Drill distance from school said to be sufficient

Details

Published on Friday, 20 January 2012 12:41

Dale Denwalt
Daily Elk Citian

The company that is drilling a gas well near an Elk City elementary school has a safety plan in place.

However, despite training and prevention techniques, blowouts can happen. There were two incidences in the past year that highlight the dangers of a natural gas well.

A rig near Sweetwater caught fire and spewed burning gas for several days this month. In September, a rig near Watonga apparently exploded, causing a large, continuous column of fire. Homes within two miles of that incident were evacuated until the situation was brought under control.

Chesapeake Energy Corporation's Nomac 63 rig is about a football field away from Northeast Elementary, Elk City's school for first and second graders.

When the permit for the drilling project was approved by the city commission last year, they required Chesapeake to provide them with a written safety plan. That plan includes conditions for identifying and controlling a leak, emergency contact numbers and a notification checklist.

The plan also designates routes for police and fire responders to take to the well in case of emergency.

Elk City Superintendent Buddy Wood said that the school has safety procedures above and beyond what Chesapeake provided.

"I think that Chesapeake has adequate safeguards in place over there for that. And I believe they're trying their best to create as safe an area around that as they possibly can," said Wood.

RARE EVENT

A spokesman for the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the state agency that regulates oil and gas wells, said that a significant blowout like the one experienced at Sweetwater doesn't happen often.

"If you want to define it in terms of what happened to Chesapeake [in Sweetwater], where you've got a fire, that's pretty rare," said Matt Skinner. "In the 11 years I've been here, I can only think of four or five. Certainly fewer than 10."

The event hasn't always been rare, though, according to Glen Wanzer, who runs a blowout prevention training program at the University of Oklahoma.

"Way back in the '60s when they started to drill these wells, they were burning down on average of one drilling rig a month worldwide," said Wanzer. "That's how the training in blowout prevention essentially got started. It stemmed off of that. We found out that just because they were big gushers, that wasn't just some way to put a scale of success."

INDUSTRY CHANGES

OU's Blowout Prevention School opened its doors in 1974, just two years after the first school opened in Louisiana. Company men and tool-pushers attend the school every two years for certification, Wanzer said. In the past, they would only come "as needed."

"We've made great strides in training. There've been a lot of changes in the industry, of course," said Wanzer. "We try real hard here to stay up with those changes and make the modifications to our programs."

A blowout can happen in several ways. Wanzer said a drill can come upon "charged sand," or an area of earth where oil or gas from another drill has leaked to. The new drill operator will then hit that material at a shallower depth.

"Ususally it is just a chain of events. It starts out as something maybe we didn't recognize or we got caught off guard, or didn't go through our check system," said Wanzer. "Sometimes it's manmade and a lot of times it's not manmade. Every piece of pipe coming off the manufacturer is not checked to be absolutely perfect. And sometimes we can develop holes in pipe that we just couldn't see. There'd be no way we'd know."

INVESTIGATION

The cause of the Sweetwater rig blowout is under investigation, and the cause is unknown.

"Lots of time out in that area we used to hit air pockets but the difference between [the Sweetwater blowout] and an air pocket is that one was ignitable," said Wanzer.

Skinner, spokesman for the OCC, said there are rules to prevent blowouts.

"They're not perfect, but they do work," he said. "Even to a layman you can see that they've really made advances in training and the way they do things on a rig."

AFTER-EFFECTS

Aside from the immediate impact of fire and explosion, the danger of a gas or oil well incident can have long-term effects. That's where the OCC comes in. They investigate whether there are any environmental impacts from drilling. 

OCC is still investigating the Sweetwater blowout, and Skinner declined to comment on what caused the fire and escaping gas.

"We had people on the site from the time of the blowout assessing any possible environmental damage," said Skinner. "There is no indication at this time that there was any environmental damage."