Anadarko's Colorado Operations Draw Criticism After Second Deadly Blast -- 2nd Update
27 May 2017 - 1:09AM
Dow Jones News
By Erin Ailworth
A second deadly accident in Colorado involving Anadarko
Petroleum Corp. is spurring criticism of the company's oil and gas
operations in the state.
A fire at oil storage tanks owned by the Houston-based company
killed a maintenance worker and injured three others Thursday
afternoon. Authorities haven't identified the person killed.
At the time of the accident, "crews were finishing projects
associated with a facility upgrade" and the tank facility wasn't in
operation, Anadarko said in a brief statement Friday.
The blast follows a home explosion that killed two people in
Firestone, Colo. last month, after natural gas leaked from an
abandoned line that remained attached to a 24-year-old well
operated by Anadarko less than 200 feet away from the residence. At
some point the line was severed, allowing gas to seep into the soil
and migrate into the house, which was built in 2015.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the
Firestone explosion.
Anadarko voluntarily closed more than 3,000 wells after the
April 17 home blast, and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper called for
a statewide review of existing oil and gas operations. The Colorado
Oil and Gas Conservation Commission notified producers they would
be required to reinspect any flow lines and pipelines within 1,000
feet of an occupied building by May 30.
Anadarko has since permanently shut three wells near the
Firestone blast, and is disconnecting all similar flow lines at
wells of similar vintage to the one near the home explosion.
The latest accident occurred as a crew performed maintenance on
a collection of oil tanks near Highway 66 and Weld County Road 13
near the town of Mead, Colo., just a few miles from site of the
Firestone explosion, according to the Weld County Sheriff's
Office.
Tank batteries are used to hold oil and gas being pumped from
wells, and are connected to those wells by flow lines like the
abandoned one that was severed sometime before the Firestone
explosion.
"When law enforcement personnel arrived on scene they found that
an Anadarko oil tank battery was fully engulfed in flame," the
sheriff's office said.
In the wake of the fire, the Sierra Club called on Anadarko to
immediately shutter all its operations in Colorado pending a review
by state and federal authorities.
"Anadarko, like so many fossil fuel companies across the
country, [has] proven that it cannot be trusted to put its workers
and the communities surrounding its operations first," said Lena
Moffitt, director of the Sierra Club's Our Wild America campaign,
which opposes mining and drilling in wilderness areas.
A representative for the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation
Commission couldn't immediately be reached for comment Friday.
Gov. Hickenlooper called Thursday's fatal fire a "terrible
tragedy" and offered his condolences to the Mead community.
"We certainly recognize the safety concerns raised given the
recent home explosion in Firestone, but at this time we have no
reason to believe that there is any relationship between the
circumstances that led to these two accidents," he said.
Write to Erin Ailworth at Erin.Ailworth@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 26, 2017 19:54 ET (23:54 GMT)
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