(Bloomberg) -- Call it the invisible spill.
You can’t see it, but it’s there—a steady stream of natural gas seeping out of the pipe casing in a well in Southern California that may spew as much greenhouse gas into the air as a half-million cars do in a year. Pipeline operator Sempra Energy says it may take three to four months to plug.
Using the same tactic that eventually ended the giant 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the company is boring a well that’ll intercept the damaged one to stop the seepage. Meanwhile, it’s moving hundreds of people into temporary housing and faces as much as $900 million in costs including relocation and legal expenses, based on Bloomberg Intelligence and government data estimates. The 8,700-foot-deep (2,650-meter) well has leaked 800,000 metric tons of gases contributing to global warming over the first month, about a quarter of California emissions by state estimates over the same period.
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