A leak, first discovered on Oct. 23, at a natural gas storage facility in California will reportedly take several months to fix. The scale of the leak was initially underestimated and all the initial efforts to fix it have failed. A new plan is now being implemented to fix the leak however, it may be several months before the latest effort to fix the leak is completed.
Since it was discovered, the actual amount of gas leaking has varied on a daily basis. The bulk of the gas is methane. Heath officials claimed that the concentration of the gas at current levels was not injurious to health.
However, more than 2,000 residents have already moved away from the site to temporary shelters. Even the FAA has declared that no planes are to fly over the site of the leak - for fear that the sparks from the engines might combust with the methane gas, according to Time.
The Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) has been trying to fix the leak from the time that it was first discovered. They first tried small-scale local efforts, however, when it was clear that none of these efforts were really working, they were forced to choose a new strategy - that of digging a new relief well to replace the one with the leak.
Digging this kind of relief well is said to be a better plan. However, it will take several months before anyone will be able to tell, as the process of digging the relief well may take a few months, according to NPR.
The gas storage facility involved is the Aliso Canyon facility. This particular facility is a part of a series of such facilities in America that have been built over old oil fields that are no longer being used. Once the oil has run out of these fields, most of the facilities are left to be abandoned. Companies such as SoCalGas have found a new use for these old oil fields, storing their natural gas in these reservoirs for many decades now.
The way that these wells are used is fairly simple. They fill the field with natural gas over the summer and then, in winter they take the gas out to supply to their customers, who may use it for heating and other purposes. There are said to more than 300 such old wells that are now being used as gas reservoirs today, according to Wired.
