Facts

Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” involves injecting an acidic solution at high pressure into a well in subterranean rocks in order to create deep, under-ground fissures and release oil, natural gas, geothermal energy, or water. As fluid and vapor are released in this process, the gaseous returns are vented and collected in a tank.

At a fracking site in Alberta in the late 1990s, a fire broke out when the collected gases escaped from their tank and alit on a diesel engine sitting two feet away. Allegedly, the tank was the wrong kind of vessel for flammable gas storage, as it was not equipped with any kind of venting mechanism to release pressure in the tank, and this led to the leakage. The placement of the engine near the tank and the crowded layout of the fracking site made it difficult for firefighters to maneuver around the blaze. The firefighters lost precious moments when the fire truck stalled, and making matters worse, they may not have had enough training, fire retardant, or water at their disposal in order to quickly extinguish the fire. All told, the fire caused more than $3.3 million in damage to equipment, as well as a loss of profit due to the shut-down and clean-up operations required after the fire.

At the time of this case, the regulations governing fracking in Alberta included a schematic drawing of how a fracking site should be laid out to prevent fires and to allow emergency personnel to respond to fires. The design requirements at these sites were of particular importance in this case: Flammable vapors captured from wells were required to be properly stored seven meters from equipment such as diesel engines that might cause those vapors to ignite.

These requirements would have been common knowledge among all parties on the job site. However, there was also an unspoken norm that workers on fracking sites would be blacklisted from future jobs if they raised safety concerns that might slow or halt production. The site in this case was operated by one company, owned by several others, staffed by engineers and operations consultants from three other companies, and two companies were also brought in to provide safety services. Any of these companies and their employees may have recognized the myriad safety violations that led to this fire, but none of them raised alarm.