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Ten, nine, eight, seven, six,
five, four, three, two, one.

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December tenth, nineteen sixty-seven.

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Twelve thirty in the afternoon.

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Beneath northern New Mexico, a nuclear
explosion tears through the rock.

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Its job is to make a gas well produce.

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This is Gasbuggy.

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The shot sits roughly one point three
kilometres underground, just beneath the

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gas-bearing Pictured Cliffs sandstone.

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Above it is a working landscape
of wells, roads and forest.

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Below it, engineers are trying to give
trapped gas a new route to the surface.

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They will get more gas.

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What comes up with it will
change the meaning of success.

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The idea had been around for a decade.

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In nineteen fifty-seven, El Paso Natural
Gas approached Livermore scientists about

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using nuclear explosives
to increase production.

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The federal Plowshare programme was looking
for peaceful uses for nuclear energy.

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Here was a customer with
a very specific problem.

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A reservoir can contain plenty
of gas and still be a poor well.

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Gas has to move through connected pore
spaces and fractures quickly enough to pay

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the bills.

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Tight rock makes that journey difficult.

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Gasbuggy proposed creating a much
larger underground collection zone.

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That is the wager.

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Spend the energy in one enormous pulse,
open pathways through the formation, and let

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the well collect the result.

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First, somebody has to prove
what is already down there.

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Two El Paso engineers, Cutler and Kendrick,
later described the field work in their

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drilling report.

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Crews drilled test wells, recovered
core, ran logs and measured gas flow.

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They tested water-bearing formations too.

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Those measurements would become the
before picture against which the nuclear

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experiment was judged.

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The site was in Carson National Forest,
beside the Jicarilla Apache Nation.

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People used the surrounding landscape.

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The consequences of a test here would extend
beyond the men assembling equipment at

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the wellhead.

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The health-surveillance team
left a remarkable record.

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Before the shot, it counted people
and milk cows within a hundred miles.

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It located mining and tunnelling operations.

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Staff collected water, milk and vegetation
samples, building a picture of radiation

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levels before the experiment.

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The gas company was watching a reservoir.

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The monitoring teams were watching a region.

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Air samplers, field crews and laboratories
would have to answer a separate question:

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did anything escape?

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At detonation, thirty-three
health-surveillance personnel were on location,

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including monitoring teams in two aircraft.

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Their later report recorded no
detected release following the shot.

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That finding concerns the detonation and
its surveillance; the later production

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tests would deliberately
bring gas to the surface.

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The reported yield was twenty-nine kilotons.

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Deep below the site, rock
was vaporised and melted.

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A cavity formed.

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Fractured material above it then collapsed
into the opening, leaving a column of

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broken rock: the nuclear chimney.

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The column of broken rock reached
upward into the reservoir.

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Gas could enter the fractures, collect
around the rubble and reach a well.

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The essential test was how much useful
reservoir this disturbed zone could actually

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connect.

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The explosion was over.

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The reservoir experiment was beginning.

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Crews now had to drill back into a subsurface
that had been violently rearranged.

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The re-entry record describes
voids and broken casing.

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At one point the drill encountered
steel damaged by the shot.

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Gas samples and pressure tests became clues
to the connection between the well and

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the new chimney.

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Even that connection was difficult to
interpret from the early measurements.

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Eventually the gas flowed
into production tests.

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The headline number sounded promising:
Livermore reports output six to eight times

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the earlier rates.

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But a flow rate is only the
first line on a sales sheet.

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Laboratory analysis found radioactive
constituents in the produced gas, including

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tritium and krypton eighty-five.

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Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen.

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Some of it was present in methane molecules.

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Contamination was mixed into the product
the experiment was trying to recover.

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The chemical mixture had changed as well.

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The laboratory report describes carbon
dioxide, carbon monoxide and hydrogen

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diluting the formation gas.

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Repeated production altered the mixture
and reduced measured radioactive

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concentrations.

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Gas quality was a moving
target through the tests.

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A stronger flow therefore
raised more questions.

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How much energy did the gas contain?

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What was mixed into it?

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What treatment, handling and acceptance
would be required before anyone could buy

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it?

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Those questions travel all the way
from the wellhead to the customer.

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At Livermore, an archive photograph shows
JoAnn Rego adjusting a gas-analysis column

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while Gasbuggy samples are being studied.

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Her work sits at the other end of that
spectacular blast: a sample, an instrument, a

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result.

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The fate of the gas depends on
what those measurements reveal.

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There was another oilfield complication.

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El Paso engineers Dean Power and Charles
Bowman reported an unexpected increase in

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water production.

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The water contained tritium, so
handling it added cost and complexity.

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Their investigation found that condensation
alone could not explain the volumes

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coming up the well.

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They compared chemistry, pressure and flow.

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Their interpretation pointed to water
entering from the Ojo Alamo formation through

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the well system.

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Later test results indicated
the leak had been sealed.

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It is a recognisable well problem, made
harder by radioactive material in the

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fluids.

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They had detonated a nuclear explosive
beneath a gas reservoir, and still ended up

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chasing a water leak.

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Every sample and every repair added
to the real cost of the experiment.

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El Paso’s nineteen seventy-three production
report gives the commercial result

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plainly: the production gas was flared.

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None had been introduced into pipelines.

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Federal standards for introducing man-made
radioactivity into natural gas had not

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been established.

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The company said the volume involved did
not justify the lengthy and expensive

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process of seeking the
necessary federal action.

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It reported no plan to put
the gas into pipelines.

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The reservoir had answered one question.

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The business had several more.

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Gas at the surface still needed an acceptable
product, a route to market and a price

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that covered the entire operation.

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Gasbuggy never became that
commercial demonstration.

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Two further nuclear gas-stimulation
experiments followed: Rulison, then Rio Blanco.

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Livermore’s historical account says
the programme demonstrated technical

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possibilities without
demonstrating economic viability.

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Plowshare ended in nineteen seventy-seven.

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At Gasbuggy, surface cleanup was completed,
while contamination remained underground

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in the detonation zone.

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The Department of Energy reports that
sampled nearby producing wells have not shown

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radionuclides attributable to the test.

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Subsurface restrictions and long-term
oversight remain part of the site’s history.

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A Department of Energy site manager explained
the distinction in this twenty-twenty

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film.

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While there are below-ground restrictions,
there are no restrictions for the site

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surface.

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The land is open range and used for
livestock grazing and recreation.

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Gasbuggy leaves an
unforgettable oilfield lesson.

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You can make the rock give up more
gas and still fail to make a sale.

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In this experiment, the blast was
only the beginning of the bill.