The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, county officials and even Sunoco Inc. are analyzing an oily, gas-smelling liquid oozing from a home's yard near Pittsburgh.
Fox Chapel police Chief David Laux tells the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review the home has been evacuated until Wednesday, when authorities expect to know what the liquid is.
“We don't know what this stuff is or where it came from,” Laux told the paper. “The speculation is that it's a little residual -- and I hesitate to use the word -- ‘burping,' just the ground giving up a little petroleum.”
DEP spokeswoman Amanda Witman says it may be oil from an abandoned well on land that used to be a farm.
Sunoco Logistics has an underground pipeline nearby, but the company and DEP officials say it wasn't leaking or moving any petroleum products when the leak was reported Saturday.
Neighbor Pamela Rollings says, “It's not like it's bubbling up out of the ground, not like something from The Beverly Hillbillies.”
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But until officials determine the source of the black gold, Texas tea or whatever it is, they're keeping the home's residents away.
