• Wednesday, 16 May, 2012

Chesapeake well blows out in Oklahoma

Rig blowout: Chesapeake confirms

related stories

By Noah Brenner

 06 January 2012 17:25 GMT

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.

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.

Watch a video here.

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.

User

Become an Upstream member!

Membership includes a subscription to our weekly newspaper providing in-depth news from the energy industry, plus full-access to this site and its archives. Still not convinced? Try our free trial.

Already a member?

Login

Upstream share price index

Recruitment
See all available positions
Events
2
06.05.2012

06

May

06.05.2012 -  20th Middle East Petroleum & Gas Conference (MPGC 2012)

MPGC 2012 will be held from 6-8 May and is returning to Bahrain again, on the occasion of its 20th Anniversary. The conference will be held under the Patronage of His Excellency Dr. Abdul Hussain bin Ali Mirza, Minister of Energy-Chairman of National Oil & Gas Authority, Kingdom of Bahrain and with National Oil & Gas Authority (NOGA) & The Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) as hosts.
The Conference Connection Inc
Read more »
07.05.2012

07

May

07.05.2012 -  20th Middle East Petroleum & Gas Conference (MPGC 2012)

MPGC 2012 will be held from 6-8 May and is returning to Bahrain again, on the occasion of its 20th Anniversary. The conference will be held under the Patronage of His Excellency Dr. Abdul Hussain bin Ali Mirza, Minister of Energy-Chairman of National Oil & Gas Authority, Kingdom of Bahrain and with National Oil & Gas Authority (NOGA) & The Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) as hosts.
The Conference Connection Inc
Read more »
08.05.2012

08

May

08.05.2012 -  20th Middle East Petroleum & Gas Conference (MPGC 2012)

MPGC 2012 will be held from 6-8 May and is returning to Bahrain again, on the occasion of its 20th Anniversary. The conference will be held under the Patronage of His Excellency Dr. Abdul Hussain bin Ali Mirza, Minister of Energy-Chairman of National Oil & Gas Authority, Kingdom of Bahrain and with National Oil & Gas Authority (NOGA) & The Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) as hosts.
The Conference Connection Inc
Read more »