Chevron Natural gas well fire in Pa.

Huge Marcellus well fire here in Greene Cty, Pa. All we have heard for the last couple of years has been the sales pitch about how safe the wells and the drilling is. They say now it may be mths. before they contain this one. More BS from big business.

That will give them a reason to raise the price of NG to the homeowners. Hal

I am not a fan of big business but I am a big fan of producing our own energy. You can't have it both ways: Using things that require energy and not producing any of it in the US.

We just had a big barn/shed fire yesterday here. So I guess I should raise cane about all the sheds/barns there are in the country??????

So I would not be throwing the BS around.

(quoted from post at 06:12:44 02/12/14) I am not a fan of big business but I am a big fan of producing our own energy. You can't have it both ways: Using things that require energy and not producing any of it in the US.

We just had a big barn/shed fire yesterday here. So I guess I should raise cane about all the sheds/barns there are in the country??????

So I would not be throwing the BS around.

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Who's raising Cane? Bad Morning?

JD,
I'm 200% in agreement with you!!! Not many people eat cake without frosting.
Loren, the Acg.

I may have a WARPED mind but , I personally think the government stages these things to happen, just so they will have another excuse to raise the prices. Seems like we the (country) are just having too many of these things happen to often(my opinion).Like you already mentioned about ALL the SAFETY procedures that they have in place its just seems odd to me. When I was a kid , I just don't EVER remember this much drastic crap happening and back thin, we had almost NO safety crap in place. I do know we the working people had more pride in what we did back thin and we the people had common since. Sorry ! Just my morning rant !!

I would find it very unlikely that the government would be able to "stage" these catastrophes. Why? Because TOO MANY PEOPLE would be involved to keep it from leaking out that it was staged.
Also, when we were kids, there may not have been as much "drastic crap" happening, but at the same time, our population was much smaller. Communication was much slower. If some goofball in Colorado walked into a shopping center and shot somebody, it did NOT make national news within the hour. It might have got a 2-line note on page 33 of the daily paper, and that was it. Nowadays, when a school kid gets a pimple in Ohio, it becomes a national news item.
We are overloaded with an excess of information. Ultimately, it becomes a bit like the little boy that cried "WOLF" and we start to become bored with the sensationalism. So, bigger and better catastrophes come along to keep the public interested. {{{yawn}}}

Safety third. The term "Safety first" itself helps foster complacency. We have so many rules and regulations that people are lulled into believing that what they are doing is safe, when ultimately, responsibility for our own safety falls upon each individual, and not someone sitting in the office, or some bureaucrat 1000 miles away.

Agreed, JD.

Dean

One well fire is nothing compared to the need to get as much carbon out of the ground as fast as we can get it. We live and work in a carbon-based economy whether people like it or not, and we need to cut foreign dependency on carbon. Don't let the pro-government people sell you a bill of goods that they can replace carbon with wind or solar - none of us could afford to live in that world.

First i have heard about it , but oh Well. And here we do not know the facts. when i worked in the PATCH around here back in the mid seventy's on the Clinton push there was just about a drilling rig on every corner . and we had several well fires . I was working up north of where i live on another location when a rig just starting a new well drilled down into a barea formation gas pocket and had a blow out and before the rig hands could get all the engines shut down one got a wiff of gas and ran away and blew which started a hug fire . Fire dept. from all over came and the need for water was great all water trucks they could get there hand on were needed and with that they needed dozers to get the trucks back in as far as they could so that meant dozers lots of dozer . I was amoung the first to get called as i was about a mile away . I spent over two days in the seat before someone could come and relieve me . It took a couple weeks before they could get that one out . The rig was a puddle of twisted melted iron . It was the driller fault as he should have been using MUD and not air to drill up there . I worked with and old geologist back then on some of the exploration wells and i was the one that did the first two well sites around here in my county . Old Sam told me back in 77 at the first site thqat we could drill down as he called it to the basement and hit one of the largest finds of gas and oil ever wright under our feet but it was deep way down past where the rigs that we were using could reach. On that hole i spent a lot of time there way more then any other hole . that test hole was the deepest of any drilled at the time and the driller pushed the rig way past what it was designed for to TD the hole that hole was 8750 ft. deep. Old Sam and i sat in the logging truck while they logged the hole and he was showing me where all the gas was located . He also told me that had they been able to drill deeper that there was a lot more down there . when they started pulling the drill stem out of the hole before they logged that hole that well kicked off on it's own as they were pulling the stem on the last two joints and shot drilling fluid up over top of the tower . Now had that happened while they were drilling with all the engines running and not just the V16 Detroit and any of those engines got a wiff of gas it could have gotten vary interesting when it kicked off. When it happened all you saw were arres holes qand elbows running around the trucks that were there got shut off my dozer shut off and that v16 got shut down and i was running as fast and hard as i could . when they got the valve closed and everything under control Old Sam went down and put a gauge on the well head and took a pressure reading and that well had almost 9000 lbs pressure on it . I have seen wells with 1200-5000 but never one this high before. It was vary scarey when it kicked off it sounded like you were next to a 747 at full throttle . They try and do everything as safe as they can but like everything else stuff happens .

I've seen no evidence of government "staging" events such as this but "environmentalists" have been found doing such things on numerous occasions.

Dean

(quoted from post at 09:44:08 02/12/14) I may have a WARPED mind but , I personally think the government stages these things to happen, just so they will have another excuse to raise the prices. Seems like we the (country) are just having too many of these things happen to often(my opinion).Like you already mentioned about ALL the SAFETY procedures that they have in place its just seems odd to me. When I was a kid , I just don't EVER remember this much drastic crap happening and back thin, we had almost NO safety crap in place. I do know we the working people had more pride in what we did back thin and we the people had common since. Sorry ! Just my morning rant !!

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The government? I thought private businesses drilled the wells?

But true not much difference between the government and big business.
We have the best government that money can buy.

Whoever told you it would be months before they put that fire out is full of crapola, remember when it was supposed to take 20 years to put out the Kuwait fires after Saddam Husseins Royal guards touched off about half the wells in that country? They probably have it out now or will very soon.

There will ALWAYS be incidents, regardless of how much safety we implement. The safety programs reduce the number of incidents.

I really do not think government is creating the incidents. I work with safety and environmental regulations every day, and mostly they are there for the better good.

(quoted from post at 11:05:27 02/12/14) There will ALWAYS be incidents, regardless of how much safety we implement. The safety programs reduce the number of incidents.

I really do not think government is creating the incidents. I work with safety and environmental regulations every day, and mostly they are there for the better good.

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Many people seem to be against environmental regulations unless The problem is impacting them directly.
NO! you can't open a hog farm behind my house!
NO refinery in my back yard.
etc...

There needs to be a compromise, I agree with you on that, there also needs to be odor control on hog operations. I do it all the time for industrial facilities.

Buddy, You don't remember when 2000 men died every year in the mines..vs..50 today?

You don't remember when the river in Cleveland caught on fire due to the pollution?

You don't remember all the toxic PCB's dumped in the Hudson River?

You don't remember why we still can not eat some of the fish caught in the great lakes?

You don't remember when the sewage from the houses in the little town where I grew up ran straight into the river where we swam and fished?

You don't remember when the street lights were on at noon in Pittsburgh because of the pollution making it hard to see across the street?

You don't remember hundreds of young women were killed in a Triangle garment factory fire in NYC?

No, it is so easy to forget how we got here. I don't think many of us would like to go back to those good old days....but you could go visit/live in China or India...they are still caught in the good old days.

Few years back, we had a gas well incident near here. Well failed that they were servicing. Had to bring in another rig and drill another hole at an angle to intercept first... Then pump it full of mud. We didn"t need a night light for several months. They just let well flare until it could be plugged off. Worst is they lost a drilling rig, and a radioactive source. Never recovered. There"s a monument there recording the incident now, with infro on the lost source.

See where a ball bearing factory had an explosion in Peterborough, N.H. Monday afternoon. Heard they will be several years trying to clean this up, too. Every time workers walk through the door with a broom they keep slipping and falling down on top of each other.

Jed, it is called an Accident, unfortunately they
happen every day, even when we do everything we
can to prevent them. This happened when they were
connecting the well to the production lines, all
other drilling and completion was done long ago.
No one knows exactly what happened yet, somehow an
ignition source got to the gas, that much is
known, however it could have been something as
simple as a static spark that touched it off. No
matter where it is, Natural Gas is a very
explosive item, always treat it with respect.

Get back on the meds buddy.

I work for a pipeline company (that's why I haven't been on here for a long time) and have worked on several well pads in PA ( around Towonda) and also in Ohio (near Cadiz) . I am suprised that this happen when connecting to the production line. Usually the greatest danger is during the drilling and fracing process. This is just a guess but almost sounds like a leaky valve or something and the gas was not detected (of course nat gas does not have a odor at this point so you can't smell it). Like someone said "safety first unless it gets in the way of production" ! BTW I am a foreman for the company I work for and my crew has put in a lot of meter runs on these well pads and tied them into the pipeline, I can assure you the companies that do this are rated by their safety records and bids are awarded with that in mind,if your not rated high enough you are not even allowed to bid the work.