A blowout at a Pennsylvania natural gas well late Tuesday could heighten concerns about the safety of a controversial process to extract gas from shale rock.
The accident comes at a sensitive time for energy drillers, exactly one year after an explosion that led to the massive BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and just as regulators mull whether to allow the technique in New York state.
The well in Bradford County, operated by Chesapeake Energy, spewed thousands of gallons of drilling fluid used in hydraulic fracturing, county emergency management officials said.
The process, also called fracking, releases natural gas from shale rock by blasting it with water, sand and chemicals.
Local residents were evacuated from Leroy Township, about 25 miles from the New York border, though Chesapeake said no one was hurt.
“An equipment failure occurred during well-completion activities, allowing the release of completion fluids,” Chesapeake said in a statement.
The fluid initially spilled into a nearby waterway but tests found no adverse affects on aquatic life as yet, said a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
Environmentalists and residents have complained that fracking can pollute water supplies. That has raised calls for increased regulation on the use of the process to produce natural gas, which is a cornerstone fuel of the Obama Administration’s energy policy.
Advances in drilling technology such as fracking have revolutionized U.S. energy markets, opening up the potential of vast reserves of natural gas in shale deposits. Surging production from these areas have pushed natural gas prices down, making it relatively cheap compared to oil.
Gas drilling in Pennsylvania, and in particular in the Marcellus Shale, has drawn the attention of major energy companies due to estimates that the region holds enough gas to meet total U.S. needs for a decade or more.
Chesapeake Energy stems flow from blown Pennsylvania gas well
Chesapeake Energy has stemmed the flow of leaking drilling fluids from a natural gas well that suffered a blow-out late on Tuesday in Pennsylvania and prompted the company to suspend a controversial gas production technique in the state.
Chesapeake, one of Pennsylvania’s biggest shale gas producers, used a mix of plastic, ground-up tires and heavy mud to plug the well — an operation that echoes BP’s “top kill” effort to seal its ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well last year.
“Late Thursday afternoon, efforts to seal the leak and regain control of well pressure were successful,” Chesapeake said in a statement on Thursday evening.
The company said it still did not know the cause of the blowout nearly two days after it occurred. It was planning to start an investigation into the accident, the statement said.
The blowout in northeastern Pennsylvania, which spilled toxic fluid into a local waterway, has stoked an already fierce debate in the United States over hydraulic fracturing, or fracking – a process to release gas trapped in shale formations by blasting a mix of water, sand and chemicals into the rock.
Proponents say extracting shale gas through fracking will slash U.S. reliance on foreign oil and cut carbon emissions. President Barack Obama has made natural gas the cornerstone of his energy policy, in part thanks to the huge reserves unlocked by the use of fracking. Shale gas now accounts for 23 percent of U.S. natural gas production, rising from a negligible amount in 2004.
But environmentalists and residents complain that fracking can pollute water supplies, raising calls for increased regulation on natural gas production.