Only Minor Injuries After Massive Gas Plant Explosion Near Orla
Alarm systems and safety protocols apparently proved their worth Thursday (Dec. 3), when a massive explosion at a natural-gas refinery near Orla resulted in no fatalities – and produced only minor injuries for two of the facility’s more than 200 employees.
The fire at the Ramsey Natural Gas Processing Plant began at about 9 a.m., and the explosion at the refinery shook the earth and sent a column of flame hundreds of feet into the sky. The explosion was felt 25 miles away, and plumes of smoke from the explosion and fire could be seen as far away as the Guadalupe Mountains and Balmorhea.
Two workers at the facility were reported to have sustained minor injuries.
Located near the New Mexico state line, the Ramsey Processing Plant is owned by Western Gas Partners and operated by Anadarko Petroleum Corporation.
Fires at the plant continued to burn for days after the explosion, but in an email Tuesday (Dec. 8), Anadarko spokesperson John Christiansen said the fires had been extinguished.
“Our next step is working with regulators to begin on-site investigations to determine the cause and assess the damage to our facilities,” Christiansen said. “Our priority will be to safely repair the existing plant and complete the expansions [underway at the time of the explosion], while being focused on bringing service back to our third-party customers as soon as possible.”
Christiansen said that personnel from across the company were working to develop “a go-forward plan to return these assets to service in a safe and timely manner.”
After last week’s explosion, plant workers and other workers from the area were evacuated to the Walter Gerrells Performing Arts Center in Carlsbad, N.M. Hwy. 285, and other roadways in Reeves County, were closed to traffic for several hours after the explosion.
The Orla facility was cited by OSHA inspectors in July, for violations related to the management of hazardous materials. Christiansen said his company had inherited the violations when it acquired the facility from a company called Nuevo Midstream last year, and he said that the issues identified by OSHA had been resolved shortly after the citations. OSHA launched an investigation into last week’s explosion, and, under law, the agency has six months to complete that investigation.
Law enforcement and emergency personnel from a range of agencies responded to the incident. DPS troopers, sheriff’s deputies from Reeves and Eddy counties, New Mexico state police and transportation department personnel and firefighters from the Otis and Carlsbad departments all responded.
Hudspeth County deputies have also assisted, providing security and keeping people away from the facility as the fire burned on.
Orla is at the center of an area that has seen a tremendous boom in oil and natural-gas production during the last six years. The boom in the Orla area – and in adjacent areas in the “Delaware Basin Play” of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico – has been enabled by the technologies of directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.