An Unseen Leak, Then Boom

An Unseen Leak, Then Boom by Abrahm Lustgarten, June 21, 2012, ProPublica
On Jan. 17, 2001, Hutchinson, Kan., awoke to an apocalypse. Gas that had silently collected inside a downtown appliance store ignited, reducing two buildings to tinder carcasses and shattering windows for blocks. Three miles away, a geyser of gas shot out of the earth, sending mud and rocks 30 feet into the air. Elsewhere, the ground popped open like the rotten hull of a boat, spraying brown briny water or catching fire. The next morning, just when the earth seemed to recover its temper, a new plume of gas and water shot through the floor of a mobile home, killing two people. Hundreds of other Hutchinson residents were evacuated from their homes, many for months. The mysterious disaster claimed national headlines, but there was little public discussion of the fact that it was caused by problems with underground injection wells. Among a small community of geologists and regulators, however, the explosions in Hutchinson — which ranked among the worst injection-related accidents in history — exposed fundamental risks of underground leakage and prompted fresh doubts about the geological science of injection itself. Geologists in Hutchinson determined that the eruptions had sprung from an underground gas storage field seven miles away. … “It was an unusual event,” said Bill Bryson, a member of the Kansas Geological Survey and a former head of the Kansas Corporation Commission’s oil and gas conservation division. “Nobody really had a feeling that if there was a leak, it would travel seven miles and hit wells that were unknown.” Though regulated under different laws than waste injection wells, gas storage wells operate under similar principles and assumptions: that deeply buried layers of rock will prevent injected substances from leaking into water supplies or back to the surface. In this case the injected material had done everything that scientists usually describe as impossible: It migrated over a large distance, travelled upward through rock, reached the open air and then blew up. The case, described as “a continuing series of geologic surprises and unexpected complexities” by the Kansas Geological Survey, flummoxed some of the leading injection experts in the world. … “It is still not clear how long the leakage occurred.”