Oilfield & Frac Site Injuries.

On a frac site or a drilling location, the worker who gets hurt is almost never standing on his employer’s property, using only his employer’s equipment. The operator holds the lease and the well. A service company runs the job. Other companies bring the sand, the water, the chemicals, the tanks and the iron, and haulers truck it all in. When something fails, the first job is not to guess who was at fault. It is to find out who brought what, who controlled it, and whose insurance stands behind each of them.

The work is also far from help. Many locations are a long way from a hospital, crews work long hitches and sleep in camps, and the scene belongs to someone else. The part that failed, the hose, the valve, the line, the tank, has to be found and preserved before it is sent back, repaired or scrapped.

The numbers.

Oil and gas extraction is among the deadliest work in the country. Federal researchers who track every worker death in the industry counted 470 from 2014 through 2019. The most frequent fatal events were vehicle incidents (26.8 percent), contact injuries (21.7 percent), and explosions (14.5 percent), and the industry’s fatal injury rate has historically been “seven times higher than for all U.S. workers.” Most of the dead, 60.4 percent, worked for well servicing companies, and the deaths are concentrated in Texas, about a third of them in the Permian Basin (CDC, MMWR, 2023).

Who is on the location.

The operator holds the lease and usually has its own representative on site. A drilling contractor runs the rig. Service companies, the frac crew, the wireline crew, the pump trucks, do the completion work. Suppliers and rental companies bring the chemicals, the tanks and the equipment, and sometimes their own people to run it. Trucking companies haul it in and out. Each one can have its own duties, its own records and its own insurance, and the contracts between them decide who insures whom.

Your employer.

The first question is whether your employer carries workers’ compensation. If it does, comp is generally the only claim against the employer itself (Labor Code Section 408.001), with one door left open: when a worker is killed by the employer’s gross negligence, the spouse and children can still seek exemplary damages. If the employer opted out, it is a non-subscriber, and in a lawsuit it loses three defenses: that you were negligent too, that you assumed the risk, and that a coworker caused it (non-subscriber injuries).

Everyone else.

The companies that are not your employer are, as a rule, third parties, and the comp system does not protect them. The exception to check is a written agreement under which a company higher up the job, often the one that hired your employer, provided your comp coverage: the law then treats it as your employer for comp purposes, and it gets the same shield (Section 406.123; Statutory Employer). Texas law lets an injured worker “seek damages from a third party” and still pursue comp benefits; the comp carrier then has a claim to be repaid from that recovery (Section 417.001). When equipment fails, the maker answers for a defect. A company that only sold or supplied it is protected unless one of the statute’s exceptions applies, among them that it altered the product and the change caused the harm, installed it, or actually knew of the defect when it supplied it (Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 82.003). When the claim is against the owner of the property where the work was done, Chapter 95 often decides what has to be proven: that the owner controlled how the work was done, and that it actually knew of the danger and failed to adequately warn.

OSHA on a well site.

On a drilling or servicing location, OSHA’s general industry rules apply; the construction rules reach only site preparation, and where no specific rule covers a hazard, the General Duty Clause does (OSHA). Those rules require eye and face protection against “liquid chemicals, acids or caustic liquids” (1910.133), a written hazard assessment (1910.132(d)), and quick-flushing facilities in the work area wherever corrosive materials can reach the eyes or body (1910.151(c)). The employer must report a death to OSHA within eight hours, and an in-patient hospitalization, an amputation, or the loss of an eye within twenty-four (1904.39).

Far from help.

Out on a location, the first medical call is often the company’s: a medic, a nurse line, a video visit. That call can help. It does not choose your doctor. In Texas workers’ compensation, outside an emergency, the worker makes the initial choice of treating doctor, from the approved list or, if the claim is in a certified network, from the network’s list (The Company Doctor). And the notice clock starts the day you are hurt: tell your employer, in writing if you can, within thirty days (Section 409.001).

Where.

The Eagle Ford runs through more than two dozen Texas counties, among them Webb, Dimmitt, Maverick, La Salle, McMullen, Live Oak, Karnes, Atascosa, Frio, Wilson, Gonzales and De Witt (Railroad Commission of Texas). A case from a location there is usually filed in the county where it happened, which is where the South Texas pages on this site say it belongs. The Permian Basin, across West Texas, is where about a third of the industry’s worker deaths happen.

What I look for first.

The part that failed, before it goes back to the yard: the hose, the valve, the fitting, the tank, and whatever tag or serial number is on it. The delivery paperwork and the shipping papers for any chemical that came onto the location, and its safety data sheet. The job safety analysis and the written hazard assessment. Where the eyewash and the shower were, and whether they worked. The master service agreements between the companies, which decide who insures whom. Photographs, names, and the incident report. The sooner the letters go out asking every company to keep what it has, the more of this is still there.