A fracking well pad exploded and caught fire Jan. 2 in Antrim, Guernsey County. The fire reportedly started at around 5:30 p.m. and burned for 18 hours, stemming from a storage tank on site.
The Guernsey County Dispatch received a 911 call at approximately 5:34 p.m. Upon arrival at the scene, Antrim Volunteer Fire Chief Donald Warnock’s team assessed the incident and made decisions about the best course of action.
“First thing is we get eyes on it to see what's happened,” Warnock said. “And then the decisions made, they go in order of life safety. So the first question that we have to ask is, has anyone been hurt?”
Warnock's team noticed a house located northeast of the well pad. The team assessed the residents, who had no injuries, and then asked them to evacuate the premises.
The fire department shut down U.S. Route 22, the highway located next to the explosion, and declared an evacuation for the half-mile radius surrounding the well pad at the request of Gulfport Energy, the fracking pads operating company.
The fire department decided the safest environmental decision was to allow the fire to burn out naturally, concluding there was no way to put the fire out without increasing the risk of environmental release.
The fracking pad, located 5.7 miles away from Salt Fork State Park, was built in 2012 and is owned and operated by Gulfport Energy, an Oklahoma City-based oil and gas company that operates mainly across Eastern Ohio.
Gulfport has had extensive legal issues in the past due to its handling of fracking well pads. According to a settlement with the EPA in 2020, Gulfport was found to violate the Clean Air Act within some of its fracking locations in Ohio.
“Gulfport will pay a $1.7 million penalty and invest approximately $2 million in improvements at 17 well pads in eastern Ohio to help reduce volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions by approximately 313 tons per year,” a press release from the EPA reads.
Among those 17 well pads was the Groh well pad in Guernsey County, the site of the recent explosion.
House Bill 507 was signed into law by Gov. Mike DeWine in January 2023. The law requires the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to allow the sale of public lands for fracking.
Already, fracking bids have been approved for lands located in Zepernick and Valley Run wildfire areas, as well as parts of land in Salt Fork State Park.
Save Ohio Parks, a volunteer organization which fights to keep fracking off public lands in Ohio, has raised numerous safety concerns with fracking near state parks.
Steering Committee Member of Save Ohio Parks Jenny Morgan claimed the fracking industry is inherently accident prone, and every well has countless possibilities of incidents.
“It cannot be regulated into safety,” Morgan said. “And so to have it 1,000 feet from these public natural spaces where our children are recreating is so irresponsible.”
Save Ohio Parks fights to inform citizens of the dangers that fracking poses to the local environment. Founding Member of Save Ohio Parks Roxanne Groff cited methane, radium 226 and 228, propane, butane, hydrogen sulfide emissions and isotopes all to be within the contents of common fracking tanks.
The group also raised concerns with ODNR, claiming it lacks inspectors as well as an effective response to fracking incidents.
“These well pads and injection well sites get maybe every six months an inspector (to show) up,” Groff said. “There's supposed to be an inspector on site while a drilling operation is happening.”
In addition to the Antrim Volunteer Fire Dept., Gulfport officials, an ODNR official and Guernsey County Emergency Management Agency were on site following the explosion. The individuals concluded no one was hurt, and there was no environmental release caused by the explosion and subsequent fire.
Spokesperson for ODNR Karina Cheung said the Division of Oil & Gas Resources Management has spearheaded the investigation into the cause of the fire, which is still unknown.
“The Division has regulatory authority over the site and will work alongside other agencies to determine the cause of the fire,” Cheung wrote in an email. “The well pad remains shut down and inactive.”
