Pipeline installation underway

From the Editor of Morgan County USA, September 21, 2020

A Mountaineer Gas pipeline in Martinsburg, West Virginia exploded this afternoon at about 3:15 p.m. on the Sentz family property on Salvation Road. Anne and Benjamin Sentz were working from home and watching workers dig a trench for a new pipeline that was running by an old pipeline that had gas in it.

“My husband and I were working from home today,” Anne Sentz told Morgan County USA. “We were standing in our kitchen looking out our window watching them dig. We kept an eye on the people doing the work ever since they started. We happened to be watching them dig. They were digging really deep. We heard a bang like they hit metal. All of a sudden there was a loud explosion. Pressurized gas shot up 80 to 100 feet into the air. Six or seven workers just scattered.”

“My husband grabbed me and said – we need to get out of here. I grabbed one dog and he grabbed the other. We just ran to our car. While we were on our way to our car, a worker came to the front of our house and said we needed to go. We just left. I left the door open. We were out of there in 30 seconds. We just drove away. We didn’t know if our house was going to explode or what. We kept on driving. I drove all the way to Shepherdstown.”

“I called 911. They had already received a call about the incident. They put me through to the fire department. I talked to someone from the fire department. They told me they would give me a call when it was safe to come back to the house. It’s 5:30 and we are still not back. We haven’t received the call yet that it is all clear.”

“They had to evacuate in a 330 foot radius we were told. Our neighbors to the right of us were evacuated. Maybe the person across the road was evacuated. I’m not exactly sure how many people were evacuated. Maybe three homes.”

Anne Sentz said that Mountaineer Gas has an easement through their property that is decades old. “It predates our ownership of the property. It predates the house being built. We didn’t grant them the easement.”

“There had been an old pipeline that runs through our yard. We are not even a natural gas customer. It just happens to run through our property. It was being used by Mountaineer Gas to deliver gas to other customers.”

“We were told by Mountaineer Gas months ago that they were upgrading this old line for safety reasons to put in this larger pipeline. They have been digging all day. It’s my understanding that they are not removing the old pipeline while they are putting the new one in.

“Then you have two pipelines running side by side – an old and a new one. And when they were digging the trench to put the new pipeline in, they hit the old pipeline and that appeared to cause the explosion.”

“I do not believe anyone was hurt. But we left within 30 seconds of it happening. I don’t know. It seems to me from my observation that everyone standing around the site got up and ran away. There was no fire. We haven’t been allowed back onto our property to see if there was property damage. I just don’t know.”

“I’ve been watching this operation for a while,” Sentz said. “I am trying to figure out what is going on. The gas company hasn’t been as transparent as they should be to the property owners and neighbors and people affected by this.”

“I was just at the site at 5 p.m. and could still smell the gas,” said Tracy Cannon. “I’ve been watching the pipeline construction in the Eastern Panhandle closely for two years now. I’ve often been concerned about what I saw. Mountaineer Gas Company has been installing new pipeline on Salvation Road without removing the old pipeline first. I was worried that something could go wrong, but I’m still shocked that this happened. Thankfully no one was injured.”

New pipeline alongside questionable old pipeline

Alberta Canada Earthquakes & Fracking

Groundbreaking Study Shows Direct Link Between Fracking and Earthquakes

From an Article by Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch.com, November 18, 2016

IMAGE: Seismicity of northwestern Alberta, Canada for the period 1985−2016. The size of the dot correlates to the magnitude of the earthquake. Xuewei Bao and David Eaton

Geoscientists have revealed a direct link between hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and earthquakes in Canada. The groundbreaking study found that earthquakes can even occur intermittently over several months after drilling operations end.

According to a new study published in the journal Science, seismic activity in northwest Alberta over the last five years were likely caused by fracking, in which chemically-laden water and sand is injected at high pressures into shale formations to release oil or gas.

The article, Fault activation by hydraulic fracturing in western Canada, was authored by Xuewei Bao and David Eaton from the University of Calgary.

For the study, the researchers mapped out more than 900 seismic events near Duvernay shale drilling sites around the Fox Creek area dating back to December 2014. This included a 4.8-magnitude earthquake in January in northern Alberta that’s likely the strongest fracking-induced earthquake ever.

They found that there were two main causes for quakes. The first was immediately from pressure increases as the fracking process occurred. “We were able to show that what was driving that was very small changes in stress within the Earth that were produced by the hydraulic fracturing operations,” Eaton told DeSmogBlog.

The second cause comes from pressure changes from lingering fracking fluid. According to the Globe and Mail, a fault shakes when fluids infiltrate tiny spaces in the porous rock and increases pore pressure. “If that pressure increases, it can have an effect on the frictional characteristics of faults,” Eaton told the Globe and Mail. “It can effectively jack open a fault if the pore pressure increases within the fault itself and make it easier for a slip to initiate.”

Per the study abstract, “Patterns of seismicity indicate that stress changes during operations can activate fault slip to an offset distance of >1 km, whereas pressurization by hydraulic fracturing into a fault yields episodic seismicity that can persist for months.”

Eaton told DeSmogBlog that a “majority of injection-induced earthquakes are actually linked to hydraulic fracturing” in Canada.

The new study is not related to the recent spate of induced earthquakes currently rocking midwestern states, most notoriously Oklahoma. Those quakes are not likely caused by fracking itself but from the injection of large volumes of oil and gas wastewater into deep underground wells.

“The key message is that the primary cause of injection-induced seismicity in Western Canada is different from the central United States,” Eaton told the New York Times, adding that their study could help regulators craft guidelines to avoid more human-caused earthquakes. 

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It’s Official: Injection of Fracking Wastewater Caused Kansas’ Biggest Earthquake

From Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch.com, October 14, 2016

The largest earthquake ever recorded in Kansas—a 4.9 magnitude temblor that struck northeast of Milan on Nov. 12, 2014—has been officially linked to wastewater injection into deep underground wells, according to new research from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The epicenter of that extremely rare earthquake struck near a known fracking operation.

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Oklahoma’s Latest Fracking-Related Earthquake Sparks Demand for Withdrawal of Oil and Gas Leases

From the Center for Biological Diversity, EcoWatch.com, November 8, 2016

Sunday’s earthquake that damaged dozens of buildings near an oil and gas pipeline hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, is further proof that fracking and wastewater injection are too dangerous to people and property to be allowed to continue, the Center for Biological Diversity said Monday. In May, the organization called on the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to withdraw 11 proposed oil and gas leases in Oklahoma because of earthquake risks. The BLM has yet to respond to that request.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net