In a situation report Friday afternoon, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said the Qugruk No. 2 well, 18 miles from the village of Nuiqsut, stopped leaking gas and brackish water Thursday night on its own.
The drilling rig, shut down after the blowout, froze over in temperatures in the minus mid-teens. Crews began thawing it so they could use the equipment to regain control of the well. The DEC said air monitors around the rig are no longer detecting natural gas.
The blowout released an unknown quantity of natural gas and about 42,000 gallons of drilling mud, some of which sprayed over more than three acres of tundra. A cleanup crew is awaiting word that the well has been controlled before setting out to work, the DEC said.
While drilling mud isn't as noxious as oil, it can affect tundra plants by changing the salinity and acid balance in the soil, the DEC said.
Meanwhile, in Nuiqsut, residents had a scare Friday when the village filled with the odor of natural gas. Some feared that a bubble of explosive gas from the Qugruk well had entered town but that couldn't have been the cause -- untreated methane has no detectable odor.
It turned out that a maintenance worker from the North Slope Borough's public works department had accidently left a fan on overnight at the small processing center for the village's natural gas system. The fan vented air from a building where methanethiol, the smelly but safe chemical used to add odor to gas, is stored, said Gordon Brower of the borough's planning department. A worker returned to the site Friday, switched off the fan and the village air cleared, Brower said.
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