, noting that firefighters and first-responders could not reach the blaze because of its intensity. However, a well site exists only about 300 yards from Summit Elementary School in Butler County.
The group cited other fires and blasts associated with the natural gas reservoir, including a gas well explosion and fire on Feb. 23, 2010, that injured three workers in Avella, Washington County, and several fires and explosions in West Virginia, causing alarm to local residents.
“If an explosion similar to the one in Greene County happened next to a school, the consequences could be devastating,” said Iris Bloom, executive director of Protecting Our Waters, a group that partners with the Butler outreach.
State Sen. Tim Solobay, D-Canonsburg, on Wednesday thanked those who responded to the well site.
“I am grateful to the volunteers and professionals who have responded to the well fire in Greene County this week, and I’m proud that the many hours of training and preparing were spent well,” he said.
He added, “Local firefighters have volunteered a tremendous amount of time to prepare for events such as this, and I have every confidence that they reacted precisely as trained. As a firefighter myself, I’m impressed by their level-headed response and their text-book approach.”
Solobay said residents with questions about the incident can visit Chevron’s Joint Information Center, located at the Bobtown Polish Club, State Route 2201 and Duff Street, Bobtown.
Staff writer Miles Layton and the Associated Press contributed to this report.