LOS ANGELES—A California official outlined a plan Thursday to cap a massive Los Angeles-area gas leak by the end of next week.
The final phase to intercept the ruptured Southern California Gas Co. well is expected to begin Monday, said Wade Crowfoot, an adviser to Gov. Jerry Brown. If all goes according to plan, it should to take contractors about five days to permanently seal the well that has been leaking since October.
The announcement at a public meeting is ahead of the company’s worst-case prediction that it would be plugged by the end of the month. The well has been leaking for 15 weeks and has been a major disruption for the upscale Porter Ranch community in the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles.
The well blowout at the largest natural gas storage facility in the West has uprooted thousands of residents and spewed more than 2 million tons of climate-changing methane in what environmentalists have said is the worst crisis since the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
