Fire, Not Explosion, At Susquehanna Drilling Site

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.

August 24, 2012 | 11:14 AM

A fire at a Susquehanna County well pad was more contained than initially thought, according to the Times-Tribune:

LATHROP TWP. – A late Tuesday night gas well fire originally reported in Susquehanna County as an explosion may have just been a valve fire.
Kristi Gittins, vice president of public affairs for Chief Oil & Gas, which operates the Ellwood Phelps 2H well pad in Lathrop Twp., said, “There was no explosion.”
However, a valve did catch on fire in one of the separator units, Ms. Gittins said, and workers did have the well shut down in under 30 minutes.
Colleen Connolly, spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said that DEP personnel were on scene Wednesday morning…
She added that three wells are located on the Phelps well pad site, and all of them have been shut down until the one unit can be replaced and the others re-inspected.

Chief has incurred seven violations at the Phelps well pad, according to StateImpact Pennsylvania’s Shale Play App. Find out more information about the well by clicking to the site.