Wyoming Oilfield Safety Summit Highlights Need For Improvement

October 5
The fourth annual oil and gas industry safety summit was held Thursday at the Casper, Wyoming Events Center.

Thursday morning's activities centered on training programs for supervisors and others engaged in oil and gas exploration and production. Keynote speaker Scott Kelly of Check 6 Inc., an oilfield training company presented in the afternoon session. Kelly spent almost 20 years as a U.S. Navy fighter pilot and said he learned the importance of teamwork to enhance effectiveness and safety. His company provides training courses to the industry throughout the nation. He said good technical training and good equipment can equal safe operations. He said the weakest link is often a lack of teamwork.

"People believe what they see and not what they hear regarding safety," Kelly told the nearly 200 registrants. "We have to empower the junior employee to have a role in safety management and briefings."

He compared the industry to the airline industry. The oil and gas industry has an incident every 200,000 hours worked while the airline industry has one incident per 10 million miles. In 8 of 10 years the airline industry has not experienced a fatal accident," Kelly said.

The state's new occupational epidemiologist, Dr. Mack Sewell, also spoke. He has been on the job in the Department of Workforce Services since July 1.

"Injuries on the job account for significant years of potential life being lost," Sewell said. He noted he's recreating the system of gathering, reporting and analyzing fatality information.

"Wyoming has experienced 20-48 fatalities a year over the last 10 years — this is 3- to 4-times the national death rate." he said. "Over the last 10 years Wyoming workers have experienced a fatality every 10 days. We see 48 percent related to transportation; 19 percent being hit or crushed; 8 percent as a result of falls — of which 98 percent of those killed in falls were not using fall protection."

So far in 2012, industrial accidents related to agriculture have claimed 4 lives; 4 people have died in transportation related accidents — including one person with a blood alcohol reading of .16; 3 deaths have occurred in the oil and gas industry; 2 in construction and 1 death in general industry, Sewell reported.

Gov. Matt Mead planned on attending to present an award but he cancelled due to a sudden illness. Department of Workforce Services director Joan Evans read the Governor's prepared remarks and presented the first Stop Work Award to representatives of M&N Equipment Co. in Casper. The award recognized David Kanski and Paul Knapp for stopping a truck driver from leaving a job site with a heavily laden truck he was not qualified to operate. The Stop Work Award recognized the company for training employees to prevent accidents by stopping the action before a possible accident happens.

The Wyoming Oil and Gas Industry Safety Alliance was formed at the request of former Gov. Dave Freudenthal and state and private agencies in response to dismal death and injury rates in the oil and gas industry. It now pushes better safety practices in the industry.