PA AG Files Criminal Charges Against Equitrans for Home Explosion

In 2018, a man in Clarksville (Green County), PA, turned on his gas stove, and it exploded, catching fire and leveling the entire house (see Did Shale Well Methane Migration Cause SWPA Home to Explode?). The man, his girlfriend, and young child were helicoptered to a hospital burn unit. The early working theory/assumptions were (a) the man didn’t smell mercaptan, therefore the source of the gas that exploded was not from the stove or line into the house itself, and (b) because there is an EQT shale well “across the street” and a gathering pipeline (operated by Equitrans Midstream) that runs “next to the house,” methane “may have” migrated from the shale well into the home, or methane leaked from the gathering line into the home. After five years of investigations, Pennsylvania's Democrat (anti-drilling) Attorney General is ready to lay the blame on Equitrans, but not for the gathering pipeline.

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