Three dead in US gas blast

ANOTHER massive explosion rocked the US oil and gas industry last night, with three people reported dead and ten missing.

The natural gas pipeline explosion in North Texas caused a massive blast that could be heard up to eight miles away.

Laura Harlin, a resident in the town of Granbury, said the explosion made a "huge rumbling" and sounded like a tornado.

Enterprise Products Partners owns the 36-inch pipeline, which is part of its Texas Intra-state system.

Chester Nolen, city manager of Cleburne, Texas, the nearest city to the blast, said ten people were missing after the blast.

The blast was originally thought to be an oil well explosion. An electrical crew was digging a hole when it struck the gas pipeline, an emergency services spokesman in Hood County, Texas, said.

Enterprise spokesman Rick Rainey said: "We have isolated that segment of line. Our crews have been dispatched to the scene."

In a separate incident a crew drilling a natural gas well through an abandoned coal mine in West Virginia were caught in a massive fireball when they hit a pocket of methane that ignited.