Cody Murray & family still waiting on Texas energy regulator after their methane contaminated water well exploded in 2014, injuring Cody, his daughter and others. Murrays expect to be in trial by October 2017, three years after the explosion. Compare to Ernst lawsuit in it’s 10th year, nowhere near discovery yet, never mind trial

Years after well explosion, Texas family still waiting for answers from agency by Jim Malewitz, March 6, 2017, The Texas Tribune

A North Texas family is still waiting for answers about whether nearby gas production caused their water well to explode and why the Railroad Commission seemed to miss early signs that something like this could happen in their community.

2017 03 06 Ashely Cody Murray, ranchers Palo Pinto Co, water well exploded from natural gas contamination

Ashley and Cody Murray, ranchers in Palo Pinto County, pose with their two children. They allege nearby gas drilling caused methane to leak into their water well before it exploded, severely burning the couple, their four-year-old daughter and Cody’s father. Their legal case could put pressure on Texas regulators. Photo: Murray Family

More than two and a half years have passed since Cody and Ashley Murray’s water well exploded, transforming their Palo Pinto County ranch into an emergency scene.

2015 08 11 Cody Murray's burns, exploding water well after fracing contaminated it

Some of Cody Murray’s injuries from the water well explosion

2015 08 25 snap RT Alexey Yaroshevsky clip on Cody Murray's frac contaminted water explosion, harm lawsuit

2015 08 25 snap RT Alexey Yaroshevsky clip Cody Murray's frac contaminted water explosion, harm lawsuit, need to be casing wells properly

With their burns healed and gone to scars, the couple and their two young children have since returned to their 160 acres outside of Perrin, about 60 miles northwest of Fort Worth.

The Murrays still lack a trusted source of local drinking water. And they’re still waiting for answers about whether nearby gas production was to blame for the fireball that shot toward Cody’s face that August day — and why the Texas Railroad Commission, the state’s oil and gas regulator, seemed to miss signs warning that something like that could happen in their cattle-and-pumpjack-sprinkled slice of the Barnett Shale.

Outside experts have linked the explosion to nearby gas drilling. The Railroad Commission won’t comment on details of its investigation, other to confirm that it remains open.

“There is nothing new to report at this time,” spokeswoman Ramona Nye told The Texas Tribune. “The Commission takes this and every incident we investigate very seriously.”

The blast was caused by a buildup of methane gas in the water well that caused enough pressure to send water spraying in the family’s pump house. Ashley Murray turned off the well pump and asked her husband to investigate, and when he turned it back on, the gas exploded, severely burning Cody, his father Jim; and Alyssa, Cody’s 4-year-old daughter.

[Compare to energy regulator corrupted & controlled Alberta, 11 years ago, May 2006.

AER and Alberta Environment fraudulently covered-up and bullied Bruce Jack after his water well at Spirit River also sprayed gas contaminated water up, later found to have been caused by an oil & gas industry well nearby:

2006 May Bruce Jack's water forced out of well because the dangerous concentrations of methane and ethane

The regulator had advised Jack to install the above gas venting system as the solution to the pollution!

Years later , even though knowing from this experience that venting does not remove industry’s migrating gases from water well bores or aquifers, the regulator advised this life threatening venting to numerous other Albertans, including Ernst, who remain harmed with explosive drinking water contaminated with methane, ethane, etc because of frac’ing by the oil and gas industry nearby.

2006 05 09 Bruce Jack Water Well Pump house explosion AFTER professionally installed system to vent the dangerous methane and ethane out

Bruce Jack natural gas contaminated water well, photo taken day of the explosion, May 9, 2006. The Alberta government and AER continue to allow companies to drill and frac the area.

2006 10 25 & 26 Bruce Jack Water Well Explosion Documentary by Grant Gelinas CBC News Intro

Special CBC News report on the Jack contaminated water well and explosion by Grant Gelinas. The video starts with audio of gases forcing water to shoot out of Jack’s well.

2006 05 09 Bruce Jack in Alberta hospital contaminated water well explosion

Bruck Jack in hospital the day after the explosion, when Peter Watson, then Deputy Minister Environment (now CEO of the National Energy Board), promptly arrived at his bedside to silence him with promises of permanent safe alternate water (the ministry and AER had deflected Jack’s concerns for years before the explosion).

photo-peter-watson-past-deputy-minister-alberta-environment-appointed-chair-neb-by-harper-govt

Peter Watson

Two industry gas-in-water testers, there to test the contaminated water the day of the explosion, were also hospitalized with serious injuries. Jack was hospitalized for a month. There were no Canadian Drinking Water Guideline Limits for methane and ethane (or propane, butane, pentane, etc.) then, and there still aren’t. Limits for methane and industry’s other migrating explosive gases might get in the way of private profits.

2006-05-09-close-up-bruce-jack-in-hospital-after-his-methane-ethane-contaminated-water-well-exploded

More details at FrackingCanada’s The Silence is Deafening, Industry’s Gas Migration, including a video of Jack’s water shooting out of his well.

End compare to AER corrupted & controlled Alberta]

Cody Murray took the brunt of the flames; with burns on his arms, upper back, neck, forehead and nose, the former oilfield worker spent a week in a burn unit. 

The Murrays sued two nearby drillers in 2015.

After Houston-based EOG Resources settled, the Murrays’ attorneys have turned their attention to Fairway Resources, a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs, claiming the company’s well was the source of the gas that ignited.

The Murrays are seeking more than $1 million in damages in the lawsuit, now in a Tarrant County district court. Their attorneys would not make family members available for interviews. 

Matthew Eagleston, president and CEO of Fairway Resources, declined to comment, citing company policy. Fairway’s attorneys did not respond to interview requests.

In a January court filing, four experts hired by the Murrays’ attorneys said the wayward methanealong with chemicals from drilling mud — escaped a poorly-sealed Fairway gas well and meandered through underground fractures into the Murrays’ pump house.

The company drilled its JT Cook #2 well in 2013, and a month later the Singletons, who live a quarter mile down the road from the Murrays and have joined them in the lawsuit, told the Railroad Commission their faucets were spouting cloudy water.

[Compare to Ernst’s drinking water in AER corrupted & controlled Alberta:

ERN000830 Ernst white water, kitchen sink, after Encana frac'd Rosebud Ab aquifers

2009: Ernst’s methane and ethane contaminated drinking water

Image result for ernst water white

2006: Ernst’s methane and ethane contaminated drinking water

End compare to Ernst’s drinking water in AER’s corrupted & controlled Alberta]

The explosion at the Murrays’ property happened 10 months after Fairway drilled the gas well, which sits less than 900 feet from the Singletons’ water well and roughly 2,000 from the Murrays’ pump house. 

An EnergyWire investigation published in June first highlighted gaps in the Railroad Commission’s probe, and raised questions about how closely the agency scrutinized the Singleton’s initial complaints. Railroad Commission inspectors at the time quickly ruled out energy production as a factor in the Singletons’ water problems, but testing from other agencies contradicted the commission’s findings. [Just like in AER controlled and corrupted Alberta!]

Christopher Hamilton, the Murrays’ attorney, acknowledges the difficulty of proving that oil and gas activities — let alone a specific well — polluted a water well hundreds of feet away. But he views this case, expected to go to trial in October, as “open-and-shut.”

[Compare to Canada:

The Murrays take 3 years to get to trial.

Ernst is in 1oth year of her lawsuit, trial date no where in sight.

The Murrays in Texas:

August 2014: Cory Murray, his daughter and father were harmed.

October 2017 – three years after the harms were done, Murrays expect to go to trial.

Ernst in Alberta:

March 2004: Encana illegally fractured Rosebud’s drinking water aquifers, contaminating them.

January 2005: Alberta regulators knew via an official report from Encana, that Encana had illegally frac’d the aquifers. The regulators did not disclose this to the residents living in explosive risk in the community.

December 2007: Ernst filed her lawsuit. (Seven years before the Murrays were harmed.)

Ernst’s lawsuit is nowhere near discovery yet, never mind trial.

Currently, wait time to get a trial date for civil cases in Alberta is 2.7 years.

2017 03 Malcolm Mayes 'Court backlog' tosses victimes into trash cartoon

Malcolm Mayes Cartoon in Edmonton Journal, March 2017

End compare to Canada.]

“It’s really incontrovertible,” Hamilton said of the evidence he’s collected. “Sometimes the science just overwhelms.”

His hired experts include:

Thomas Darrah, a geochemist at Ohio State University;

Franklin Schwartz, an Ohio State University hydrologist;

Zacariah Hildenbrand, chief scientific officer at Inform Environmental; and

Anthony Ingraffea, a civil engineering professor at a Cornell University with expertise in hydraulic fracturing.

Ingraffea wrote of at least three likely pathways for gas to escape Fairway’s well, which he said was constructed with “bare-bones” protections and operated carelessly. The well also violated commission standards, Ingraffea wrote, notably because it lacked a Bradenhead gauge, a device that could monitor pressure and help detect leaks.

Darrah, who compared gases found in local water wells to Fairway’s gas, concluded: “The JT Cook #2 oil and gas well displays a geochemical match to samples of groundwater in the Singleton’s and Murray’s water wells in all of the measured data.”

Hildenbrand’s analysis linked a drilling mud additive found in the Murrays’ water — called Chem Seal — to Fairway’s drilling. 

[Compare to the Ernst lawsuit:

Encana still has not yet complied with Justice Wittmann’s July 2014 Order to file all important and relevant records with Ernst by December 19, 2014.

The chemicals Encana injected into Rosebud’s drinking water aquifers continue to be kept secret by the company, with no regulator, authority or court compelling Encana to hand over the vital records that Ernst is legally entitled to.

Instead of complying with the Court Order, Encana and Canada’s legal system is further delaying the case with an application for continued case management after the retirement of Justice Wittmann on May 1, 2017 (Ernst advised the court that case management is not in her interest). ]

End compare to Ernst lawsuit]

And Schwartz found fault with a Railroad Commission analysis that ruled out the Barnett Shale as a source for the Murrays methane and suggested the gas could have naturally escaped from a shallower rock formation. The commission’s experts, Schwartz said, failed to account for “physical, chemical and isotopic processes” that alter gas underground. 

The Commission declined to answer specific questions about its investigation into the explosion.

“As with any incident, our technical experts base their work on the appropriate science and data necessary to complete a thorough and comprehensive investigation,” Nye said.

Rebecca Norris, who lives just west of the Murrays, doesn’t expect the commission to do much of anything.

“Oh yeah, right,” the 66-year-old retiree responded after a reporter told her that the commission was still investigating.

In September 2015, the Tribune reported that Norris, who said can see a handful of gas wells from her bedroom window, never heard back after telling the commission that her water was turning everything — the sinks, the tub — orange. Nye promised at the time to find out why her agency never followed up.

Eighteen months later, Norris said orange “crud” still settles around the bottom of drinking glasses. She said she’s the only one in her house who can stomach the water, and her grown daughter and son “won’t even go near it,” when they visit. “They say it tastes terrible,” Norris said.

Norris said the Railroad Commission still hasn’t called. Nye said this week she was looking into it. 

“I feel like they’re not doing their job,” Norris said. “You think: ‘Why are they not following through on what they said they’d do?’” [Emphasis added]

Read more:

Related:

2014 08 06: Flash fire burns four people, including 4 year girl; methane contamination in well water source possible cause ]

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