STAFF at the Beach Energy drilling rig acted quickly to extinguish a fire, which broke out in one of the four generators at the site on Friday night.
Country Fire Service crews from Penola attended the scene at around 10.30pm to help extinguish the blaze.
Wattle Range CFS group officer Fred Stent said staff on the site did well to act quickly and contain the fire.
“We just assisted them with putting it out and identified a few other problems that we were able to fix,” Mr Stent said.
Operations at the exploration site involve drilling down 4km through two aquifer systems in an attempt to tap into commercial quantities of gas.
Beach regional manager Glenn Toogood said the fire was caused by unforeseen circumstances and had nothing to do with the gas wells.
“Operations at Haselgrove-3 were slightly disrupted late on Friday evening when the rig’s fire detection system alerted to a small fire in one of the four electrical generators on-site,” Mr Toogood said.
“The fire, which was not related to drilling operations, was quickly extinguished by staff at the site.”
Mr Toogood said the fire posed no further risk to any staff and appropriate safety precautions were followed.
“As you would find with most major companies, there are precautions in place to manage risk and Beach Energy is no different,” Mr Toogood said.
“Safety is paramount in all of our operations and the swift response to extinguish the small fire was testament to the strong safety systems we have in place to respond to such rare events.”
Mr Toogood said the CFS was notified and attended as a precaution.
“As a safety precaution, the CFS was alerted to the event and two units were dispatched from Penola,” he said.
“Nobody was harmed in the incident and full operations recommenced early on Saturday evening.”
While the fire was contained to the generator, Mr Stent said the CFS crews did not ascertain the damage cost.
“I am not sure what the damage bill would be,” Mr Stent said.
“Our priority and interest was to put out the fire so that the staff could reoccupy the site and continue their jobs.”
It was the first emergency services incident at the $12m drill site since the drilling operation began.
The step-up in gas exploration has drawn strong opposition from anti-gas activists with dozens of people from the Limestone Coast Protection Alliance protesting at the site earlier this month.
