Porter Ranch gas leak is 'temporarily stopped,' officials say

The massive gas leak at Southe Califoia Gas Co.’s Aliso Canyon storage field above Porter Ranch that forced an estimated 15,000 residents to flee the community, has been temporarily controlled, SoCalGas officials declared today.

After 111 days, the Gas Co. aounced it will continue to work in coordination with the Califoia Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) and other agencies during the process of permanently sealing the well.

Company officials signaled they were getting close to a solution when they aounced there would be an eight-day retu home deadline rather than the original time frame aounced earlier.

The leak, discovered on Oct. 23, spewed more that 100,000 pounds of methane, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere above the North San Feando Valley community, the state said. It prompted a voluntary community evacuation and the Los Angeles Unified School District to temporarily relocate nearly 2,000 elementary school students. The gas company covered the expense in both cases.

The aouncement came after a relief well was erected to the east and below SS 25, which is near the summit of Oat Mountain. Its shaft is more than 8,500 feet deep.

The leak was in the well casing about 500 to 600 feet below the surface. The casing will be removed and be examined as part of Blade’s probe.

SS 25 will eventually be taken out of service.

Many residents complained of ill effects like nausea and bloody noses they said were related to compounds in the gas that give it the rotten egg odor.

SoCalGas gave up to $7,000 in relocation expenses to families who left the community because of ill effects they suffered from compounds in the gas. At one point more than 5,000 households were in temporary housing.

The leak, and a communication breakdown between the company and the community outraged residents and elected officials.

Gas company executives said they believe the leak started on a Friday in late October and the crew at the well site focused on trying to stop it and failed to tell the communications and customer service unit.

The following Monday the company began notifying residents via letter but some did not receive them until the following week.

The first attempt to kill the well was made on Oct. 24 by forcing fluids down the SS 25 shaft. That attempt failed and the company contacted Hallibutron’s Boots & Coots, the company formed in the late 1970s BY Asger “Boots” Hansen and Ed “Coots” Matthews, veterans of Red Adair Service and Marine Company.

Advertisement

That company extinguished several hundred oil well fires in Kuwait during the Gulf Was. And in 1974 Adair was brought in to put out an oil well fire in the field above Porter Ranch.

Special well kill equipment was then brought in from the Gulf Coast and Boots & Coots made six other attempts to kill SS 25, the last in late December, but none were successful.

Gov. Jerry Brown finally declared a sate of emergency regarding the gas leak in early January.

Stopping the leak has proved to be a technical challenge.

There are 115 wells at Aliso Canyon and some, like SS 25, date back to the early 1950s. The facility under the Santa Susana Mountains is a sandstone formation and the gas is stored in the rock’s pores.

The gas is injected under pressure and the state ordered the company to draw out as much as possible. The facility, the biggest west of the Mississippi River can hold 86 billion cubic feet of natural gas and there were 77 billion cubic feet in storage when the leak erupted.

In late January the Califoia Public Utilities Commission ordered that the withdrawals be stopped when there was 15 billion cubic feet left in the field.

- - , .