Wyoming oil and gas officials: Safety report is a call to action
20.05.12
Representatives of Wyoming’s oil and natural gas industry lauded
the value of a scathing state report that said most industry
workers who die do so in a work environment in which safety is an
afterthought.
Nearly all Wyoming’s oil and gas industry deaths were due to a
failure to follow existing safety procedures, former state
occupational epidemiologist Timothy Ryan said in a memo last month
to Gov. Matt Mead.
Ignored safety rules correlated with 96 percent of the 62 deaths
in Wyoming’s petroleum industry from 2001-08.
Wyoming’s overall workplace death rate was more than 3.5 times
the national average in 2010 and ranked worst in the nation five of
the past 10 years.
Ryan reviewed 17 years of incident-level data about Wyoming
workplace fatalities. He said the data shows the state lacks a
“culture of safety.” He recommended better fatality data collection
and sharing and better coordination of safety efforts.
Don Burkhart is chairman of the Petroleum Association of
Wyoming’s safety committee and health and safety adviser for BP in
Wyoming. He said he’s not sure how oil and natural gas companies
that lack what Ryan called a culture of safety can improve their
ways.
Source: Casper Star-Tribune Online