Shell's Tioga County Methane Geyser Captured On Video

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 28, 2012 | 3:43 PM

A group called the Responsible Drilling Alliance has obtained video of the geyser of water and methane that shot out of the ground last week near a Shell natural gas drilling site in Union Township, Tioga County. Due to the geyser, methane bubbling into a nearby creek and gas spotted in a private water well, Shell issued a voluntary evacuation request to people living within a mile of the well. The Department of Environmental Protection is investigating the incident.

The video was taken on Tuesday, June 19^th. RDA’s Ralph Kisberg said the person who filmed the footage wants to remain anonymous, but identified one of the men speaking in the video as Canton Fire Chief Kim Jennings. In a brief phone interview with StateImpact Pennsylvania, Jennings confirmed that fact.
“I’ve never seen a geyser like that,” he said.
The flume gradually decreased in size over the course of the week, as Shell flared off gas at three nearby well clusters to bring down subsurface pressure. Company spokeswoman Kelly op de Weegh said the flow has now completely stopped.