Pressure tests that help determine whether underground oil and gas pipelines are leaking may not have been done around a newly re-started well 178 feet from a house that exploded in Firestone, the Denver Post has learned.
But state rules for the oil and gas industry may not have applied to that Anadarko Petroleum well. Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission rules do not require the pressure tests on smaller pipelines where hydrocarbons flow at pressures lower than 15 pounds per square inch, according to COGCC spokesman Todd Hartman.
Whether Anadarko conducted tests before or after re-starting the well January is “among many, many issues under review,” Hartman said Friday in an emailed response to queries.
The integrity of underground oil and gas pipelines has emerged as a key question as state regulators and Frederick Fire Protection District officials investigate the still-unexplained April 17 explosion. No cause has been determined. Two men were killed in the blast and a woman was seriously injured.
Colorado Front Range county officials have responded by urging greater caution by producers. On Friday, Adams County commissioners followed their counterparts in Boulder and called on all oil and gas operators to immediately inspect any vertical wells located within 250 feet of occupied buildings and make sure people are safe.
“The board of commissioners’ primary responsibility is to ensure the health and safety of our residents is protected above all else,” Adams County board chairwoman Eva Henry said.
On Thursday, the Boulder County commissioners called on companies to shut down 300 vertical wells and inspect them to make sure they are safe. Anadarko owns about 10 of those wells.
Anadarko officials announced this week they have voluntarily shut down 3,000 of its older vertical wells in northeast Colorado to conduct inspections over the next four weeks.
The officials said they were doing this out of an “abundance of caution.”
On Thursday, Great Western Oil & Gas officials announced they, too, are shutting down wells as a precaution. Great Western has located all of its gas lines within 250 feet of occupied buildings and shut down 61 wells feeding those lines, officials said. They also said they had conducted pressure tests on the lines to make sure they were safe, even though those same lines previously had passed an annual inspection required under state rules. Great Western in 2015 acquired Encana Corp.’s Colorado assets, including wells concentrated in southwest Weld County.
“While we are confident our operations do not present a danger to the public, we are proactively taking the necessary steps to ensure the public that our facilities continue to be safe,” the company said in a statement.
COGCC director Matt Lepore said at a press conference on Thursday that contractors hired by the state had begun testing soil in the Firestone Oak Meadows neighborhood to determine whether gas vapors from pipelines had leaked into soil.
Air tests done on Wednesday for methane and other hydrocarbon emissions turned out negative, Lepore said.
Once state regulators develop a more complete understanding of the circumstances around the explosion, Lepore said, they may address more specific issues with operators.
Adams County had 961 active oil and gas wells in operation at the start of the year, according to the COGCC. Weld County, where the blast occurred, has more than 23,0000.
whether nearby oil and gas operations, including a capped gas gathering line that ran through the Oak Meadows neighborhood, might have played a role.
The home was located within 178 feet of a still producing oil and gas well drilled back in 1993. One of the first things state investigators did was ensure active wells in the area were shut-in.
