Blowouts

A blowout occurs when the pressure control systems on a petroleum well fail, causing an uncontrollable, or wild, release of natural gas or oil. The most immediate danger of a blowout is posed by the debris that can be sent rocketing through the air. Rocks, drilling tools and metal casing pipe can shoot hundreds of feet up through and out of the derrick, harming anyone who is struck. While drilling for the Canadian government at Pelican Landing on the Athabasca River, A. W. Fraser experienced a now infamous blowout which he described as being a flow of gas

in an unconquered condition….Small nodules of iron pyrites, about the size of a walnut, were blown out of the hole with incredible velocity. They came out like bullets from a rifle. We could not see them going, but could hear them crack against the top of the derrick….There was danger that the men would be killed if struck by these missiles.

This well blew wild for twenty-one years before it was wrestled under control.

Perhaps the most dramatic danger of a blowout is that it ignites. Friction created by ricocheting debris can spark a fire, which, given its gushing and combustible source, can be incredibly tricky to subdue. This risk has generated a specialization within the field of fire-fighting, as particular knowledge and skills are needed to quench rogue wells and their fires.

The Pelican Landing blowout is not the only one to have become legendary due to its persistence. When Royalite No. 4 punctured a high-pressure, sour gas reservoir in Turner Valley in 1926, it blew wild, ignited and burned for two months before it was snuffed by wild well fighters who used steam and dynamite. In 1948, a well known as Atlantic No. 3 burped mud and then blew out, shooting machinery up through the rig 45 m (148 ft.) high. Although the fire that ensued was quenched in three days, the well itself required six months to cap, during which time it spewed 280,000,000 cu m (10,000,000,000 cu. ft.) of gas and more than a million barrels of oil.

Perhaps the most famous natural gas blowout in Alberta is the one that occurred outside of Drayton Valley on October 17, 1982, in the small town of Lodgepole. The public reaction to this event was perhaps more intense than the subsequent fire, not merely because it was the second blowout in the same field by the same company, Amoco, but also because it, like the previous, involved sour gas, or gas laced with toxic hydrogen sulfide (H₂S). Several surrounding communities had to be evacuated due to what the press dubbed “Alberta’s geyser of terror” and “the worst blowout in Alberta’s history.” Residents in Edmonton, 129 km (80 mi.) away, suffered the effects of the “Amoco flu,” and it is claimed that the tell-tale sour gas odour of rotten eggs could be detected as far away as Saskatoon and even Winnipeg, as well as in the cabins of aircraft flying overhead. During the

course of sixty-eight days, the well spewed huge amounts of natural gas, many nearby residents were sickened, sixteen workers were hospitalized and three wild-well firefighters were killed. The fire that raged for about two weeks during this time burned off the lethal H₂S but also burned 1.6 sq km (400 acres) of surrounding forest after destroying the $8 million drilling rig.

While the two Lodgepole blowouts spawned a reevaluation of safety regulations and the generation of more stringent requirements for specialized safety equipment and detailed emergency response plans, they also highlighted the great ambivalence shared by the government and some sectors of the public: to what extent should the economic growth brought by petroleum development be inhibited by the need to safeguard the public from hazards that development might pose?