The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has confirmed that an Ohio-based energy company is cleaning up a recently reported crude oil spill from an injection well in Otto Township.

According to Melanie Williams, community relations coordinator for the DEP’s Northwest Regional Office, at 9:15 a.m. Friday, a representative of Red Jacket Energy of North Canton, Ohio, contacted the DEP’s Emergency Response program and Oil and Gas program to report an oil spill on Route 46 near Farmers Valley.

The investigation report indicates the spill is in Otto Township.

“A DEP representative was dispatched to the site to meet with Red Jacket Energy’s representative and they agreed upon initial clean-up activities,” said Williams. “The incident is still under investigation.”

The investigation and cleanup measures were outlined in the investigation report from the DEP. The initial investigation indicated the spill was less than 500 gallons, according to the report.

A pumper for Red Jacket told the inspector who was dispatched to the scene “that there had been a problem with the oil/water separator that lets brine flow to the injection system and oil to the stock tanks,” the report stated. “For this reason, Red Jacket had been injecting brine with undetermined quantities of oil into the injection wells on the lease for some time.”

When the pumper arrived at the lease in the morning, he found a crude oil spill around the wellhead of the injection well just up Coleville Road from Route 46, according to the report.

While the reported indicated no oil was initially thought to have entered any waterways, closer inspection revealed “perhaps one or two barrels of oil had reached the waters of the Commonwealth.”

The inspector added in the report that he did not see any oil at a spot about 50 yards downstream from the stock tanks on the north side of Route 46.

The report explained: “It appeared that several barrels of oil were pooled around the wellhead and that oil had flowed down a swale through the adjacent yard, into the Coleville Road ditch, into an unnamed tributary to the North Branch Cole Creek and into North Branch Cole Creek.”

The amount of oil in the creek and tributary was minor compared to what was in the swale and ditch, which contained several more barrels worth of oil, the report indicated.

However, “due to the nature of the source of the spill, it was impossible to determine the total volume of oil spilled,” the report read.

The report indicated that cleanup efforts were already underway when the inspector arrived on scene.

“Resources from Chip McCracken Oil Field Services, Magee and Magee Oil Field Services and Red Jacket Energy were on site establishing containment with siphon dams and diking,” the report related. “Roll-off boxes from Duffy Inc. were arriving during my time on scene.”

Most of the spill was found to be “trapped in a snow/oil slurry in the well location, swale, and ditch.”

All parties agreed that workers would dig the slurry out with excavation equipment and put it in boxes to remove it, and they would use a vac truck at a siphon dam to pump oil off the tributary. The inspector also suggested two more siphon dams be built, one upstream from where swale enters the roadside ditch and the other in the ditch upstream from the tributary.

The DEP has not yet said whether any disciplinary actions will be taken as a result of the spill.