FLAMING OIL TORCH

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 December 1929, Page 10

FLAMING OIL TORCH

WELL BURNS OVER WO DAYS. • ’ ' y ■ ' ’’ ’■■■ '■ For more than a hundred day? “the torch of Mpreni? ft geyser of pij, has illiimmated the countryside, even to the pppltul, 60 mile? UW a Y from ‘‘Well 160? MorpUi^tnndard,” says a September message from the ; New Yprk “Times’” C9rr©Bp.9Ud§Jlt ’at Bukharest? \ .All efforts to extinguish the flames have been im vain so far, and thousands of dollars’ worth" of oil and gas are,being consumed eypry day, many lives have been, lost a hd there re_ mains the dangdik of the fire spreading to hundreds nf nearby wells. Moreni is a small- yfHasp in thQ heart of the Rumanian district, Which yearly produces of crude petroleum, one-sixth of .the

world’s output. After yeqrs of sur- - face exploitation, the largp companies,, including the standard, fhe Rpmanor American and the Dutph „Shgll, recently began extensive subterranean dig; ging, and it’was from Well I® 0 ’ m>w a roaring pillar of flames and that the Standard had antjpiPdted h- ; huge supply a little pwßd than fbree months ago.. The digging W .haehT completed, pumps and pipes h a 4 h e en laid and everything : wps prepared for the first gush from a depth of 1,453

iiieti*es. *’ r '' ' Everything’ went well, albeit the. initial burst was so terrific'that thp villages and engineers, although used to happenings of this kind, were anxious. The pressure was 200. atmospheres, and the first shock, carried ' light machinery and structural .scaf-- .. folds hundreds of feet into the air to be scattered n? sp mnch dPbris; Five minutes later, workmen and engineers ran in all directions. The Pillar of gas and, oij had. become ope pf fine and 1 smpfce, so forbidding that it was futile 1 to attempt to get anywhere near it. J The steel and wooden towers of six <

nearby wells ignited almost instantly and jvere consumed or transformed into writhing metal skeletons. ' While 1 the red, black and yellow torch of Mpreni is seen day and night within a rafiids of many miles? 40,000.--00 cubic feet of gas have been destroyed since the well caught fire. All

.methods Of extinguishing the bla?e /have so far proved,-usejess. } First an attempt was made to put. .out the fire by means of a huge irpp hell weighing many tons, hut. this was blown into the air and shatter.eh and torn as. if it had been a paper hg.t. 'The next step was to tunnel in order that the gas and oil might be diverted to a neXv course- The first tupnel was blpwn in, or blown out, and four workmen were killed. A second tunnel was likewise blown in nud three mpre workers were, killed- *. ' , , For the third time engineers are

now directing the work of digging a tunnel 250 metres' away from-’J-the burping well and §pme SP rostra deepThey hope to divert the underground gases, before they pan be .ignited,, and thus not only save the well itself, but practically the entire district.' .. .. . All sorts of fantastic plaps \ have been received from Whb declared they know how to extinguish, the firp. . They suggest pumping vine? gan 'throwing usphyxUtipg bombs arid employing’ many sorts of intricate machibpry to save the well. The danger is, however, that should thp' firp be put out, the entire valley would be-, come a charged bomb, which might explode at any time and entirely annihilate the valley. The hope , that remains is for some engineer to devise a means fpr cutting the “main” and thus arresting'the flow of gas until new efforts and methods of digging can be employed. .