Well Control Teams On The Scene In Tioga County

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

June 21, 2012 | 3:07 PM

An update on Shell’s potential methane migration problem in Tioga County: company spokeswoman Kelly op de Weegh says a well control team has been called in to help. Here’s her emailed statement:

We have both a groundwater protection technical team and a well control team actively working on the origin and cause of the water and methane release. As a precaution, we have suspended our well completion work on the well pads in the area. The release – from and near water wells within a hunting club – is not located on any of our well sites. We are depressurizing gas wells in the larger area in order to reduce pressure subsurface. We’re also working operations around the water wells, including excavation in a secured, control zone.

StateImpact Pennsylvania profiled these well control teams – which are often based in Texas – earlier this year.