Wild Well Control on Tuesday was able to extinguish one of three fires burning on a well pad in the Little Missouri National Grassland about a half mile from Lake Sakakawea. That leaves two fires to go from a conflagration that began July 22 and has appeared to contribute to a smoky haze over a large swath of Lake Sakakawea, along with wildfires from western states.
“(The 4H) well is now safely isolated,” Petro-Hunt spokeswoman Beth Babb told the Williston Herald. “The 3H remains on fire and is our current focus. The 2H is still burning, but under control and very small. We hope to have the 2H and 3H extinguished soon.”
Petro-Hunt has brought in Wild Well Control as a specialist to handle re-establishing control of the wells. Babb has been asked for additional information about how the company will approach the task, and that information will be added to this story if and when received.
North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality has advised those living near the oil well fires to monitor the quality of their air at www.airnonw.go. If air quality is low according to the monitors, or if an individual is sensitive to air pollution, their recommendation has been to limit time outdoors.
DEQ Director David Glatt said there is “good plume rise” due to the heat of the fire.
“I guess the bad part is it’s a hot fire, but the good part is, it’s a hot fire,” he told the Williston Herald. “Because then all the air toxics get consumed or burned up in the fire.”
Glatt said DEQ has sampled air quality adjacent to the well site and has also gone out a fair distance to see what is happening as well.
“We’re not seeing anything of concern,” he said. “We’ll continue to do that the next couple of days, just to keep an eye on it.”
Glatt said he believes the smoke hanging over Lake Sakakawea right now is also due to western wildfires burning in other states, which has cast a pall over the entire state.
“I can’t tell you that it’s from the oil fire,” he said. “Like I said, I went down, I was in South Dakota this weekend and as I was heading south there were parts where it looked like I was almost driving into a big smoke cloud.”
No injuries have been caused in the oil well fires so far, and the incident has been contained to the well pad, officials have said.
The Williston Herald has been told by Little Missouri Grassland officials that a fire suppression plan is in place around the well pad, just in case a wildland fire is triggered, and that a long-term monitoring plan is also in place for when the incident is over.
Emergency Management Director Karolin Jappe said the company has gone above and beyond with fire suppression efforts.
“They know the dangers, so they’ve been soaking the ground with water,” she told the Williston Herald. “They’ve done a lot of work to make sure if (the fire) did get off location that it wouldn’t burn the county.”
No injuries have been caused in the oil well fires so far, and the incident has been contained to the well pad, officials have said.
The Williston Herald has been told by Little Missouri Grassland officials that a fire suppression plan is in place around the well pad, just in case a wildland fire is triggered, and that a long-term monitoring plan is also in place for when the incident is over.
The road and area where the fire is occurring has been closed to the public since the fire began, and local residents and visitors to the grasslands have been asked to avoid the area while it’s closed.
North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms last week told North Dakota Industrial Commission members that he was told by the company the fire started as a result of a blowout preventer failure. The cause of that failure is still under investigation, and cannot really begin until after the fires are out.
Helms said the fire from the first well caught a work-over rig on fire, which then fell over, severing flow lines on two other wells, setting them on fire, too. The fourth well on the pad did not catch fire.
“They’ve constructed all the necessary berms and everything that they need to, to make sure it’s contained and nothing gets down the you know the hill into Lake Sakakawea,” Helms told commissioners. “They’re today doing burnt equipment removal. So their pumping units, work-over rig, tanks, all of that hot metal has to be pulled off the location.”