Range Resources Suffers Casing Failure/Loss of Control Incident During Fracking
(PaEN) On December 17, 2025 at 10:30 p.m., the Department of Environmental Protection was notified by email of a casing failure/loss of control incident during fracking operations at the Range Resources Appalachia LLC Burkett shale gas well pad in Jefferson Township, Washington County.
DEP did an onsite inspection of the well pad on December 18 at 9:54 a.m.
Fracking operations were underway in three wells on the pad when at 8:40 p.m. the 4H shale gas well suffered a casing failure and gas pressure spiked to 2,000 psi annulus between the 5 ½ inch casing and 9-inch casing setting off a relief valve.
The fracking job on 4H well was shut down at 8:42 p.m. and pressure stabilized at around 4,836 psi. The well was shut in and lines were bled to 0 psi by 8:51 p.m.
After the well was brought under control, two kill plugs were set in the well to seal off the wellbore at 5,976 feet and 5,876 feet.
Find Pa DEP well maps like this at:
https://gis.dep.pa.gov/PaOilAndGasMapping/OilGasWellsStrayGasMap.html?
How to bring up these sorts of Google maps: Just enter the GPS coordinates like this “40.32742 -80.45679” from the DEP Report into the Google Maps search window. Don’t forget to put a hypen (minus sign) in front of the 2nd coordinate (Longitude) which is usually either 80 or 79 in our tri-state area.
Pressure in the annulus stabilized at 125 psi and was manually bled off at 9:45 a.m on December 18 and was at 0 psi at the time of the December 18 inspection.
Range Resources planned to run logs of the well to determine the depth and extent of the casing failure to develop a correction plan.
Range Resources said they would finish fracking the other two wells and move off the pad, according to DEP’s inspection report.
Violations
The casing failure and loss of control incident occurred on December 17 at 8:40 p.m. and Range Resources did not immediately report it through DEP’s website until December 18 at 5:53 p.m., even through an email notification was sent December 17 at 10:40 p.m.
Website notifications are required because they are set up to immediately notify DEP staff, where a normal email is not in situations involving “abnormal fracture propagation” and loss of control incidents.
This type of incident also triggers the requirement to prepare an Area of Review Fracture Communication Incident Report to be submitted to DEP within three days of the incident. Read more here.
The initial AOR Report requires the owner to survey water wells, other conventional and shale gas oil and gas wells in the vicinity of the casing failure to determine if the failure resulted in “communication” or contamination of those wells with methane or fracking fluids.
DEP’s inspection report indicates Range Resources failed to submit the AOR report within the three days.
DEP also said Range Resources failed to submit a follow-up notification of the loss of well control incident within two hours of the initial notice as required by the Pressure Barrier Policy. Read more here.
The only violation included in DEP’s inspection report was failure to notify DEP through the website immediately.
Response Requested
In addition to the AOR Report and the Pressure Barrier Policy notification, DEP requested a written response on the incident by January 15 detailing what caused the incident and how Range Resources expects to correct the problem and a schedule for bringing the well into compliance.
As of this writing– January 3– no further DEP inspection reports have been posted after the December 18 report.
