Littleinch - I likely have the terminology wrong - it's the Porter Ranch leak which the pipe that was capped developed a fracture so the gas is leaking up alongside the pipe. I assumed that there was a plan when the gas was stored to attach something to the cap to allow them to retrieve the gas.
As a result, I have been curious if they are just staying away to prevent igniting it as opposed to attaching a pipe to a pump station to another gas storage location. For all I know this isn't a risk assessment as much as a monetary consideration that the value of gas vented is less expensive than a temporary pumping station and pipeline to put it into another well, and that all the gas is more expensive than cross drilling, so they will leave a giant hazard running to save the difference in cost. The other consideration is that even with the bulk of the flow diverted to a pumping station, there would still be some amount of leakage, which would not stop until the facility was completely drained; while cross-drilling will eventually, supposedly, seal the whole thing.
One detail that I like is that the butterfly valve that would have been used to seal the pipe was removed some years back because the storage site owners couldn't get spare parts (I read that as - didn't want to pay for spare parts) and have done this with dozens to hundreds of other pipes into storage, so there many more wells primed for uncontrolled venting.
It is the IR camera footage that is most enlightening. I really should work the numbers on what the exit temperature is, but am just that lazy. The footage has that gas jet going a short way up and then dropping back on the hillside and down into the community like water and I wonder if that's due to cooling from expansion.
