DUSTIN BLEIZEFFER Star-Tribune energy reporter | Posted: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 12:00 am
For years a number of residents of the Line Creek Wilderness subdivision west of Clark in Park County have fought deep-well natural gas development in the area, often expressing concern that gases and chemicals might seep into the local water supply.
Then a major leak did happen. While drilling at 8,030 feet on the Crosby Ranch Friday afternoon, a crew working for Windsor Wyoming LLC shut off gas flow through the well bore. Gas and mud began oozing out of a nearby hillside, and the crew didn't have enough heavy mud to pump down the bore and stop the leak.
The event led to a voluntary evacuation of 25 residences and a major "I told you so" from some locals who have been opposed to oil and gas activity in the area.
"We've been asking for safety plans over and over again," said Deb Thomas, an evacuee who had formed the Clark Resource Council to fight the industry. "Do we have to wait until somebody gets killed? Is our water safe to drink? Who is now responsible?"
On Monday, folks in Wyoming's oil and gas industry prepared for public opinion fallout from the event.
"It makes me ill, personally," said Jimmy Goolsby of Casper-based Goolsby & Associates, which provides geological services to the oil and gas industry.
Goolsby said the event will surely give the industry a black eye. Safety is always the first concern, he said. So he was glad to learn that no one was hurt. Then a certain sense of nausea struck him. It's the feeling one gets when he's branded a bad guy simply because of his association.
"On one hand we feel like we're doing something for the public good," Goolsby said. "We're helping our country, and I feel patriotic that I'm helping find minerals that help the country. On the other hand, you're always branded as the bad guy."
Goolsby said it seems that conflicts between residents and oil and gas development increase as more and more people move to rural areas of Wyoming to live on "ranchettes" - those 2-acre plot subdivisions that spread faster than the flu.
"Most oil and gas development occurs in remote areas. Now, people are wanting to live in those remote areas," Goolsby said. "There has to be some willingness for all of us to take some amount of risk, as long as we keep that risk as low as we possibly can."
Both the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission require the use of a blowout preventers when drilling wells. The OGCC also requires that metal casing and cement be used to seal well bores and prevent "communication" between geologic zones.
OGCC supervisor Don Likwartz said it appeared as though Windsor Wyoming LLC had complied with its drilling permit on the Crosby well. It was required to cement 2,000 feet down the 8,000-foot well. He said that when drilling for deep gas, it's usually under high pressure, so you can never be 100 percent certain there won't be a fissure or a leak.
"There's always risk when you shut in a well like that with pressure," Likwartz said.
Thomas said she was concerned about how much time elapsed before she was told to leave.
"How about those of us who were there from 2:00 to 7:00 breathing this stuff before anyone bothered to let us know what was happening?" she said.
Thomas also was concerned that the blowout contaminated the aquifer supplying water to homes in the area.
"We're looking at long-term monitoring to establish what's going on with our water," she said.
Windsor reached a settlement with the state in January for improperly disposing of at least 200 barrels of fluids at a home near Clark. The settlement called for Windsor to pay $5,000.
There were five recorded blowout events in a short period of time when large-scale coal-bed methane drilling took off six years ago in the Powder River Basin. Blowout preventers weren't used because the wells were relatively shallow and not under high pressure. The OGCC then mandated that drillers use diverter tubes, and there hasn't been a blowout since, according to Likwartz.
Blowouts are "rare," he said. "Usually, almost always, it involves human error."
There have been two major blowouts in Wyoming in the past 15 years - the Cave Gulch blowout near Waltman in February 1998 and a deep gas well blowout in the Madden field in 1992.
Energy reporter Dustin Bleizeffer can be reached at (307) 682-3388 or dustin.bleizeffer@casperstartribune.net.