North Dakota is a dangerous place to be an oil and gas worker.
In 2011 and 2012 23 oil and gas workers died in North Dakota. That gives the state the highest oil and gas worker fatality rate in country. To start to understand why that is, I went to the heart of the oil boom: Williston.
The street in front of Arnie’s Motorcycles is crawling with trucks. There’s semis hauling water and muddy pick-ups carrying oil field workers. For people who come in to ride the bikes onto that road, "You’re almost risking your life trying to get out," says Darold Halvorson, an employee at Arnie's Motorcycles.
Darold Halvorson and his sister DeAnn Clark run the store. They sell a lot of bikes and ATVs to the same guys driving those trucks down the street. "They just kinda tear off out into the street," says Clark. "‘Oh that one will be back we’re thinking,’ all wrecked up. And sometimes they are."
This culture of risk taking is part of the high fatality rate in the oil and gas industry around the country. According to a recent CDC report, half of the oil and gas workers who die in vehicle accidents weren’t wearing seatbelts. Teresa Van Deusen sees it all the time in her job as safety specialist for WPX Energy, a large oil company here.
According to Van Deusen, "They have the go-get em kind of attitude, ‘Oh I can do that. I can do this little shortcut.’ Well, when you’re working with the pressures and dangers that are inherent to the oil field, you can’t do shortcuts."
"You probably almost have better odds of winning the lottery than getting a visit from a regulatory agency"
I met Teresa at a meeting of industry safety professionals. I asked people there why North Dakota’s oil industry was so dangerous. Safety consultant Scott Rogers, an environment and safety consultant from Bozeman, Montana says, "The experience level of our entry level employee is significantly lower than the individuals or companies I visit with in Texas or Colorado."
Lots of people said something along these lines, including the guy who organized this meeting, Dennis Schmitz. Another problem, he says, is that most oil and gas companies are unlikely to ever have a safety inspection in North Dakota -- even though OSHA has hired more inspectors recently and created specific programs that target the oil industry.
"You probably almost have better odds of winning the lottery than getting a visit from a regulatory agency," says Schmitz.
According to Schmitz - the root of the problem is that big oil companies aren’t directly responsible for workplace safety. They contract out pretty much every dangerous job on an oil well to smaller companies.
I asked Teresa Van Deusen of WPX Energy if there is anything operators can do to help these smaller contractors be safer. Her response: "Wow. I don’t know how to answer the question…. Um, obviously that is the drilling company’s employee."
Van Deusen did explain that WPX follows all the OSHA standards and expects the contractors to do the same.
I’ve been asking questions across the state on this issue for a few weeks. And finally, Governor Jack Dalrymple agreed to talk to me about it. He said North Dakota prefers to incentivize safety, not punish companies who break the rules. "We feel we are aware of the situation. We feel the programs we have in place are working," said Dalrymple.
But then he said something surprising. He said he wanted to get his top safety and health officials together in a meeting, "Where I would just turn to them and say, I want a report about what we’re doing about fatalities in the workforce and I want to know if there’s anyway we can do it better. And I think because of this interview I will probably be doing that at our next meeting."
You can learn more about the data behind this story at insideenergy.org. Inside Energy is a public media collaboration that focuses on America’s energy issues.
