BROOKS, Alta. (CP) -- Thick, black smoke could be seen from the Trans-Canada Highway on Tuesday after an oil well exploded near this southern Alberta town, killing one worker and injuring three others.
Officials immediately evacuated campers at Tillebrook Provincial Park and two families living near the well site, which is five kilometres southeast of the town of 11,000.
Although the well's official emergency planning zone calls for an evacuation within a 40-metre radius of the well, Celtic officials said in the release they elected to expand that radius to 1.5 kilometres as ''an additional precaution ... to ensure the health and safety of those in the area.''
That meant an evacuation for nearby residents and for about 100 campers at Tillebrook Provincial Park.
Brooks Mayor Don Weisbeck, who watched the well spew flames six metres into the air from a mere kilometre away, was relieved there was no evacuation of his community.
But he admitted to some nervousness when he first heard about the explosion.
''You could smell the sulphur,'' he said. ''You could smell the gas burning, but it wasn't a putrid smell or anything like that.
''Anytime you hear sour gas you get a little nervous.''
The explosion happened as a contract company was working on the new oil well, which has a sour gas content, to bring it into service, said Darin Barter, spokesman with the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board.
However, he stressed the sour gas content was very low, just 1,200 parts per million.
''Gas isn't being vented into the atmosphere,'' he explained. ''What's happening is it's being burned off.''
One area resident was furious that officials did not evacuate his young family right away.
Miles Fritzler said he rushed home from work after realizing his wife and children - a two-year-old girl and two boys, aged six and eight - were still at home even though their neighbours had been evacuated by police.
Fritzler said his wife was mowing the lawn and the children were playing on a trampoline when he and an emergency escort arrived to get them out of the area.
''I'm furious,'' he said. ''We obviously have a very poor evacuation system.''
RCMP Const. Kerry Doran said every effort possible was made to get everyone out.
''Local police did their best under the situation and considering the limited resources,'' Doran said.
The dead worker, identified by RCMP as 23-year-old Warren Fick from Lloydminster on the Saskatchewan boundary, was working right in the vicinity of the well, possibly right over top of it, Barter said.
The three injured workers were taken to hospital but were reported to have just minor injuries.
The well is owned by Calgary-based Celtic Exploration Ltd. [TSX:CLT], which had contracted Precision Drilling to complete it.
By late Tuesday, emergency crews had managed to get the fire under control.
Well-control and fire-control experts were at the site, Barter said, along with Brooks RCMP and the Palliser Health Authority. The energy board was co-ordinating the response and investigation.
Barter said there was no early indication of the cause. ''We're not sure exactly what happened at this point.''
Alberta Environment spokeswoman Erin Gregg was also at the scene.
''Our role is basically to monitor the air quality and feed that information to the EUB so we act really in a support role in this situation,'' she said. ''We provide any information we can on the air quality to the EUB so they can take appropriate action.''
Brooks, which is surrounded by hundreds of wells within a 50-kilometre radius, isn't the only community that is nervous these days about gas wells.
Last December, an Acclaim Energy oil well west of Edmonton leaked for a month before being extinguished. The initial blowout sparked the evacuation of more than 500 nearby residents.
And in Calgary, health officials recently sought permission to challenge an EUB decision that could allow drilling of four sour gas wells at the city's southeastern edge.
The EUB ruled that Compton Petroleum Corp. can drill the wells safely even though a leak of sour gas can be fatal for those exposed to it in high concentrations.
A storm of controversy followed the ruling. Residents and environmentalists worried it sets a precedent for drilling gas wells near urban centres, while industry said the decision shows the wells can be developed safely.
Update
A spokesman for Alberta's Energy and Utilities Board says an oil well blowout in southern Alberta has been capped.
Darin Barter says well control experts Boots and Coots secured the Celtic Exploration Ltd. site by extinguishing the fire and stopping the flow from the well.
That means residents from about a dozen houses evacuated Tuesday night will be allowed to return home.
Barter says there has been a lot of misinformation in the community indicating that a sour gas well was involved, but he says that's not the case.
He says the actual sour gas content was extremely low - less than one-half of 1% - and the evacuation was purely precautionary.
Two injured workers were treated and released, and one man is still in hospital Wednesday in stable condition.
(c) The Canadian Press 2005
