A natural gas well pad owned by Gulfport Energy exploded in the small community of Antrim just before 6 pm Thursday. It caught fire, leading the Guernsey County Emergency Management Agency to evacuate those living within a half-mile radius.
Antrim’s volunteer fire chief Donald Warnock said they saw 100-foot flames, and the top had been blown off one tank on the pad. The fire burned for more than 18 hours. While no one was injured, portions of U.S.Route 22 were closed during the incident.
On Thursday night, Warnock said they did not know what materials caused the blast, and were cautious to extinguish the fire.
“Currently, the consensus is we’re going to let it burn,” he said in a video on Facebook. “The road will remain closed due to the hazards of the other tanks possibly overheating and exploding.”
In addition to Antrim’s volunteer fire department, Guernsey County EMA, Ohio State Highway Patrol, and other state agencies, as well as representatives from Gulfport Energy, which owns the well, were working with incident command.
Drones sent overhead by the Guernsey EMA showed a second tank on the pad had been breached.
By early afternoon, ODNR spokesperson Karina Cheung said in an email that the fire was out.
The EMA lifted its evacuation order, allowing residents to return home.
Cheung said they had found that the tanks were storing oil, condensate, and brine. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
Gulfport Energy did not respond to requests by The Allegheny Front for comment.
Anti-fracking activist Jenny Morgan, who tracks oil and gas accidents in Ohio, was not surprised by the incident.
“This happens nearly every day in Ohio, a gas and oil incident,” she said. “We see fires, explosions, spills, truck accidents spilling brine. And those are the reported incidents,” she said.
Morgan works with Save Ohio Parks, a non-profit that formed when Ohio started leasing its public lands for fracking in recent years. The group provided a list of accidents and violations by Gulfport Energy, including a $3.7 million settlement with EPA over pollution at its oil and gas facilities in Ohio, which included the well pad that just caught fire in Antrim.
The state has awarded the company seven bids to frack on state lands, including the nearby Egypt Valley Wildlife Area. The well pad fire occurred less than six miles from Salt Fork State Park, which the state has also leased to energy companies for fracking.
