worried about csg, don't be...., page-9

GPS76,

It's just semantics really. How far do you have to go before it's classified 'contamination?' Contaminants are all around us, in the air we breathe and the water we drink.

The casing failure occurred while they were bringing syngas to the surface under pressure so syngas would have escaped into the formation at that point.

The syngas includes benzene and toluene. From an engineering point of view this means there was a brief uncontrolled release of contaminants into an aquifer that locals draw water from.

It would have been quickly shut down so the total release would have been very minor. You'd expect only traces to show up in monitoring bores nearby. This is exactly what happened.

Overall the level of contamination would have been decently less than, say, a fuel tanker overturning on a highway and spilling diesel into the soil. And that's something that happens from time to time, and nobody cares much about the environmental impact.

But the way DERM handled this case was disgusting, and it led directly to public hysteria fanned by the media.