Fire

Federal regulators late on Friday were preparing to take over the investigation of a massive explosion and fire on a portion of a Texas Eastern Transmission mainline in Westmoreland County, PA, that left one person severely burned and caused significant property damage in the area.

Federal regulators late on Friday were preparing to take over the investigation of a massive explosion and fire on a portion of a Texas Eastern Transmission mainline in Westmoreland County, PA, that left one person severely burned and caused significant property damage in the area.

Federal regulators late on Friday were preparing to take over the investigation of a massive explosion and fire on a portion of a Texas Eastern Transmission mainline in Westmoreland County, PA, that left one person severely burned and caused significant property damage in the area.

Federal regulators late on Friday were preparing to take over the investigation of a massive explosion and fire on a portion of a Texas Eastern Transmission mainline in Westmoreland County, PA, that left one person severely burned and caused significant property damage in the area.

Unseasonably warm and windy conditions in the Bakken Shale in North Dakota sparked two grass fires on Sunday in McKenzie County, a top oil producing area, including one near a Oneok Partnersnatural gas compressor station southeast of Keene. A Oneok spokesperson told NGI’s Shale Dailythe company is investigating the fire’s cause, which consumed about 900 acres before being brought under control. The incident had no impact on operations. Another fire reportedly resulted from target shooting, authorities said.

An oilfield chemistry facility owned by Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s Lubrizol Corp. was destroyed by a fire on Tuesday in Southwest Pennsylvania. Eight people, including firefighters and Lubrizol employees, were treated for non-life threatening injuries.

Ohio regulators have fined Statoil ASA $223,000 for a series of violations they discovered after completing a review of an explosion and fire that occurred last year at an eight-well pad operated by the company in Monroe County (see Shale Daily, June 30, 2014).

Although the electric side of the utility business gets the most attention as both a potential source and vulnerable victim of wildfires and the high winds that accompany them, natural gas utilities also have a stake, albeit smaller, in the western fire wars that have been worse this year because of the prolonged droughts in California and other states.

No injuries were reported after a Gulf of Mexico drilling platform offshore Louisiana caught fire early Friday, forcing the evacuation of 28 people, the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) said.