Damaged Bradford County wellhead is replaced

HARRISBURG -- Workers were able to replace a damaged wellhead on a Bradford County gas well last night, following last week's blowout and wastewater spill.

Officials from Chesapeake Energy, who operate the Leroy Township drilling site, announced the completed repairs Monday night. The malfunctioning wellhead was part of the cause of last week's accident, according to Chesapeake.

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While briny wastewater spilled into a nearby creek tributary during the early hours of the incident, both the company and state Department of Environmental Protection have reported no significant impacts so far. DEP officials said yesterday that they did not have results yet from last week's water sampling, and were doing additional testing this week.

As investigations by DEP and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials get underway, Chesapeake said its employees will continue to work with regulators on determining the cause of the equipment failure.

Neither state nor federal environmental regulators have indicated what potential penalties could be imposed on the company, but both are seeking information on what happened and the chemicals in the water that was released.

First published on April 26, 2011 at 9:40 am