natural gas
Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...
well fire at
Gassi Touil
Gassi Touil is a large natural gas field in the Sahara Desert region of Grand Erg Oriental of Algeria, within the commune of Hassi Messaoud. It is an outlying part of the Berkine Basin, itself a region of the Ghadames Basin that extends into Tuni ...
in the
Sahara Desert
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static electricity
Static electricity is an imbalance of electric charges within or on the surface of a material or between materials. The charge remains until it is able to move away by means of an electric current or electrical discharge. Static electricity is na ...
when a pipe at the GT2 well ruptured on November 6, 1961, the
Phillips Petroleum Company
Phillips Petroleum Company was an American oil company incorporated in 1917 that expanded into petroleum refining, marketing and transportation, natural gas gathering and the chemicals sectors. It was Phillips Petroleum that first found oil in the ...
/OMNIREX/COPEFA-owned well produced more than of natural gas per second, whose flame rose between and . The flame was seen from orbit by
John Glenn
John Herschel Glenn Jr. (July 18, 1921 – December 8, 2016) was an American Marine Corps aviator, engineer, astronaut, businessman, and politician. He was the third American in space, and the first American to orbit the Earth, circling ...
during the flight of ''
Friendship 7
Mercury-Atlas 6 (MA-6) was the first crewed American orbital spaceflight, which took place on February 20, 1962. Piloted by astronaut John Glenn and operated by NASA as part of Project Mercury, it was the fifth human spaceflight, preceded by Sov ...
'' on February 20, 1962. The blowout and fire were estimated to have consumed enough gas to supply Paris for three months, burning per day.
After burning almost six months, the fire was extinguished by well fire expert
Boots & Coots Boots & Coots was a well control company. It was founded in 1978 by Asger "Boots" Hansen and Ed "Coots" Matthews, veterans of the Red Adair Service and Marine Company. The two companies extinguished approximately one third of the more than 700 oil ...
well control company. Preparations took five months while Adair's team cleared wreckage from near the wellhead with shielded bulldozers, dug wells, and excavated three reservoirs for water supplies. On April 28, 1962, Adair used a modified bulldozer with a arm to move a metal drum containing a
nitroglycerin
Nitroglycerin (NG), (alternative spelling of nitroglycerine) also known as trinitroglycerin (TNG), nitro, glyceryl trinitrate (GTN), or 1,2,3-trinitroxypropane, is a dense, colorless, oily, explosive liquid most commonly produced by nitrating g ...
charge to the well. Adair, Matthews, Hansen and Charlie Tolar rode the rig, protected by a metal heat shield and water sprays, with Adair driving and the others on a shielded platform while medical teams and evacuation helicopters stood by. After positioning the explosives, the team ran to a trench about from the well. The explosion extinguished the fire by displacing oxygen from the area of the ruptured well. Water from the reservoirs was used to flood the area for two days to cool the well.
Drilling mud
In geotechnical engineering, drilling fluid, also called drilling mud, is used to aid the drilling of boreholes into the earth. Often used while drilling oil and natural gas wells and on exploration drilling rigs, drilling fluids are also us ...
was pumped into the hole to control the flow of gas and the well was capped after four days of work. Lateral wells to the GT2 well bore pumped mud into the bore to help to control the flow of gas.
Part of the 1968
John Wayne
Marion Robert Morrison (May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979), known professionally as John Wayne and nicknamed The Duke or Duke Wayne, was an American actor who became a popular icon through his starring roles in films made during Hollywood's Gol ...
movie ''Hellfighters'' was loosely based upon the feats of Adair during the 1962 Sahara Desert fire.