RULISON — Firefighting crews extinguished a well fire at a drilling rig east of Rulison but were continuing Wednesday evening to try to cut off the flow of natural gas that fed the blaze.
Workers using a crane managed to attach a 20-foot pipe to the well and divert the flow of gas late Wednesday afternoon, said Donna Gray, a spokeswoman for Williams Production, the energy company responsible for the well.
Gray said with the fire out, crews were able to cool down the drilling rig substructure enough to be able to start pumping drilling mud down the well to try to cut off the flow of gas.
The well caught fire in an explosion at about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday off Garfield County Road 320, across the Colorado River from mile marker 82 of Interstate 70.
Five Cyclone Drilling employees were working on the rig at the time, but none were injured, said Susan Alvillar, also of Williams.
She said the fire never posed a threat to a home about 300 yards away.
The fire was contained to the drilling pad, which is in a farm field on property owned by the Savage family.
Alvillar said the rig crew was drilling at a depth of about 6,800 feet and experienced some high natural gas pressure. However, she said drilling crews deal with high gas pressure all the time.
“What occurred specifically we do not know, and that’s what’s under investigation,” Alvillar said. “The important thing to us is that no one was hurt.”
Mike Morgan, chief of the Rifle Fire Protection District, said the fire’s cause will be jointly investigated by the fire department, Williams and Cyclone.
Gray said she didn’t know if the well might be salvaged, or if the drilling rig would be a total loss.
“I would say its structural integrity is very questionable right now,” she said of the rig. “We were looking for it to (collapse Wednesday) and it never did.”
The fire also charred a driller’s cabin, which crews later managed to pull away from the flames.
Efforts to fight the fire Wednesday were slow going. Morgan said water supply challenges had to be overcome. Crews also built berms around the fire site to contain water flow, and they made drilling mud at a nearby rig site and trucked it to the fire.
Workers from the Halliburton drilling services company helped fight the fire, and Grand Valley Fire Protection District firefighters assisted.
Alvillar said air pollution from the fire was minimal because natural gas is a clean-burning fuel.
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E-mail Dennis Webb at dennis.webb@gjsentinel.com.
