PENFIELD, Pa. — A blowout at a natural-gas well in a remote area shot explosive gas and polluted water as high as 75 feet into the air before crews were able to tame it more than half a day later, officials said Friday.
The gas never caught fire, and no injuries were reported, but state officials worried about an explosion before the well could be controlled. The well was brought under control just after noon Friday, about 16 hours after it started spewing gas and brine, said Elizabeth Ivers, a spokeswoman for driller EOG Resources Inc.
Pennsylvania, historically an insignificant source of natural gas, is trying to adapt its laws to respond to a furious rush to tap a gas-rich shale formation under its land. The blowout could test the ability of state regulators, who promised an aggressive investigation into the accident.
"The event at the well site could have been a catastrophic incident that endangered life and property," Department of Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger said in a statement. "This was not a minor accident but a serious incident that will be fully investigated by this agency with the appropriate and necessary actions taken quickly."
If the agency finds that mistakes were made, it will take steps to prevent similar errors, he said. It was too early to tell the extent of any environmental damage, he said.
Details about the accident were still sketchy, but the agency was told that unexpectedly high gas pressure in the new well prevented the crew from containing it, said Dan Spadoni, a spokesman for the Department of Environmental Protection.
EOG declined to explain how the accident happened, citing the ongoing investigation. Public safety and protection of the environment are of the utmost importance, the company said in a statement.
President Barack Obama and others have touted exploration of shale as a major new source of clean, homegrown energy. However, lawmakers who are battling for more stringent oversight of such drilling to protect clean drinking water quickly seized on the accident.
"Incidents like this blowout are a reminder that there are dangers and that precautions must be taken to protect the health and well-being of Pennsylvanians," U.S. Sen. Bob Casey said in a statement.
Casey has sponsored a bill to require the industry to comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act and force it to disclose the chemicals it uses in its hydraulic fracturing processes — in which millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals are blasted underground to shatter tightly compacted shale and release trapped natural gas.
David Rensink, the incoming president of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, said gas well blowouts are very rare and can be very dangerous to control, since a spark can set off an explosion.
Typically, a blowout preventer — a series of valves that sit atop a well — allows workers to control the pressure inside, he said.
Just such a device figured into the massive oil spill off the coast of Louisiana. The oil rig's blowout preventer was supposed to shut off the flow of oil in the event of a catastrophic failure but failed to do so.
The Pennsylvania well is on the grounds of a hunting club in a heavily forested section of Clearfield County, near Interstate 80 and about 90 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.
Houston-based EOG, formerly part of Enron Corp., was drilling into the Marcellus Shale reserve, a hotly pursued gas formation primarily under Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York and Ohio that some geologists believe could become the nation's most productive natural gas field.
There are more than 1,000 Marcellus Shale wells in Pennsylvania alone, some of them within view of homes, farmhouses and public roads.
There were no homes within a mile of the well, and polluted drilling water was prevented from reaching a waterway, said Spadoni, the department spokesman.
On Friday afternoon, a worker blocked a dirt road to the site, while trucks hauling tanks to remove the polluted water streamed past him. He said he was not allowed to talk about what had happened.
The accident happened just after the crew finished hydraulic fracturing. The crew was clearing out debris from the well when gas shot out of it, Spadoni said.
Workers evacuated the site and contacted county authorities before 10 p.m., said John Sobel, a Clearfield County commissioner. A Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman said the agency got word after midnight and within the hour notified the DEP. The DEP said it wasn't notified until 1:30 a.m., more than five hours after the blowout.
The polluted water flowing out of the well and into the woods was stopped by a trench and a pump installed by a contractor, Spadoni said. Companies that specialize in securing blown-out wells were called in, he said.
As a precaution, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a flight restriction Friday morning, saying no planes below 1,000 feet should go within three miles of the site. The restriction was lifted shortly after the well was capped.
Levy reported from Harrisburg, Pa. Associated Press writer Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg contributed to this report.
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