At approximately 7 PM on Friday evening, first responders were called to the scene of a reported oil tank explosion in Somerville, TX. According to those early reports, a piece of the exploded tank blasted up and hit the road, which was then struck by the driver of a pickup truck on the road.
The driver of that truck went airborne and was airlifted to a nearby hospital in Bryan, TX.
The Burleson County Emergency Management Office has reported that Chesapeake Energy owns the well where the explosion occurred. They are now tasked with cleaning the site and figuring out what happened.
Chesapeake Energy’s History of Accidents
Chesapeake Energy is no stranger to catastrophic accidents like this one. Just last year, on January 29, a deadline oil rig explosion happened in Burleson County, that time near Caldwell, TX. Three workers were killed. Early reports indicated that the workers had been upgrading the well at the time of the blast.
This was the deadliest oilfield accident to occur since January 2018.