Southern California Gas Company ( SoCalGas) discovered a leak in its natural gas storage facility at Porter Ranch, a neighborhood about 25 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, California on October 23, reports Gizmodo.com.
At the time of the discovery, engineers with SoCalGas weren’t quite sure where the leak was originating but suspected a well casing had failed deep below the surface of the more than 8,000 foot deep well. The failed well was described as being “a 7-inch diameter steel pipeline that allows natural gas to be put into a naturally occurring underground storage field.”
Also at that time, the company told state and local officials it would take “several more months” to find the source and then repair the leak. However, on Saturday, Dec. 26, the company told state regulators the drilling of the primary relief well, to intercept and plug the leak, would be finished by Feb. 24, although repairs could take an additional month, reports the LA Times.
By the middle of November, according to a Digital Journal story, more than 130 families had been temporarily relocated, while SoCalGas had already received hundreds of addition requests for relocation because of the stench of the leaking methane gas.
Pinpointing the location of the leak came early Sunday morning, when after working through the night, employees reached a depth of 3,800 feet and discovered the site of the target well using a magnetic ranging tool, said Anne Silva, a spokeswoman for SoCal Gas.
An environmental disaster on a scale with the BP oil spill
Environmental scientists are comparing the scope of this event created by this gas leak to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. For the last two months, the gas leak has spewed natural gas into the atmosphere at a rate of up to 110,000 pounds an hour.
Natural gas is an excellent alternative to coal, a fossil fuel when we are talking about emissions, but in its raw form, is the same climate-destroying gas that 195 countries have been trying so hard to keep out of the atmosphere, according to another Digital Journal story.
Methane gas is a powerful short-term climate forcer and is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a heat-trapping gas in the first 20 years after it is released into the atmosphere. It is estimated that methane is leaking out of the Aliso Canyon site at a rate of about 62 million standard cubic feet, per day. (That’s the same short-term greenhouse gas impact as the emissions from 7 million cars).
But local residents in the area of the leak have more immediate problems. Headaches, nose bleeds, and breathing problems have forced the relocation of two schools for the 2016 semester and forced the evacuation of over 3,000 families and their pets to date.
The 30-year-old master-planned community of Porter Ranch has 30,000 residents, as well as schools, businesses, parks and hiking trails. It is tucked beneath the Santa Susana Mountains at the northwestern tip of the San Fernando Valley.
