The leak at Southern California Gas Company’s Aliso Canyon storage facility drove over 6,000 residents of the Porter Ranch community from their homes, caused two schools to be closed, and has been blamed for an assortment of ailments, including headaches and nausea.
Even though the well will still need to be sealed permanently with cement and undergo inspection by state regulators, the announcement by SoCal Gas was the first good news to be heard in 16 weeks. People will be allowed one week to return to their homes after the well is permanently sealed.
“We have temporarily controlled the natural gas flow from the leaking well and begun the process of sealing the well and permanently stopping the leak,” Jimmie Cho, a SoCalGas senior vice president, said in a statement, as reported by the Associated Press.
The gas leak is expected to cost the utility, a division of Sempra Energy, in excess of $250 to $300 million, according to their filing with the Security and Exchange Commission, reported by Digital Journal in January. However, those figures are expected to rise because they only cover the cost of capping the well and relocating about 6,400 families.
It would be impossible to calculate the probable damages from innumerable lawsuits, penalties from government agencies and the expenses to mitigate pollution, and all this is still being amassed. And these figures are based on if the plug holds, and it is in SoCal Gas’ best interests that it will hold.
The well that had the blowout is a 60-year-old well that was built to pump oil out of the porous rock a mile-and-a-half down below the Santa Susana Mountains. When the oil ran out in the 1970s, the 115-well field was used to store natural gas.
