Crude oil spewed into the air on Monday morning after a valve at a Weld County oil pad “popped off,” briefly closing a nearby road and painting surrounding snow yellow.
One man told The Denver Post his car was showered with oil as he drove south on Interstate 25.
The pad, located near Johnstown about a half-mile north of Colorado 60 and east of I-25, has six wells and is operated by Synergy Resources Corporation. Only one of the wells was impacted by the valve failure, the corporation said.
“We basically had a failure of a pop-off release valve on a separator,” said Jerry Brian, director of environmental health and safety for the corporation. “They are supposed to pop off to release the pressure to prevent an explosion.”
Brian said crews had stopped the release about 20 minutes after it began. He estimated that several gallons of oil were released when the valve popped.
The corporation said it planned to have the site cleaned up by the end of the day Monday and that crews were already at the pad.
J.D. Ruybal, of Windsor, was headed south on I-25 when he saw crude oil rocketing into the air from the pad.
“There was this stuff just shooting out of it,” he said. “It was just a geyser.”
Ruybal said the oil was green-colored and smelled like diesel fuel.
“We were literally being rained on,” Ruybal said. “It got all over the windshield. I had to turn the windshield wipers on.”
Officials said it wasn’t immediately clear how far the oil had spread. Clean up crews are sampling the area to determine the extent of the release.
Brian said snow and the frozen ground have made the preliminary stages of clean up process easier. He said the release never put the public at risk and that state regulators have been contacted about the incident.
“We hate that this happened,” Brian said. “We don’t want this to happen.”
The Colorado State Patrol, Johnstown police and fire crews responded to the scene.
Jesse Paul: 303-954-1733, jpaul@denverpost.com or
