On a Sunday evening in early April, workers at the edge of a field in Galeton lost control of the pressure at a new frack well. Boom! It was a blowout.
“It was probably 50 feet up there,” said Galeton resident Tony Ranalli. “It was shooting pretty high.”
Ranalli grabbed his son Cole, 11, and made a beeline for the local elementary school. They’d heard something big had happened and were curious to see it themselves. The parking lot offered a perfect view of the Bishop well pad in Weld County, which is operated by the oil and gas giant Chevron.
“We just left as soon as we heard about it and came straight down,” Cole said. “And we saw this giant geyser.”
The "geyser" was an eruption of well bore fluids from the blowout.
“Like a fountain,” Ranalli said. “It kind of got misty as it came down.”
Fourteen homes in the immediate area were quickly evacuated as oily droplets fell on fields and houses. The air stank of gasoline.
Ranalli, who has worked in the oil and gas industry for more than a decade, said he’s never seen anything like it.
It took workers more than four days to get the blowout under control and stop the geyser. Chevron is solely responsible for cleaning up the site.
More than two months later, four of the homes in the evacuation zone are still not occupied. In a statement emailed to KUNC, Chevron said “we continue to work with each homeowner and agricultural property owner to address individual claims."’
Chevron wrapped up an investigation into the cause of the blowout earlier this month, blaming it on improperly assembled and installed equipment. The company pledged to do better in the future by pre-assembling equipment in advance, using better barriers in the well and reviewing wellhead procedures. But questions still linger about the public health implications of the accident and how regulators will hold the company accountable.
Competing air quality data
A few days after the blowout, state regulators started monitoring the area for benzene, an air toxin frequently used in fracking fluids that's been linked to health issues like cancer and birth defects. They found benzene levels elevated up to 9 parts per billion (ppb) about two miles downwind of the blowout. That was well below the Environmental Protection Agency’s guidelines for acute exposure and wasn’t enough to ring alarm bells for Michael Ogletree, senior director of the Air Pollution Control Division at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
“I think it’s a stretch to say that there were elevated levels (of benzene) that caused concerns,” Ogletree said.
Colorado State University researchers were also monitoring the area. When they sampled air within the emissions plume, about a mile away from the accident, Atmospheric Science professor Jeff Collett says his team estimated benzene concentrations 12 times higher than the state – up to 110 ppb.
The two sets of findings are not necessarily contradictory, according to both Ogletree and Collet. The two teams used different methodologies. They took measurements at different times and days, and under different meteorological conditions that would affect the density of the plume. The CSU team drove to the site and chased down the plume during a period when it was more concentrated.
“If we look at our peak estimate of benzene concentration here of 110 parts per billion, that's one of the higher concentrations we've seen and certainly the highest one we've ever seen a mile away from the source,” Collett said.
But health risks increase with exposure time. The problem is that no one knows how long any given person was exposed to the plume, which moved around like a column of smoke blowing in the wind.
“The plume is very dynamic,” Collett said. “The plume definitely reaches people. What we don’t have information about is how long it stays at a particular location. The fact that this plume existed for several days before it could be controlled raises the probability of exposure to more people in this area as the plume was moving around.”
Scientists are still developing a definitive body of research on how exposure to oil and gas chemicals affects human health. That’s especially true when it comes to a singular massive accident like the Galeton blowout.
“There are very few studies that could characterize the health impacts of a blowout like what you have going on in Weld County,” said Boston University epidemiologist Mary Willis. “Because it’s such an unusual circumstance, there’s virtually no studies that are able to look at these like high exposures for short periods of time.”
Willis is one of a very small group of researchers studying how oil and gas development affect human health. She says an emerging body of research shows just living near oil and gas wells increases the risk of adverse birth outcomes and childhood cancer. But that’s under normal circumstances. With an enormous blowout like what happened at Galeton, the impact could be more acute.
“You’ve got a spike in air pollution - there’s probably some sort of adverse health effect,” Willis said. “To what extent we can capture that in an epidemiologic study? We’ll see down the line.”
But state regulators have to balance this emerging science with local economic and political realities that strongly favor an active local oil and gas industry.
“We take any of these issues in particular as it pertains to public health very seriously,” Ogletree said. “I think the actions that we've taken were appropriate for the level of the event.”
Community in the aftermath
A town like Galeton is the picture of oil and gas country. Residents are used to the industry. For many, like Ranalli, it’s their livelihood. They generally support it and are not easily fazed, even in the aftermath of a disruptive accident like the Bishop well blowout.
“I feel safe,” Ranalli said. “I don’t know if I’d say (it’s a) once in a lifetime (event) because there’s always a chance it could happen again. But I, I just don’t think it’ll happen again anytime soon.”
At the same time, Ranalli still wants to see Chevron held responsible for the mess. In an email, Chevron confirmed that it is still planning to complete a total of 16 wells at the Bishop site and move them into the production phase. There should be penalties, Ranalli said, to make sure the company doesn’t let another accident happen during that process.
"They gotta have some accountability,” he said.
Chevron said the cleanup process will take at least five years to complete. What accountability could look like beyond that is still unclear. At a hearing scheduled for June 26, the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission will take up that question.
