Updates
Note: most regional links break early and break often.March 18, 2011: the fire is out. Minimal issues. In the big scheme of things, this amounts to a bit of prolonged flaring. Some fast thinking by personnel at the site when the fire broke out prevented any injuries or death.
March 10, 2011, afternoon: clean-up has started at site, even though fire continues to burn. Article notes that this is the third fracture-treatment accident in past seven months.
Canadian-based Sanjel was conducting the failed, highly pressurized fracture treatments at this Arnegard well and another one near Killdeer.March 10, 2011: Fire-fighting equipment reaches well fire site. The story was posted at 4:47 p.m. yesterday, March 9, 2011, but I did not see it yesterday. Saw it for the first time this a.m.
At Killdeer, some 2,250 barrels or about 100,000 gallons of fracture fluid and oil were recovered. At one in November at a Whiting Petroleum well near New Town, fluid recovery was reported in excess of 5,000 barrels.
Boots & Coots, owned by well services giant Halliburton, will put a stack on the burning well to direct the fire upward, bolt the stack down and then close valves on the stack to stop the fire. The fire is expected to burn several more days.March 9, 2011, evening: I am unable to find any update regarding this fire. I assume it is still burning and will do so until oil well specialty fire fighters arrive on scene to put it out.
March 9, 2011: Williston Herald headlines it as a "blow-out" but the story calls it a failed valve that was leaking oil and steam, giving workers an opportunity to flee before it started on fire.
The McKenzie County Sheriff's Office received a call at 2:26 a.m. Monday of a leak involving steam and oil from a well.By strict definition of "blow-out," this would fit the first definition of a blow-out:
The well was in the completion process. It is located eight miles north of Arnegard off of McKenzie County Road 18.
1. an uncontrolled flow of gas, oil, or other well fluids into the atmosphere or into an underground formation.It appears not to fit the second definition, commonly referred to as a "gusher."
March 8, 2011: Almost no new update today in the regional newspaper. At midday today, the well continues to burn as far as I know. Lynn Helms, director, NDIC, suggests that the fire will not go out by itself. Boots and Coots is on its way up from Texas with specialty oil well fire fighting equipment. Helm made the interesting statement that there is no such equipment here in North Dakota. Wow. Biggest oil field in America right and perhaps the most active, and no specialty fire-fighting equipment. Something tells me Boots and Coots will be setting up shop somewhere in Williston before this is all over.
Original Posting
Link here. The Jaynes 16-12H well, file number #20022, SM Energy, still on confidential status. It appears there are about 8 tanks on the pad. No frack trucks in the area that I could see, but the well was quite a ways in the background. Hard to see much, but I did not see a lot of equipment there. No rig on site. My hunch: well has been drilled and was waiting to be fracked. About 10 miles northeast of Arnegard, North Dakota; or 9 miles northwest of Watford City.
[My hunch was wrong: occurred during late stages of cracking. Video too far away to see equipment. Link here.]
The links won't remain long; regional sites break links often and quickly.
Probably more video for next 24 hours.
Update: if you go to the link above and drill back to "news" you can get more current video. No injuries or deaths, human or livestock. Boots and Coots is on the ground; sounds like the fire may go on for awhile. A broken valve was noted; before it could be fixed, explosion and fire. At least that's what I understood.
OK things are bound to happen. How many fracs have been done over the last 3 years? The odds say something will happen sooner or later. A .05 failure rate is better than buying a new car. We are truly pushing everyone to the limits.All equipment is pressure checked to limits higher than the pressure of the job before hand. The safety and enviromental aspects of fracing are beyond osha or any other standards. I truly beleive that the companies in North Dakota are well regulated and acheiving goals above the standards. Everyone Home Safe Every Day!!!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you. I agree 100 percent.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that this has received so little local press, much less almost no national attention, this will be managed professionally by the NDIC.
I was very relieved to see no deaths or injuries.
It probably would have made the national news had someone died, but the national news seems to have plenty of bad things to talk about lately...
ReplyDeleteI remember thirty years ago the stories of horrible deaths and burn injuries in the oil patch. You are correct: now a single death in the oil patch merits a national news story.
ReplyDeleteBack then burn surgeons and plastic surgeons had two areas to gain experience: war zones and the oil patch. Now, it's mostly war zones.
Orthopedic surgeons gained experience on injuries suffered on the German autobahn and Alpine skiing.
I was just thinking about that comment: "Now a single death merits a national news story."
ReplyDeleteThe story of the Gulf oil spill in last summer resulted in a number of deaths. The loss of lives was reported in the first new stories, but by the end of the second day, there were no more reports about the deaths. Eleven folks died in that explosion / blow-out. So, depending on what else is going on, even 11 deaths might not result in much reporting.
I don't think we've even been told if any -- much less, how many -- firemen have died trying to control the Japanese nuclear reactors affected by the earthquake/tsunami.