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Posted on 12/29/2015 7:10:03 AM PST by Navy Patriot
The location of an underground well pipe that has been leaking methane gas in a Los Angeles neighborhood has been pinpointed, Southern California Gas Co. officials said Sunday.
The utility company said it had drilled down about 3,800 feet when it found the breached well's 7-inch pipe with a magnetic ranging tool that allows workers on the surface to locate small underground targets. They are drilling a relief well nearby that they will eventually connect to the leaking well so they can plug it with cement. The leak has forced thousands of people to leave their homes.
"One of the challenges in drilling this relief well is to find a 7-inch pipe from about 1,500 feet away, several thousands of feet below ground - while avoiding others nearby," Southern California Gas Co. said in a statement issued Monday. There are more than 100 such wells in the area.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
http://la.curbed.com/archives/2015/12/porter_ranch_aliso_canyon_gas_leak_aerial_video_size.php
The perplexing gas leak at the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility near the San Fernando Valley community of Porter Ranch has been spewing an enormous amount of methane gas (and a lovely rotten egg aroma) into the air since late October, at a rate of 110,000 pounds per hour....
The company’s plan to drill a relief well is now underway, reports the Daily News, and they’re drilling a second, backup relief well too, in case the first one doesn’t do the trick. The main relief well won’t be complete until March, though; the backup well will only begin to be drilled in January, with completion taking between three and four months.
While the efforts to fix the massive leak are in progress, methane continues to billow out of the breach and into the air....
3,800 feet down? I’d like to see the back hoe that dug that trench. LOL!
I guess I’m missing something here. Why can’t they go down the original well bore to plug it?
it had drilled down about 3,800 feet...
You're not expected to be a technical expert in everything.
The biggest reason is the possibility of igniting the escaping gas plume, working some distance away where the gas concentration is below ignitable levels minimizes that risk.
Nah, it was a boring job.
Some discussion about when a relief well is needed. Not specific to this case.
http://www.jwco.com/technical-litterature/p11.htm
I need a lot more coffee! I read that at first as the black hoe that dug that!
“This is not a simple leak at all” and standard industry techniques for “killing” the well such as pouring in mud already have failed, he said in a conference call.
The leak is in an inner casing 500 feet underground and the gas is escaping into the ground at the bottom of the well, roughly 1,000 feet below, Bohlen said.
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I believe this plan injects the cement from the reservoir level and uses the gas pressure to push cement into the leaking path through the blowout.
https://www.socalgas.com/documents/news-room/faq/aliso-canyon-faq-121415.pdf
Kaliifornia Gai-weenies are going to rip this company to financial shreds as soon as this well is plugged.
BM
The payment train has started.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-socal-gas-leak-health-20151215-story.html
What’s the difference between this leak if it caught fire and a volcano?
gaia is gas and all else
gas is therefore holy and not actionable
It would just be a surface fire, not an eruption of magma and exploding material from below.
The fire could not extend down into the storage reservoir. There is not oxygen down there to burn. The leaking gas would just burn after it reached the surface.
A big, bad and long last fire, but just a surface fire. Like other wells that catch on fire.
You'd think they could go in and just squeeze the bad section, but they have to kill the well first, and that might take so much LCM they couldn't keep the bottom in it and weight up enough to shut in 1200 psi of casing head pressure.
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