Methane blaze extinguishes itself, perimeter remains at Greene gas well

A fire that burned for four days at a gas well in rural Greene County went out by itself, but officials said on Sunday they will approach the site very cautiously to stop the gas leaking from two damaged well heads.

For reasons that were still unclear, the methane gas that was pouring from one of the three wells on the pad decreased in volume and the fire extinguished itself about 3 p.m. Saturday, said Bill Zempolich, manager for asset development out of the Moon office of Chevron, which owns the well in Dunkard.

The fire had been going out intermittently, but the gas kept hitting a superheated crane left on the pad and reigniting. Crews at the site used a laser Saturday to determine the crane cooled and shouldn't re-ignite the gas, said Scott Perry, deputy secretary for the state Department of Environmental Protection's Office of Oil and Gas Management.

A worker missing since the Tuesday explosion remains unaccounted for, and Chevron is turning over that part of the investigation to state police. Officers at the Waynesburg barracks said there was no information available on Sunday. One other worker was injured.

Chevron officials waited to announce that the fire was out because they were working on a plan to get on site to remove the charred crane and cap the wells, said Blake Loke, Chevron's operations manager in Moon and incident commander for the fire.

“While the fire is out and there's less gas coming from the well, we're going to treat the fire as if it's still burning,” he said. “We're working on plans to remove the last piece of equipment — it's going to be very difficult — which is that charred crane on the pad.”

Crews brought in special equipment from Houston to move the crane, which has been too damaged by the explosion and blowtorch-like blasts of flame from the well to be rolled away like most of the other trucks on the site, Loke said.

Once the crane is gone, contractor Wild Well Control will work around the clock to fill water tanks at the site in case the well reignites. With adequate water to attack the fire and provide “cover spray” for workers if they have to retreat, they can go up to the damaged well heads and start work on capping them.

Chevron and Wild Well were initially trucking water in from Chevron's sources off site but were installing a system that could start drawing water as early as Sunday evening from Dunkard Creek. The DEP issued an emergency water permit on Saturday allowing Chevron to pump up to 1.15 million gallons a day from the creek.

Even if Chevron reaches that limit, it will have little effect on the creek, lowering the water level by about 1 percent per day, said Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of the West Virginia Water Research Institute.

Dunkard Creek is recovering from a 2009 algae bloom. Ziemkiewicz said the plans to pump water out of the creek will not create conditions to allow the algae to bloom again.

Andrew Leibhold, president of the Pennsylvania chapter of Friends of Dunkard Creek, was pleased with the limits the DEP put on pumping water out of the creek.

Loke said monitors at various distances from the wells were measuring no gas from 300 feet away and minimal gas at 200 feet. The gas does not pose a public health or safety risk, Perry said.

Aaron Aupperlee and Matthew Santoni are staff writers for Trib Total Media. Aupperlee can be reached at 412-320-7986 or aaupperlee@tribweb.com. Santoni can be reached at 412-380-5625 or msantoni@tribweb.com.