As oil industry injuries rise, companies take measure to reduce risks for employees.
Working on oil and gas drilling sites can be extremely dangerous. Workers are well aware of the risks, and employers do everything they can to plan for and mitigate them.
Accidents still happen, however, as was the case on March 20 when a man died after being struck by a traveling block at a drilling site in Dunn County, North Dakota.
According to online news reports, the man was trapped under “blocks” and couldn’t be resuscitated after being rescued. His death was the most recent of nearly 40 in the oilfields of the Bakken Shale play since fiscal year 2010, says Eric Brooks, area director for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
“People don’t realize when you work in the oilfields, it’s a hostile environment,” says Cliff Roberts, an engineer with Ensign Energy Services Inc. in LaSalle. Ensign Energy is one of the world’s leading land-based drillers and well-servicing providers.
Fatalities on the rise
In 2012, 138 people died working in oil and gas extraction fields in the U.S. The number has increased since 2009 when there were 68 deaths recorded in the industry.
“We can and must do better. Job gains in oil and gas and construction have come with more fatalities, and that is unacceptable,” says Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez in a statement. “No worker should lose their life for a paycheck.”
Oil and gas fatalities were at their lowest in 2009 since the statistic was first recorded in 2003. In 2010, there were 107 fatalities and in 2011 there were 112.
Perez says increases in the number of jobs in the oil and gas industry is a big reason for the increase in that area. The total private sector employment in the U.S. increased by more than 1 million jobs from 2007 to 2013, which is about a 1 percent increase. In the same period, oil and gas added 162,000 jobs, about a 40 percent increase.
“During times of high demand like now, there are new workers brought into this industry, and these are workers who may not have relevant training and experience,” says Ryan Hill, who leads the oil and gas extraction program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. “They didn’t grow up around the industry, especially in some of the newer oil fields.”
A report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that oilfield workers were seven times more likely to die on the job than other industries.
“Workers in this industry typically work 12 to 14 hour shifts for a week or two consecutively,” Hill says. “The type of work that workers do often requires performing repetitive and physical labor.”
Other injuries up too
On March 25, Brian Busby suffered non-life-threatening burns to his hands and head while working at a Nabors Drilling rig on a Whiting Petroleum location in McKenzie County, North Dakota, according to the McKenzie County Sheriff’s Department.
Busby’s injuries were caused by a rig fire.
His injuries are just one example of many that can, and do, happen on drilling sites throughout the U.S. According to Bureau of Labor statistics those nonfatal injuries have also increased with lost-time injuries costing the industry $303 million and 50,000 workdays in 2012.
Of that lost-time cost to the industry, oil and gas extraction jobs spent $88.2 million, while drilling support gave up $65.6 million and other support services spent $149.5 million. The total of $303 million is up from $271 million in 2011. At nearly $76,000 each, those lost-time injuries cost the industry $539 per employee across the entire workforce.
The typical injured worker in the sector in 2012 was male, age 25-34 and on the job one to five years when injured. Employees on the job for less than three months and those between three and 11 months were the second and third most injured groups.
Most incidents at oil and gas drilling sites fit into one of the five most common oilfield safety areas where OSHA makes citations.
Busby’s burns fall into the explosions and fires category, while the man who was trapped under the blocks would be classified as a struck-by, caught-in or caught-between injury. The other three categories are falls, confined spaces and chemical exposures.
Making changes
OSHA oil and gas inspections are up over the last five years, according to statistics, but not every inspection ends on a bad note.
“We have a predominance of employers who have embraced their responsibility to provide and ensure a safe workplace. These employers have assisted us in our goal towards improving worker safety,” Brooks says. “However, a small number of employers still harken back to the days of mere regulatory compliance.”
Penalties for OSHA citations are sharply higher for the oil and gas group. Extraction averaged the highest penalties at $2,850 per citation in 2012, while drilling averages $2,504 per citation and other support averages $2,225 per citation.
Brooks has seen companies make some changes over the last several years to keep employees safe, the biggest of which is the widespread use of flame resistant clothing (FRC).
“We began addressing this issue around 2008. At that time the use of FRC was rarely seen except under the most severe of working conditions. Now, you would be hard pressed to find an employer who has not implemented a comprehensive FRC policy. We have experienced numerous success stories where employees are alive today through the use of FRC.”
OSHA has also implemented several measures towards reducing the number of fatalities in the Bakken formation. The first is a voluntary industry “stand down.”
“The stand down called for employers to voluntarily cease operations for a portion of a day in order to increase the level of awareness of workplace hazards and means to safely address them,” Brooks says. “Over the next 30 days, these employers conducted inspections of their work sites.”
Brooks noted that approximately 129 employers, with nearly 1,200 employees, participated in the event.
The second thing OSHA did to improve safety was conduct a dedicated Problem Solving Initiative, where additional compliance officers from throughout the region traveled to North Dakota to conduct dedicated enforcement activity within the Bakken formation.
“For a one-month period of time, inspection teams traveled through the approximately 35,000 square miles of operating area conducting unannounced site inspections,” Brooks says.
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