Chesapeake well blows out in Oklahoma
A rig drilling for a Chesapeake Energy unit in Oklahoma burned Thursday night after hitting a shallow gas pocket and suffering a blowout before key safety equipment was rigged up, the company said.
Noah Brenner 06 January 2012 17:25 GMT
Chesapeake’s wholly owned drilling subsidiary Nomac Drilling’s No. 17 rig was engulfed in flames after crews lost control of the well and the blowout ignited, a Chesapeake spokesman told Upstream.
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No injuries or environmental threats were reported, Jim Gipson said in an email.
The rig had spud the Davis 30 12-26 well four miles northwest of Sweetwater in western Oklahoma. It was drilling ahead at 900 feet when it hit a zone of pressurized gas, which quickly flowed back up the well and caught fire.
The well was slated to drill vertically to 12,000 feet before kicking off the lateral.
Operations were at such an early stage that a raft of safety equipment had not been hooked up yet, including the blowout preventer and gas separator.
The equipment had not been installed because crews had not yet set surface casing on the well and the blowout preventer mounts on top of the surface casing, Gipson explained.
“So the weight of drilling mud was the only pressure control,” he said.
A well-control crew is on site and another crew is working to salvage the rig, Gipson said.
“There will be very thorough investigation into the cause of the incident,” he said.
Published: 06 January 2012 17:25 GMT | Last updated: 2 minutes ago
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