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Oil Well Killing Accident and Explosion

While a field crew was "killing" an old oil well, a massive volume of natural gas was suddenly and unexpectedly released from the well head piping. Shortly thereafter, the subsequent gas/air mixture was ignited, resulting in a brief, but extremely intense, fireball. One person was killed, several more were severely burned and the nearby equipment was totaled. The oil company hired APTECH to assist its staff engineers with a cause and origin evaluation. We photographed and diagrammed the accident site and piping, provided immediate advice on site preservation (to avoid future claims of evidence spoilation) and performed a detailed examination of the pipe fittings and potential gas release points. Our reconstruction of the events leading up to this accident was aided by an engineering mechanics analysis of the forces applied to the piping by the crew and their hand tools.

Satish Almaula		Plant failure and root cause analysis; process and design engineering analysis; process technology development and testing; plant engineering, operations, maintenance and safety management; plant and process control system management.

Kimble Clark, Ph.D.		Failure analysis, heat transfer & thermodynamics, process plant equipment failures & explosions, fuel science, combustion, industrial fires and explosions.

Richard Schreiber, P.E.		Machinery and mechanical device failure analysis, mechanical testing, combustion and heat transfer, industrial fires and explosions, gas appliances.

Eric Sullivan, P.E.		Metallurgy, welding, failure analysis, fire and explosion investigations, equipment, piping.