Gas wells leak explosive levels of methane in Bakersfield
Some Bakersfield residents are concerned about potential explosions after a state agency found that six idle oil wells near homes were leaking methane in the past several days.
State and regional inspectors found concentrations of methane in the air around some of the wells at levels considered potentially explosive and environmental activists in the region are worried that other chemicals may also be leaking from the wells that could pose a threat to public health.
But Uduak-Joe Ntuk, head of the California Geologic Energy Management division of the California Department of Conservation, the agency that oversees wells and confirmed they were leaking, said in a statement that the leaks were “minor in nature and do not pose an immediate threat to public health or safety.”
Residents and environmentalists in the region first became concerned
when they were alerted by Clark Williams-Derry, an energy analyst, that two wells were hissing within a few hundred feet of homes. He was visiting the area on May 10 with a French documentary crew that's working on a film about cleaning up oil and gas infrastructure around the globe.
“One of them was leaking, it was making an audible hiss,” Williams-Derry told the Associated Press. “And I was like `what the hell is going on?' I thought these things were supposed
to be essentially sealed.”
On May 17, an inspector from the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District measured the concentrations of methane in the air surrounding the leaking wells, Jamie Holt, chief communications officer with the district, said in a statement to the Associated Press.
The agency wouldn't confirm the concentrations of methane they found. But a letter sent to the state's oil and gas regulators by a coalition of environmental groups said the inspector found that methane levels in the air around one of the wells was 20,000 parts per million (ppm) and at least 50,000 ppm around the other well.
Those two wells have since been sealed, Ntuk said in a statement on Friday, but while inspectors were checking to make sure the seals on those wells stopped the leaks, they found four more idle wells leaking.
Three of the four wells had methane concentrations of 50,000 ppm in the air surrounding them, according to a report from the state. The other well had a methane concentration of 6,000 ppm.
Methane is potentially explosive at air concentrations of 50,000 ppm, according to federal guidelines.
Riley Duren, an international methane expert and research scientist at the Arizona Institute for Resilient Environments and Societies and Research, Innovation and Impact, said that methane concentrations of 50,000 ppm imply “an extreme and potentially hazardous event.”