The Lodgepole blowout

A sour gas well ran wild for 68 days and the smell reached Winnipeg

At half past two in the afternoon on 17 October 1982, a well about 20 kilometres west of the hamlet of Lodgepole blew out of control. What came up was sour gas carrying 25 per cent hydrogen sulphide, 250,000 parts per million, which is lethal at a tiny fraction of that. Two workers were killed. The well burned and vented for over two months before specialists killed it on 23 December, and for weeks the rotten-egg smell of it was reported as far away as Saskatoon and Winnipeg, and in the cabins of aircraft flying over. The public inquiry that followed rewrote how sour gas is drilled in this province. It is the reason every rig out here now carries the plan it does.