The flames thought to have been extinguished at three gas pipelines at the Qingxi No 1 Gas Well at Qingxi Town, Xuanhan County, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, roared back to life yesterday evening.

"The blaze was extinguished at 7:32 pm yesterday after workers spent nearly four and a half hours trying to cap the leaking well. But at 8:20 pm, the flames started burning again and eventually broke out into a fresh blaze," said Zhang Chongyao, an information officer in Xuanhan.

Zhang arrived at a site 500 metres away from the leaking well early in the morning and stayed there until 8:50 pm. He told China Daily that workers braved heavy fog as they dumped slurry and cement into the leaking gas well.

"After the flames started up again, police guarding the site asked all government officials and journalists to leave. Nobody knows what will be done to fix the situation," he said.

The gas well, operated by China Petrochemical Corporation, started leaking at around 7:00 pm last Thursday, leading to the evacuation of some 12,380 villagers living within a 1-kilometre radius of the site.

About three hours after the leak started, officials from the corporation ignited the gas to reduce pressure building up in the well.

"Since then, we have not found any sulphureted hydrogen or sulphur dioxide in the air at the site of the leak. It has not done great harm to the environment," said Liu Yong, an official with the Dazhou Municipal Environmental Monitoring Station.

As a result, the county government permitted evacuees living outside a 500-metre radius of the site to return home, said Liang Tao, chief of the Qingxi Town Government.

As of yesterday, 723 people living within a 500-metre radius surrounding the leaking well remained displaced. Of that number, 126 were primary school students.

Xuanhan, which is about 500 kilometres from the Sichuan provincial capital Chengdu, is a county under the administration of Dazhou.

Workers initially tried to fix the leak on Saturday by dumping about 200 tons of slurry and cement in the well, but failed because of "complicated conditions at the well," according to a statement by China Petrochemical Corporation.

The corporation has invited nearly 30 experts to Xuanhan and some 100 armed policemen to the site of the leaking gas well to help manage the situation.

The eastern part of the Sichuan Basin abounds in natural gas reserves. In Xuanhan alone, there are some 50 gas well drilled by China National Petroleum Corporation and China Petrochemical Corporation.

This part of the basin has witnessed several major gas leaks since December 2003 when an accident caused the death of 243 people in Kaixian, Chongqing Municipality.

Source: China Daily