Sometimes, important things happen in the world that get almost no notice. I was rummaging through some old email, including items from a mailing list that I have been subscribed to for years, when I ran across a story titled Poisonous mud wreaks havoc on Java. Apparently a gas exploration project has gone horribly wrong and resulted in the displacement of more than 8,000 people with a number of them reporting illness and injuries from exposure to toxic fumes that have been released.
This story is not actually “news” in that it is dated 13 July 2006 and talks about something that has been going on for six weeks at the time that the story appeared. However, it should cause a certain level of concern for those people that live and work in those areas where fossil fuel exploration is common. There are certainly still a lot of unknown hazards associated with the operation.
It does “cause a certain level of concern”. Lots of natural gas deposits are ‘sour’, ie: they contain significant amounts of hydrogen sulphide, which is highly toxic. Sour gas drilling is an extra hazard to those working on the drill rigs & those living nearby.
Before sour goes to the user the H2S is removed & converted to elemental sulphur. Around here there are lots of gas plants with sulphur piles that grow when the price of sulphur is low & shrink when it’s high.
There had been a proposal to drill some sour gas wells just outside of the city here, but the opposition from nearby residents seem to have killed it.
Jim Baerg
51° N 114° W
Jim:
Thank you for the information. I would imagine that drilling companies are pretty good at predicting whether or not a particular field is “sour”, but I would love to hear more. Something that would concern me as a nearby resident of a drilling project is the answer to the question – “how do you know” whether or not to take extra precautions? What kinds of measures need to be implemented to handle this kind of deposit safely? How reliable are they? What happens if they fail? How do we know that the people actually doing the drilling are following the right procedures? Who is the safety regulator?
Finally, what happens if the price of natural gas is high enough to bring in the wildcatters and speculators? Does the situation change if there is a “boom” in the area with a drilling “frenzy”?
Here in Alberta the industry is regulated fairly safely & the nearby residents get told about what’s happening. In places where the residents near the well have little political clout it’s likely they don’t. Here the regulation is mostly through the Alberta Energy & Utilities Board.
Here workers on the rigs go through H2S safety courses, but I expect there is a problem during a boom with having inexperienced workers who don’t know all the proper proceedures.
This string caught my attention, but still a little surprised there isn’t as many comments as I expected. I’ll keep checking back since this is a hot topic for me personally.