Attempt to be made Sunday to put out fire at Saskatchewan gas pumping station

PRUDHOMME, Sask. – An attempt is to be made Sunday to turn off gas feeding a fire at a remote natural gas pumping station in Saskatchewan that prompted an evacuation on Saturday.

RCMP say there were no injuries when an explosion started the fire at a TransGas facility near Prudhomme, a small community northeast of Saskatoon.

TransGas is a subsidiary of Crown-owned SaskEnergy, and company spokesman Dave Burdeniuk said four homes in the area remain evacuated and the residents are staying with relatives or in hotels.

READ MORE: Natural gas continues to burn at TransGas facility NE of Saskatoon

Burdeniuk says automated equipment shut the facility down and Safety Boss, a Calgary company that specializes in putting out oil and gas fires, has been called in to help extinguish the blaze.

Burdeniuk says the flames are reaching about 20 metres into the air, and SaskEnergy has asked for a no-fly zone to be imposed around the site as a precaution.

Burdeniuk says workers ventured into the flames twice during the night and equipment is being brought in so that an attempt can be made to turn off the gas at the wellhead.

SaskEnergy has been “arranging for things like water taker trucks, because as they do approach and have to literally work in the flames, they want a wall of water,” he said Sunday, noting that water can’t be used to put out a natural gas fire.

“There are four homes that remain evacuated – that’s a total of 13 people. We’re going to be able to tell them, hopefully but early afternoon, whether they need to stay away for another day,” Burdeniuk said.

Air quality testing in the area is “not picking up any contaminants at all … the flame is burning up all the natural gas.” he said.

Burdeniuk said it appears the flames were sparked when there was a release of gas at the wellhead from one of seven underground caverns at the site. The caverns, he explained, are used to store natural gas for the winter when demand for heating is greater.

The caverns are about a kilometre-and-a-half down and are carved with water in underground salt deposits. Each cavern is about as tall as a 12-storey office building.

Burdeniuk said Saturday he was unsure about whether there was a risk of the gas igniting underground.

“We don’t know what might happen but it should just burn at the wellhead. That’s usually how these things happen when they do occur,” he said.

Burdeniuk said the facility would normally be staffed during a weekday, but was designed to be automated on evenings and weekends when demand for natural gas is low. When extremely low temperatures occur, however, he said a staff member sleeps at the site to make sure everything goes smoothly.

“We work very hard on maintenance at these facilities and they are designed to operate in all conditions in Saskatchewan. It’s too early to say what happened and how this occurred,” he said.

“We’ve been operating these facilities since the mid-1960s and have never had a serious injury out at a facility. And incidents like this are rare.”

No customers have lost service, he said.