Swede White/WRKF Response vehicles line the road leading to the out of control well.

Listen to the Story

In the middle of a sugar cane field near Paincourtville, Louisiana, a 7,200 foot exploratory oil and gas well blew early Wednesday morning. The well is gushing a brown mix of oil and gas 60 feet into the air. From one mile away, the gusher can be heard and it sounds like howling wind. A two mile stretch of state Highway 70 has been closed, and three tractor trailers with containment caps hitched to the back line the shoulder of the road.

Assumption Parish Sherriff Mike Waguespack says right now it is just a matter of waiting and says, "Well the current status right now is that they're moving in a lot of heavy equipment and matting. They're trying to get the site set up to go in closer to the well. Right now...it's one of those hurry up and wait games."

Sherriff Waguespack says right now there is no way of knowing how much oil and gas is spewing out of the gusher but containment is a priority and adds, "There are also contractors on site doing the booming and containment, stopping off some drainage ditches, so when they start dousing this well with a lot of heavy water, as they approach to try to stop the flow, there's going to be some runoff that contains some hydrocarbons and other liquids. It could be up to a 10 day process, and after that probably months of clean up."

The well is owned by Mantle Oil and Gas and an engineer with the company says that the blowout preventer could have failed. Master Trooper Bryan Zeringue with the Louisiana State Police says it is too early to determine what caused the blowout.

Zeringue says, "Once they are able to contain the well, they'll be able to get in and assess and see what exactly the problems are. The main issue at hand is capping and containing this well. We've had some reports of some of the area in the perimeter, we do have some area that is covered with some oil, but like I said for the most part we've monitored the site."

Rodney Mallet with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality says that the sugar cane fields are being utilized to collect the oil and says, "What we're trying to do is collect the oil as it runs off. The area down there is designed to have most of the water run off in a certain way because it is a lot of farm land sugar cane land for irrigation purposes. It is designed to have the water run in a certain direction. With that in mind, they have dug a manmade collection area so when the water runs off the oil will run with the water to this collection area where they will be able to collect it there."

Mallet says taxpayers will not pay for clean up and a DEQ mitigation team will oversee clean up and says, "With an oil spill like this or any kind of spill, then they will be brought in to oversee the cleanup to see that the responsible party who is financially obligated to clean it up because it's not going to be cleaned up at the taxpayers' expense."

Less than two miles away, tractors still till the soil, and are still harvesting sugarcane.