An accident at an oil or gas rig, possibly a "fracking" well, damaged a ten inch gas pipeline causing a huge explosion, forcing the whole town of Milford Texas to evacuate.
The official story doesn't make sense. Even the dumbest frackers in Texas aren't dumb enough to drill into a gas pipeline. It looks like someone is covering up something dangerous and possibly illegal that they did. From the video the drilling rig can be clearly seen along with trucks servicing the operation. One truck is clearly on fire. The drilling rig and the trucks are adjacent to the source of the flames, not on top of it, so there's no way they drilled into the pipeline. Correction upon review: Perhaps they damaged it with one of the trucks. The drilling operation is dangerously close to the pipeline. This is a developing story and I appreciate the crowd sourcing investigation. Multiple elements of the official story are not adding up.
MILFORD, Texas (AP) — A drilling crew punctured a gas pipeline in North Texas on Thursday and triggered an explosion that led emergency personnel to evacuate a nearby town, according to the Ellis County Sheriff's Office.Apparently Chevron is letting the fire burn itself out after closing shut down valves. Fear of the heat setting a second pipeline ablaze prompted total evacuation of the town of 700 people.Officials said the explosion occurred about 9:30 a.m. at a rig near Milford, about 40 miles south of Dallas. A Chevron crew punctured a 10-inch line, and company spokesman Justin Higgs said the accident involves a liquefied petroleum gas pipeline.
Ellis County officials also asked people on FM 308 from Milford back toward Italy and Maypearl to leave because a second line was reportedly in danger of another explosion. Chevron is expected to let the highly-pressurized gas leak out through the inferno until there is no more gas left in the pipeline segment.TXSHARON has the best possible explanation I have found for what might have triggered the explosion. Workers may have been trying to tie the well directly into the existing pipeline without shutting the pipeline down and clearing out the potentially explosive gas.Students and school staff were evacuated to the neighboring town of Italy. Nearby residents with respiratory issues were advised to remain indoors. Firefighters were available from nearby cities but there were no firefighters on the scene as of noon local time.
It looks like some kind of natural gas facility or drilling operation in the photo.Update:According to the new, this is an active drill site and the explosion occurred when they punctured the pipeline. However, that can’t be correct because they would not be drilling through a pipeline. I’m wondering it this was one of those hot tap operations where they try to hook up a new pipeline to an existing pipeline.
TJ and other commenters rightly note that if the gas line that exploded really was an LPG line, not a natural gas line, then it would make no sense to hot tap into it. Natural gas does not compress to a liquid at environmental temperatures, so it is completely incompatible with LPG. In that case, something the workers did, not the drilling itself, damaged the pipeline.
2nd update from River Rover in the comments:
That's what's called a work over rig.-----end updates----
It's used to run hot oil down an oil well to melt the parrafin accumulated on the walls of the production casing (pipe the oil/gas comes to the surface in). Looks to me like things must of gone bad during set up ops. I might be wrong.
Chevron, of course, is mum about what the workers were doing at the time of the explosion.
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