GASBUGGY: THE NUCLEAR GAS WELL GEONAVIGATE | INDUSTRY CHATTER 8:33 | 10 chapters ABOUT THIS EPISODE The opening countdown is original archival film audio from The Resourceful Atom (1968). Historical narration draws on identified reports. Original film audio is labelled explicitly; the episode contains no newly recorded witness interviews. 00:00 — ORIGINAL ARCHIVAL COUNTDOWN Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Source: U.S. AEC, The Resourceful Atom (1968); preservation copy: Periscope Film / Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/27544ProjectGasbuggy 00:12 — 01. THE SHOT December tenth, nineteen sixty-seven. Twelve thirty in the afternoon. Beneath northern New Mexico, a nuclear explosion tears through the rock. Its job is to make a gas well produce. This is Gasbuggy. Sources: USGS_1968 The shot sits roughly one point three kilometres underground, just beneath the gas-bearing Pictured Cliffs sandstone. Above it is a working landscape of wells, roads and forest. Below it, engineers are trying to give trapped gas a new route to the surface. Sources: USGS_1968 They will get more gas. What comes up with it will change the meaning of success. Sources: LLNL_HISTORY 00:47 — 02. THE LETTER The idea had been around for a decade. In nineteen fifty-seven, El Paso Natural Gas approached Livermore scientists about using nuclear explosives to increase production. The federal Plowshare programme was looking for peaceful uses for nuclear energy. Here was a customer with a very specific problem. Sources: LLNL_HISTORY A reservoir can contain plenty of gas and still be a poor well. Gas has to move through connected pore spaces and fractures quickly enough to pay the bills. Tight rock makes that journey difficult. Gasbuggy proposed creating a much larger underground collection zone. Sources: DRI_2015 That is the wager. Spend the energy in one enormous pulse, open pathways through the formation, and let the well collect the result. First, somebody has to prove what is already down there. Sources: DRILLING_1968 01:38 — 03. BEFORE THE COUNTDOWN Two El Paso engineers, Cutler and Kendrick, later described the field work in their drilling report. Crews drilled test wells, recovered core, ran logs and measured gas flow. They tested water-bearing formations too. Those measurements would become the before picture against which the nuclear experiment was judged. Sources: DRILLING_1968 The site was in Carson National Forest, beside the Jicarilla Apache Nation. People used the surrounding landscape. The consequences of a test here would extend beyond the men assembling equipment at the wellhead. Sources: DOE_TRIBAL 02:10 — 04. THE PEOPLE OUTSIDE THE FENCE The health-surveillance team left a remarkable record. Before the shot, it counted people and milk cows within a hundred miles. It located mining and tunnelling operations. Staff collected water, milk and vegetation samples, building a picture of radiation levels before the experiment. Sources: PHS_OFFSITE The gas company was watching a reservoir. The monitoring teams were watching a region. Air samplers, field crews and laboratories would have to answer a separate question: did anything escape? Sources: PHS_OFFSITE At detonation, thirty-three health-surveillance personnel were on location, including monitoring teams in two aircraft. Their later report recorded no detected release following the shot. That finding concerns the detonation and its surveillance; the later production tests would deliberately bring gas to the surface. Sources: PHS_OFFSITE 03:00 — 05. THE ROCK BECOMES THE MACHINE The reported yield was twenty-nine kilotons. Deep below the site, rock was vaporised and melted. A cavity formed. Fractured material above it then collapsed into the opening, leaving a column of broken rock: the nuclear chimney. Sources: DOE_FACTS The column of broken rock reached upward into the reservoir. Gas could enter the fractures, collect around the rubble and reach a well. The essential test was how much useful reservoir this disturbed zone could actually connect. Sources: DOE_FACTS The explosion was over. The reservoir experiment was beginning. Crews now had to drill back into a subsurface that had been violently rearranged. Sources: DRI_2015 03:41 — 06. BACK INTO THE HOLE The re-entry record describes voids and broken casing. At one point the drill encountered steel damaged by the shot. Gas samples and pressure tests became clues to the connection between the well and the new chimney. Even that connection was difficult to interpret from the early measurements. Sources: DRI_2015 Eventually the gas flowed into production tests. The headline number sounded promising: Livermore reports output six to eight times the earlier rates. But a flow rate is only the first line on a sales sheet. Sources: LLNL_HISTORY 04:13 — 07. THE GAS THAT CAME BACK Laboratory analysis found radioactive constituents in the produced gas, including tritium and krypton eighty-five. Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen. Some of it was present in methane molecules. Contamination was mixed into the product the experiment was trying to recover. Sources: GAS_QUALITY The chemical mixture had changed as well. The laboratory report describes carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and hydrogen diluting the formation gas. Repeated production altered the mixture and reduced measured radioactive concentrations. Gas quality was a moving target through the tests. Sources: GAS_QUALITY A stronger flow therefore raised more questions. How much energy did the gas contain? What was mixed into it? What treatment, handling and acceptance would be required before anyone could buy it? Those questions travel all the way from the wellhead to the customer. Sources: GAS_QUALITY At Livermore, an archive photograph shows JoAnn Rego adjusting a gas-analysis column while Gasbuggy samples are being studied. Her work sits at the other end of that spectacular blast: a sample, an instrument, a result. The fate of the gas depends on what those measurements reveal. Sources: DOE_REGO_PHOTO 05:27 — 08. THEN CAME THE WATER There was another oilfield complication. El Paso engineers Dean Power and Charles Bowman reported an unexpected increase in water production. The water contained tritium, so handling it added cost and complexity. Their investigation found that condensation alone could not explain the volumes coming up the well. Sources: WATER_REPORT They compared chemistry, pressure and flow. Their interpretation pointed to water entering from the Ojo Alamo formation through the well system. Later test results indicated the leak had been sealed. It is a recognisable well problem, made harder by radioactive material in the fluids. Sources: WATER_REPORT They had detonated a nuclear explosive beneath a gas reservoir, and still ended up chasing a water leak. Every sample and every repair added to the real cost of the experiment. Sources: WATER_REPORT 06:18 — 09. THE FLARE AND THE PIPELINE El Paso’s nineteen seventy-three production report gives the commercial result plainly: the production gas was flared. None had been introduced into pipelines. Federal standards for introducing man-made radioactivity into natural gas had not been established. Sources: EPNG_1973 The company said the volume involved did not justify the lengthy and expensive process of seeking the necessary federal action. It reported no plan to put the gas into pipelines. Sources: EPNG_1973 The reservoir had answered one question. The business had several more. Gas at the surface still needed an acceptable product, a route to market and a price that covered the entire operation. Gasbuggy never became that commercial demonstration. Sources: EPNG_1973 07:04 — 10. WHAT STAYED BEHIND Two further nuclear gas-stimulation experiments followed: Rulison, then Rio Blanco. Livermore’s historical account says the programme demonstrated technical possibilities without demonstrating economic viability. Plowshare ended in nineteen seventy-seven. Sources: LLNL_HISTORY At Gasbuggy, surface cleanup was completed, while contamination remained underground in the detonation zone. The Department of Energy reports that sampled nearby producing wells have not shown radionuclides attributable to the test. Subsurface restrictions and long-term oversight remain part of the site’s history. Sources: DOE_FACTS A Department of Energy site manager explained the distinction in this twenty-twenty film. Sources: DOE_SITE_VIDEO_2020 Original film audio — Ken Kreie, DOE site manager · original DOE film audio, published 2020 “While there are below-ground restrictions, there are no restrictions for the site surface. The land is open range and used for livestock grazing and recreation.” Sources: DOE_SITE_VIDEO_2020 Gasbuggy leaves an unforgettable oilfield lesson. You can make the rock give up more gas and still fail to make a sale. In this experiment, the blast was only the beginning of the bill. Sources: LLNL_HISTORY RESEARCH AND HISTORICAL SOURCES [USGS_1968] Surface Seismic Measurements of Project GASBUGGY Explosion at Intermediate Distance Ranges U.S. Geological Survey | 1968 https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1968/0315/ [LLNL_HISTORY] Project Gasbuggy, a plowshare program Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory | 2019-12-09 https://st.llnl.gov/news/look-back/project-gasbuggy-plowshare-program [DOE_FACTS] Gasbuggy, New Mexico, Site Fact Sheet U.S. Department of Energy Office of Legacy Management | 2026-08 edition https://www.energy.gov/lm/articles/gasbuggy-new-mexico-site-fact-sheet [DRILLING_1968] Drilling and Testing Operations for Project Gasbuggy El Paso Natural Gas Company; SPE Fall Meeting 1968; OSTI | 1968 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4835959 [PHS_OFFSITE] Report of Off-Site Surveillance for Project Gasbuggy, March 1967 to June 1968 U.S. Public Health Service, Southwestern Radiological Health Laboratory | 1970-02 https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPURL.cgi?Dockey=9100FBMO.TXT [DRI_2015] Radionuclide Migration at the Gasbuggy Underground Nuclear Test Site Desert Research Institute for U.S. Department of Energy | 2015-08 https://lmpublicsearch.lm.doe.gov/lmsites/4394-s13226_gsb_dri_radionuclidemigration.pdf [GAS_QUALITY] Gas Quality Analysis and Evaluation Program for Project Gasbuggy Lawrence Radiation Laboratory; OSTI | 1969 data through August https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/servlets/purl/20555844 [WATER_REPORT] An Evaluation of Water Production from the Gasbuggy Reentry Well El Paso Natural Gas Company; OSTI | 1969 reporting window https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/servlets/purl/20555842 [EPNG_1973] Gasbuggy 1973 production-test operator report, OSTI4311566 El Paso Natural Gas Company; OSTI | 1973 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4311566 [DOE_TRIBAL] Tribal Collaboration — Jicarilla Apache section U.S. Department of Energy Office of Legacy Management | current page accessed 2026-11-02 https://www.energy.gov/lm/tribal-collaboration [DOE_SITE] Gasbuggy, New Mexico, Site U.S. Department of Energy Office of Legacy Management | current page accessed 2026-11-02 https://www.energy.gov/lm/gasbuggy-new-mexico-site [DOE_REGO_PHOTO] Project Gasbuggy photo: JoAnn Rego at Livermore U.S. Department of Energy | Circa 1968; later digitization https://www.flickr.com/photos/departmentofenergy/11326006345/ [DOE_SITE_VIDEO_2020] Gasbuggy, New Mexico, Site — Office of Legacy Management site video U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Legacy Management | Published 2020; recording date unspecified https://www.energy.gov/lm/gasbuggy-new-mexico-site ARCHIVE AND PRESENTATION NOTES AEC film: the acquired Periscope preservation copy retains its watermark and embedded timecode. NARA film: an unwatermarked U.S. Air Force/National Archives site-film extract is used separately; film 342-USAF-50411, NAID 72228. Original explanatory diagrams are conceptual and not to scale. Later site photographs are labelled separately from historical material. The companion source notes contain the shot-by-shot edit and source timings.