Fire

Two homeowners in the foothills north of Los Angeles where the Creek fire started earlier this month reported seeing an electric transmission line fall into the brush and spark, fueling speculation that a Southern California Edison Co. (SCE) power line may have caused one of the major fires that have destroyed thousands of acres and infrastructure.* However, these earlier reports as to the start of the Creek fire in Southern California were found to be inaccurateas the transmission line equipment in question belongs to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), and the city-run utility said that equipment did not spark or go down in the fire.

A number of small oilfields in Ventura County, CA, remained shut in Friday as the Thomas Firespread into Ojai and the unincorporated areas surrounding the city of Ventura, with major producer Aera Energy LLC closing down all of its operations.

Powerful Santa Ana winds hit Los Angeles Monday overnight, fanning a wildfire in the foothills 20 miles northwest of downtown and leaving thousands of electrical customers without power. Initial reports from Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) indicated no major outages on the area system.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has opened a probe into whether infrastructure maintenance in Sonoma and Napa counties by Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. (PG&E) played a role in the wildfires.

A forest and grass fire, spreading rapidly out of the Rocky Mountains and onto the plains in southwestern Alberta, has prompted safety shut-ins of wells producing sour natural gas laced with hydrogen sulphide.

As four lightning-ignited wildfires burned with varying intensity across parts of northwest Colorado Monday, oil and natural gas operators shut in parts of their operations as a precautionary step, federal and industry sources told NGI.

Two workers were hospitalized and one was missing following a fire Thursday evening at the Phillips 66-operated Paradis Pipeline Station, which is a 30-minute drive west of New Orleans.

A transformer exploded and caught fire on Sunday at Talen Energy Corp.’s 538 MW natural gas-fired power plant in Southeast Pennsylvania. No injuries were reported. The explosion occurred outside of the the building. It took firefighters about an hour to contain the fire and the plant remains closed for an investigation into the cause, a company spokesman said. TheLower Mount Bethel power plant is located in Northampton County.

A fire still raged on Tuesday consuming 36 oil and produced water storage tanks in New Mexico at a drilling site owned and operated by Tulsa, OK-based WPX Energy. Thirty of the tanks are used for temporary oil storage.