Arlington fire department shuts down natural gas well after reports of explosion
Arlington firefighters shut down a natural gas well following reports of an explosion at the Lake Arlington Baptist Church drilling site early Thursday morning, Fire Chief Don Crowson said in a statement.
At about 4:47 a.m., Crowson said, Arlington firefighters discovered a loud hissing sound but no fire at 3016 Little Road, the same site where more than 42,000 gallons of fracking fluid leaked into the city’s storm water system in 2015 due to a well head malfunction.
Dozens of families were ordered to evacuate their homes during the 2015 incident, and Vantage Energy, which operated the gas wells at the time, received three citations for releasing hazardous materials and waiting nearly two hours to notify city officials.
On Thursday, Arlington officials said the hissing sound stemmed from a one-inch cooler bypass pipeline on the compressor that had broken off under pressure. The fire department’s gas well response team activated the emergency shut off switch as police shut down traffic on Little Road, and fire crews performed remote air monitoring around the well site, Crowson said.
“It was relatively minor,” Crowson said in a brief interview. “Fire department inspectors have been on scene this morning with the contractors to ensure that the compressor is repaired properly and once those repairs are completed, the well will be reactivated.”
Initial air monitoring testing at the site gave no hazardous readings, Crowson said, and the additional remote testing displayed normal air conditions. There was “no need to evacuate homes in the area,” Crowson said.
Sage Natural Resources, which is based in the Fort Worth area, now operates the LABC wells, according to the Texas-Drilling.com database. A request for comment sent through the company’s website was not immediately returned.
Fire prevention staff are in the process of notifying the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Crowson said. Kim Feil, a longtime Arlington activist who has written extensively about fracking in Arlington and Tarrant County on her blog, was concerned when she contacted TCEQ officials Thursday morning and they had not been notified by 9:50 a.m.
Officials from the TCEQ can conduct more extensive testing for highly flammable chemicals like benzene, xylene, ethylbenzene and more, Feil said. When the state agency is not immediately called, it impedes its ability to accurately measure the impact of the incident, she added.
“[The testing] gives the ability for the public to know the meteorological conditions and the wind direction,” Feil said. “It just leaves a paper trail we can look at whereas with the city, it’s like, ‘We’re not going to blow up, so no need to evacuate people.’”
Arlington officials did not specify which well was affected by the broken pipeline. Without more information, Feil said it is impossible to know if the issue had any connection to the 2015 incident.
“If it was the same well, it would be concerning,” Feil said. “I find it to be a little bit more than a coincidence, I’ll just leave it at that.”
