A home explosion in Colorado that killed two people was caused by odorless, unrefined natural gas leaking from a small pipeline that was old and believed to be out of service but was still connected to a nearby well, fire officials said Tuesday.
FIRESTONE, Colo. - A red-orange fireball that killed two people and destroyed a Colorado home prompted the governor to order sweeping inspections of natural gas lines and is certain to worsen tensions in a state already divided over how to regulate the industry. Investigators blamed gas seeping from a severed underground pipeline, called a flow line, created to carry oil or gas from a well to a storage tank or other collection point.
The state's required setback, the minimum distance required between occupied buildings and wellheads, is 500 feet.
The order, issued by the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, requires energy companies to give the state Global Positioning System location data on their flow lines.
Other questions surround who should compile the maps, who should maintain them and whether they should be public.
Hickenlooper said that may require a new law, and the Legislature is unlikely to pass one this year because the session is nearly over. "I'm not compelled that it's got to be the state that controls that", Hickenlooper said. But it faces an uphill climb with other lawmakers at the State Capitol.
"We are... I wouldn't say completely confident, but we are hopeful that this will be a unique situation, a one-time occurrence", he said. Matt Jones of Louisville.
Investigators said they do not yet know when and how the line was cut.
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Colorado can not pass a new law in less than three days, and lawmakers had just five working days left on Thursday. They had more than 300 bills to settle before leaving the Capitol, including measures to fund public schools and fix crumbling highways.
Fast-growing Colorado cities sometimes overlap with highly profitable oil and gas fields.
Colorado has a Democratic House and a Republican Senate, making bipartisan agreement crucial for any measure. On a touchy subject like restricting one of the state's largest and most influential industries, consensus can be elusive.
Some Democrats weren't ruling out a hasty attempt to expand well inspections, despite the long odds of success. Investigators have said they do not know why that was not done.
The commission already has an interactive online map that provides a wealth of information about wells, but Lepore said it does not have the same kind of data on flow lines.
But in March, Colorado's second-highest court ruled the oil and gas commission can put more weight on protecting public health and the environment when it draws up rules, giving environmentalists a new tool to argue for stricter regulations.
That's a reaction that could be echoed throughout Colorado's eastern plains, where more and more often homes are being built near where wells are active or have been active.
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