workover rig companies in williston nd made in china

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2+ years previous oilfield and/or workover rig experience preferred. Work on floors or derricks on the rig as needed. May offer relocation package DOE.

$3000 SIGN ON BONUS. Overtime available - 60-70 hours per week. Exceptionally clean and state of the art shop. Diesel engine repair: 1 year (Required).

The Crew Worker, under the direction of the Rig Operator, performs activities and operates hand and power tools to perform maintenance and repairs to oil or gas…

Looking for experienced Floorhands for Workover Rigs in North Dakota. Full benefits, competitive pay with desirable schedule of TWO WEEKS ON / TWO WEEKS OFF.

*Floor Hands - *minimum experience required 6 months. *Derrick Hands - *minimum experience required 1 year. Job Requirements: *Job requirements include but are…

Manages tools on the workover rig floor and assists in daily maintenance. Picks up/lays down pipe and latches tubing in elevators. This is a full-time position.

Installs / disassembles (rig up/rig down) of wireline and pressure control equipment in accordance with original equipment manufacturer’s standards including…

Communicates with customer and/or the delegated well site representative, rig crew and field support staff. Plans, directs, supervises, and evaluates the work…

Monitor daily rig or rigless well operations. Gas storage wells workover candidate"s evaluation. Design and generate programs for workovers, abandonments, and…

As a rig hand, you will need to safely complete tasks and operations as the onsite supervisor instructs. You will be responsible for all aspects of maintaining…

Crew Member positions include Rig Trainee (no experience required), and Floor hand, Derrick hand, Relief Crew Chief, and Crew Chief, which are experience…

Assists the Rig Operator in performing job activities associated with the rig-up and rig-down of the workover rig, picking up/laying down and standing back rods…

Provide technical expertise to trouble-shoot major operational problems, such as blow out, rig on fire or serious accident that may occur during the operations.

Deliver and rig up berms for containment; and rig down and return berms to Safety Solutions. Able to rig-up and use a wide range of safety and rescue equipment…

A biker peeled out of the main intersection of Epping, North Dakota, a small town with a population of around 100 that is steadily growing as oil production ramps up in the area.

Drillers worked to drill "the curve," the 1000 foot portion of the oil well that gradually changes the angle from vertical to horizontal, on the Raven Drilling Company rig, outside Watford City, North Dakota.

"Bam" sliced a microwave pizza he made for dinner at the Raven Drilling “man camp” near to their drill site. Four six man crews trade off working two crew/two week shifts, with each shift lasting 12 hours, and drilling operations continuing 24 hours a day. Most men spend their time either sleeping or working, and head back to homes across the US once their shifts are over.

The Fox Run RV park located outside Williston is home to over a thousand people. Just renting a space for your trailer in the park costs $850/month—an affordable price compared to single bedroom apartments that fetch more than $2,000.

Oil industry workers arm wrestled one another at the Epping Saloon, outside Williston, North Dakota, after work. Epping, which has a population of 100 as of the 2010 census, is set to grow dramatically as new housing is built to accommodate workers coming to the region to work in the shale oil fields.

"Bam," center, "Lesbo," drinking a beer, and "Phillips," sitting in the backseat, relaxed on a “booze cruise” after their shift on the Raven Drilling oil rig by taking a drive into the badlands near their “man camp,” finding an old car frame, abandoned sometime in the early 20th century, by the side of the road.

A father and his son floated by in the waterpark section of the Williston Area Recreation Center, which prominently features a sculpture of an oil derrick and gas flares as it’s centerpiece. The Arc, as it is known, was opened in March 2014, at a cost of $70 million. Much of it is financed by a 1 cent sales tax on local transactions.

A local resident of Williston, North Dakota watched as a massive fire fueled by chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing process, referred to as "fracking," burned out of control at the Red River Supply complex in downtown Williston, in July, destroying much of the facility, located next to Williston"s downtown and railroad spur.

Local residents of Williston attended an affordable housing meeting at the Williston community library. Many of them, particularly the elderly, live on fixed incomes, and have seen their rents rise and eviction notices be issued as the price of rent has skyrocketed in past years.

Long tanker trains carrying oil east stretch across the North Dakota Prairie outside Epping. Tanker train traffic has crowded out much of the grain and livestock transport capacity that farmers in the region used to rely on to get their goods to market.

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The Williston City Commission has awarded up to $167,000 in STAR Fund incentives for four business expansions at its meeting on Tuesday, January 26, 2021. The projects included Baja Auto Sales, Circle T Transport and Construction, Prizm Company and Pronghorn Well Service, LLC.

All of the projects utilized the Williston STAR Fund/Bank of North Dakota Flex PACE Program to purchase property for their developments. The Flex PACE may be used to purchase real property and equipment or cover selected capital needs. The Flex PACE combines funds from the PACE Fund and Williston STAR Fund at a 2:1 ratio to buy down the interest rate on businesses’ loan.

Tricia Anderson, Pronghorn Well Service co-owner, said the funds will help them purchase a building and land for equipment storage and maintenance. Pronghorn provides workover rig and oilfield services.

“Having a shop will provide our company a central location to hire new employees, hold safety meetings and training and repair equipment,” said Anderson. “Our hands-on work is out in the oilfield, but we are super excited for the growth potential this grants us.

Keith Olson, Director of the Small Business Development Center in Williston, worked with the owners of all four projects. He said it’s nice to see the Flex PACE program help the local business base grow and expand.

“Most have been working on finding the right space and we have worked with them over the past few years waiting for the right opportunity to buy,” explained Olson. “Flex really helps make it happen when they finally find the purchase that works for them. It is great to see such diverse projects early in the year and from a wide variety of industries.”

“Survival during the pandemic has been challenging,” Anderson admitted. “With a lot of prayer, we have made it through. We are thankful every day for our continued opportunities.”

Baja Auto Sales -up to $32,000 from the Flex PACE Interest Buydown program to purchase the lot at 1014 2nd Street West. Baja is going to relocate its used car lot and detail business to the new, larger location.

Circle T Transport and Construction–up to $42,000 from the Flex PACE Interest Buydown program to purchase a larger shop at 5825 Hamilton Lane. Circle T is a family-owned business that offers a variety of hauling services plus snow removal and mowing.

Prizm Company – The dance school is purchasing property to diversify and grow its business. Prizm received up to $41,000 from the Flex PACE Interest Buydown program to purchase property at 5003 2nd Avenue West. The new location will house a daycare in the residence and a dance studio in the pole barn.

Pronghorn Well Service, LLC – the company has workover rigs and winch trucks to haul oilfield equipment. Pronghorn is purchasing a shop and property at 4914 21st Avenue Northwest for equipment storage and maintenance. They will receive up to $52,000 from the Flex PACE Interest Buydown program to purchase the building.

Rig counts have long been a leading indicator for future oil production in the state. This month, they’re hovering around 34, although they did reach 36 for a day or two the first week in February.

That’s a two-year high since the pandemic began, which follows the national trend. Baker Hughes listed rig counts on Friday, Feb. 18, at 645 — 10 more than the week prior and 248 more than in 2021.

North Dakota’s rig count might well be higher at this point, but there are a couple of systemic factors that are holding things back, and it’s not just that the state has been branded “mature” by its top producers.

For one, the exceptionally tight labor pool has chopped at least five off the top of North Dakota’s potential rig count. North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms mentioned this briefly in his monthly oil production report.

“A couple of operators have been working hard to add rigs,” Helms said, “And in one case it took them three months and three attempts at hiring a full crew to actually get the rig out of the yard.”

The first go-round, workers did not show up for training and the second round, workers actually showed up but it was a bitterly cold part of December, and many of them did not stick around.

The other company was only able to add a rig when a different company backed off of a couple of rigs, which allowed the other company to add workers — but did nothing to improve the net rig count.

“It’s just that hard to get workers,” Helms said. “And so the expectation has changed from adding, you know, a dozen rigs over the next year to hoping to add seven.”

The situation illustrates how North Dakota’s labor crunch is holding the state’s oil and gas sector recovery back, despite the prolonged period of higher oil prices — mid $90s — that more normally would be prompting a spike in rig counts.

Hydraulic fracturing crews with a hundred or so employees follow along behind rigs, completing the wells that have been drilled. North Dakota has 11 active hydraulic fracturing crews right now, Helms said, up from one during the pandemic. That is about as many as needed to keep up with the existing number of rigs.

Another problem that’s also holding back oil production is the increasing gas to oil ratio and the lack of infrastructure to take that gas to market. This is a problem that could get worse, as the gas-oil ratio in the Bakken is set to continue growing, even at flat production.

North Dakota Pipeline Authority Justin Kringstad has talked about this issue frequently. Even 5 percent growth in oil production would be difficult, as things stand now, when it comes to gas takeaway. That sets a new ceiling, as many companies have set ambitious 98 and 99 percent gas capture rates for their ESG goals.

“We know that even at flat, slight growth in oil, gas growth is going to continue to stay strong, and we will likely start to see that really come on strong here toward the summertime,” he said.

The oil and gas sector is working on more gas infrastructure, to de-bottleneck areas where takeaway capacity has been constrained and to add to overall capacity out of the Bakken.

Among these projects is the recently completed WBI pipeline system that came online two or three weeks ago, which helped debottneneck an area north of the lake near Tioga.

In late 2024, the Wahpeton line comes online in the southeast corner of North Dakota, and it will plans to deliver natural gas to customers off of the WBI line.

Meanwhile, in January, the Grasslands pipeline held an open season to send about 90 million cubic feet of natural gas per day to the Wyoming market. The results of that open season are not yet known, but the target in-service date for the line is fall 2023.

Meanwhile, a deadline is coming up March 1 for applications on a cross-state pipeline that will carry natural gas to the eastern half of the state from the West.

Kringstad said one thing he’ll be watching is whether the new infrastructure that’s being built is large enough for these newly ambitious gas capture targets industry has set, targets that are substantially higher than the state’s regulation that requires 91 percent capture.

Lack of adequate gas infrastructure can set an artificially low ceiling on the Bakken’s potential oil production, and which can also act to depress rig counts over time.

Every workover rig available is going right now in the Bakken, North Dakota’s top oil and gas regulator Lynn Helms said on Friday, during his monthly oil production report, as companies try to get wells online as quickly as possible after back-to-back blizzards idled a substantial number of four and five-well pads in Williams, Divide, and McKenzie counties.

March was a good month for production, Helms said, with a 2.8 percent increase in crude oil production from 1.089 million barrels per day to 1.12 million barrels per day. That figure is 2 percent above revenue forecast. Gas production, meanwhile, rose 4.5 percent to 3.01 billion cubic feet per day from 2.87 billion cubic feet per day in February.

Gas capture percentages were 95 percent, and this time Fort Berthold was a bright spot, with 97 percent capture. Helms said he expects continued improvement in the Fort Berthold area, with new solutions for gas capture in the works for the Twin Buttes area, which has been a problem spot.

But production is not going to look as rosy in April, Helms said, and may not look great in May either, given the time it will take to repair electrical distribution infrastructure. Load limits remain in place because of wet conditions, and that is a condition that might go on for a while, given the recent flooding issues caused by rain.

“We saw production in the first blizzard dropped from about 1.1 million barrels a day to 750,000 a day,” Helms said. “We recovered not quite back to a million barrels a day. And then the second blizzard came in. It was heavily impactful on electrical power and infrastructure in the Bakken oil fields.”

“It took a week, or I guess within a little bit less than a week, we recovered to 700,000 and it’s taken another week, we think we’re back at about a million barrels a day.”

One of the biggest of problems was that so many natural gas processing plants were knocked out of service, some for nine hours and others for well over a week.

“Just this past week, our largest gas plant came on and that’s really enabled a lot of production to come back on,” Helms said. “So we’re back to a million barrels a day, maybe a little more. You know all of the large operators reported enormous production losses. And of course that has led to the deployment of every workover rig available being out there trying to get wells back on production.”

Last weekend in Williams County, a dozen four and five-well pads along Highway 2, headed toward Ray, remained idle. They appeared to be without electricity, with some poles still clearly broken and lines laying down on the ground.

In his discussions with drilling contractors, Helms has learned that most drilling rigs went south to Texas and New Mexico, both of which escape winter sooner than the Bakken. Those areas hired the available workforce, too, which has added to the Bakken’s difficulty in attracting workforce.

“It’s taking around two months to train and deploy a drilling rig and crew, and very similar timeframes for frack crews,” Helms said. “So it’s just very, very slowly coming back.”

“There have not been any new frack fleets constructed since before the pandemic,” Helms said. “So the iron that’s out there is starting to show some wear and tear, some age, and, at some point, we’re going to have to see capital deployed to bring that iron back on.”

“I was reading an article today, and some of the large operators were saying, ‘Well you know we could bid up the price to hire frack crews, but all we would be doing is hiring them away from smaller companies that can’t afford to pay as much.’ So there wouldn’t be a gain in the number operating, in the number of wells completed, or really a more rapid rise in production. So it’s very much workforce limited.”

North Dakota rig counts are at 40 right now and Montana rigs are at 2, according to figures from North Dakota Pipeline Authority Justin Kringstad. Helms said the Bakken hasn’t seen those numbers since March of 2020. There are about 15 frack crews running now, a number last seen in April 2020.

Prices, however, have been well ahead of revenue forecasts, pushed in part by sanctions against Russia, which attempt to choke a major source of financial capital for the invasion of Ukraine, as well as continued supply chain issues and lower than expected production from OPEC.

“Today’s price is almost $102 a barrel for North Dakota light sweet and $106 West Texas,” Helms said. “So we’re estimating about $104 a barrel for North Dakota crude prices. That’s more than double revenue forecast. Revenue forecast was based on $50 oil, so that’s 108 percent above that.”

“And of course the market did not like the signal that it got this week or late last week of the cancellation of the offshore lease sales in the Alaskan lease sales,” Helms said.

“For example, the RMPs, or the resource management programs, and the records of decision from Corps of Engineers and Forest Service weren’t filed along with information about why various quarterly lease sales were canceled,” Helms said. “And why some of the tracts were chosen that were chosen to be in this latest lease sale.”

North Dakota is a few days away from a May 18 deadline for protests in the projected June sale, which has 15 parcels listed. If there’s a protest against one or more of the tracts, they could be pulled from the sale for further consideration.

Join us Oct. 31 - Nov. 3, at the Hall 5, booth #5250 to learn how we collaborate with customers to deliver smarter well planning, optimized drilling performance, and innovative completions for production enhancement.

HalVue Real-Time Viewer is a highly efficient real-time data monitoring application that enables you to unlock an immersive real-time environment and collaborate with your team like never before.

The StrataStar™ Deep Azimuthal Resistivity service provides multilayer mapping for precise well placement in the most productive zones of the reservoir.

Their exceptional mobility, stability, and ease of operation are the outcome of our extensive experience in the design and production of mobile drilling rigs.

Belonging to the same family, Sovonex™ service rigs comprise many of the technological advantages that result in smooth operation and make the life of our customers’ easier:

Wide selection: At our production facility in China we design and develop workover rigs for service depths ranging from 1,600 m to 8,500 m (5,250 ft-27,900 ft), and workover depths from 2,000 m to 9,000 m (6,600 ft-30,000 ft) for 2 7/8” DP.

Full API coverage: The different components of our well-servicing rigs are manufactured to the following API standards:Steel structures, such as the mast: API Spec 4F

Highly maneuverable : Sovonex™ mobile drilling rigs and self-propelled workover rigs possess excellent driving properties in the desert, mountain, and other impassable terrains.

Powerful CAT engines and a custom-made chassis that can be equipped with single wheel full suspension enable well service operations in even the most remote areas.

Suited for corrosive environments: All steel parts are specially protected against corrosion through the application of multiple layers of ship paint. The same coating process is used in marine shipbuilding.

Reduced NPT: The mast is erected hydraulically to reduce time for rig up and increase safety. Likewise, all rig components have been designed to allow for fast assembly and disassembly.

With every service rig, we send technical staff to our customer to provide first-hand technical support. The engineer responsible for the rig design is always part of the service crew.

There has been a sudden surge in job openings in the Bakken, particularly for hydraulic fracturing and completion crews, as companies ramp up to put more wells on line in the first half of 2017, reported Oil Patch Hotline.

The number of job openings in Williston, ND, has more than doubled as companies scramble also for licensed CDL truck drivers. One company said there is a nationwide shortage of drivers.

“The labor crunch in North Dakota continues and it looks like it will get more intense by mid-2017,”said Cindy Sanford, office manager for the ND Job Service in Williston. “We do have a labor shortage.”

“We have a harder time finding drivers,” said Art Brown, human resources director MBI Services, which has a dozen openings for drivers and workover rigs. Some candidates are reluctant to move to North Dakota because they are concerned the oil field may again go through a decline.

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” Brown said. “All of our services have seen an upturn. We want to make sure we are very competitive on wages.” Some drivers can work 10 hours a day and earn USD 80,000 and USD 100,000 a year, he added.

The number of openings in the dozen energy counties has doubled in the last3 months to 410 as many of the service companies such as Halliburton and Schlumberger are calling back workers that were laid off several months ago.

Rockwater Energy in Williston is looking for 10 CDL drivers for hauling frac sand and frac water with pay scales ranging between USD 75,000 and USD 85,000 plus a USD 500 signing bonus.

“The whole country is suffering from a driver shortage,” said Bill Kremin, human resources director for Brady Trucking in North Dakota and Utah. The company specializes in hauling frac sand and has over 15 openings for CDL drivers.

Schlumberger"s emissions digital manager talks about integrating emissions with operations data to reduce emissions, stay in compliance and improve performance.

"For the last, let"s say, 12, 14 years, we"ve been in catch-up mode around here – a lot," Williston Mayor Howard Klug told FOX Business. "What do you do with all the sewage when you double the population and you don"t have any place to put it?"

The mayor"s rather unique concern was the result of one of the biggest economic booms of the past decade: fracking in North Dakota"s Bakken Formation.

In the late 2000s, fracking and horizontal drilling made previously difficult to tap oil, trapped in the underground rock formation, accessible. The yearly oil production in North Dakota went from 45 million barrels in 2007 to nearly 525 million in 2019. North Dakota is now second only to Texas in oil production in the U.S.

This led to a massive influx of oil activity and jobs that made Klug"s city the hub of the fastest growing population center in the United States during the 2010s.

An image of downtown Williston, North Dakota, on August 24, 2021. Williston sits on the Bakken rock formation which has led North Dakota to become the second biggest oil producing state in the U.S.(Tyler Olson/FOX Business / Fox News)

The population of the Williston micropolitan statistical area – which includes Williston itself and the surrounding Williams County – exploded between the 2010 Census and the 2020 Census. There were 22,398 people in 2010 and 40,950 in 2020. That"s an increase of 83%.

The only other county in the United States to grow as fast was neighboring McKenzie County, which saw its population increase from 6,360 to 14,704, or 131%. The population in McKenzie County"s Watford City grew even faster than that, but it"s only a fraction of the size of Williston.

All the new people in the early days of the oil boom overwhelmed the area, causing housing prices to skyrocket. Many people slept in tents or cars just for the opportunity to work one of the new high-paying oil jobs. "Man camps" – where men working in the oil industry would live for a few weeks or months at a time – became a scourge, and crime rose.

But there was also good that came from the boom. Landowners became millionaires off of royalties from their mineral rights. Retail options and public services in Williston eventually increased significantly, as did the town"s diversity.

"The things that we did, we build a new high school. We built [a recreation center]," Klug said, regarding what the city was able to do with its increased revenue. He also speculated that the city added 20 churches in the past decade, as well as other houses of worship.

"Where else in North Dakota do you have an African grocery store?" Klug added. "The restaurant business went crazy. We have just about any kind of restaurant that you can imagine right here in the city of Williston. You know, we never thought that we would have a sushi restaurant right next door to city hall."

Oil wells outside of Williston, North Dakota, on August 24, 2021. The northwest North Dakota oil boom powered Williston to be the fastest-growing "micro" area in the United States between 2010 and 2020.(Tyler Olson/FOX Business / Fox News)

The city was also able to raise money to deal with the assorted problems that came with its population growth. It increased its police force from about 25 sworn officers to approximately 70 to deal with the crime surge, according to Klug. The city built more roads to handle the extra traffic, including some that rerouted the massive trucks headed to the oil fields around the city instead of through it.

It built an airport to handle more commercial flights on larger planes. And it increased its funding for mental health services and started a city-owned ambulance service.

What about the mayor"s answer to Williston"s sticky sewage situation? The city spent $120 million on a new sewage plant that will allow the city to handle up to 70,000 people.

The Bakken area"s growth in raw numbers pales in comparison to the growth in some other places in the United States over the past decade. Sumter County, Florida – the home of The Villages – grew from 93,420 to 129,752, an increase of more than 36,332 people. Maricopa County, Ariz., grew from 3,817,117 to 4,420,569, an increase of more than 600,000.

But in raw percentages, those places only grew 36% and 16%, respectively, compared to the 83% growth in the Williston area. That"s what gave Williston a "Wild West" feel in the early days of the oil boom, according to local restaurant owner Marcus Jundt. The entrepreneur also lost the 2014 mayoral race to Klug.

"It reminded me of the history books I read when you were a kid in school and you read about Spindletop or the Alaskan gold rush or even the Forty-Niners in California," Jundt, who came to Williston in 2011 to get into its restaurant business, said.

Williston Mayor Howard Klug speaks with FOX Business in Williston City Hall on August 24, 2021. Klug said the city has been playing "catch-up" for years as its population nearly doubled in a decade thanks to the North Dakota oil boom.(Tyler Olson/FOX Business / FOXBusiness)

"Instead of having you know like gold rushes in the past you had people just showing up on the train or showing up in their pickup trucks. You go to McDonald"s and take an hour to go through the drive through. Monday night at Applebee"s it would take two hours to get a table," Jundt said. When he eventually opened his bar, it was "three deep" every night, Jundt said.

"It was just – there was energy in the air, it was electrifying. All anyone was talking about was the new business they were going to start or something that they were doing that was financially successful and exciting and something new that they"re going to do," Jundt continued. "And it seemed like it was contagious. It was like a fever and there was nothing like it. I"ve never experienced anything like that in my life."

The nearest large city is Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada, a nearly seven hour drive away. In the U.S., the closest major cities are Minneapolis and Denver – each about a 10 hour drive.

Jundt is the classic definition of a carpetbagger. He used to run Kona Grill, an upscale chain based in Phoenix. And he admits that some of the lifers in Williston – which before the oil boom he says was "a Mayberry type town where everybody knew each other" – might think that all the change is a net negative for the area.

But state Sen. Brad Bekkedahl, who"s held Williston-area public service positions since the 1980s, says he sees a town that"s starting to "stabilize" into a strong community in the last "six or seven years."

Workers and diners at Williston Brewing Company on August 24, 2021. The restaurant and multiple others in town are owned by Marcus Jundt, who came to Williston to serve the town"s growing population of oil workers and their families. Last decade, the(Tyler Olson/FOX Business / FOXBusiness)

"The people who live there now have good roads, good access to facilities. They have better commercial facilities in town than we used to have – more restaurants, more retail coming in," Bekkedahl said. "They also have the new Williston Recreation Center, which at the time was the largest public facility of its type in the country… And we"re getting to the point where we have a community where it looks like it"s stable instead of going through a boom."

In Klug"s words, Williston had to figure out what "makes a town a town." One of those things is children. Another is medical care. The quantity of both skyrocketed in Williston.

With a surge in working age people in Williston, the median age decreased from about 55 years old to about 30 years old. And with that came an exponential increase in the number of babies born.

"We went from maybe 20, 25 births per year to over 800, close to 900 births in our hospital," Klug said. "So with that we"re working on expanding the medical field. With that many births… where do you put them when they get to be kindergarteners here? So we consolidated school districts."

Williston Economic Director Shawn Wenko says the explosion of population and families is simply a symptom of Williston being a place with opportunity for those willing to work for it.

"At one point, the average median income was north of $100,000 up here. That"s settled in a bit as things have kind of calmed a bit. But it"s still relatively high. I mean, I want to say we"re probably, you know, in the high 80s, if not low 90s," Wenko said. "You"re able, if you"re willing to work hard, if you"re an entrepreneur, you"re going to be successful, build a good life for yourself."

An oil rush is on in North Dakota, where production has risen 12-fold since 2000. But along the way, the business has also become dangerous. At least 74 people have died in the Bakken oil fields since 2006. And major oil companies, which have most profited from the boom, often evade accountability when accidents happen.

And the guy told him, you put your time in here, in a year, year-and-a-half, you will be up over $100,000 a year. For a 21-year-old kid, that"s pretty exciting.

If you have ever seen a workover rig, there"s — there"s stacks of pipes in there. His job would be to stand up there and uncouple them or couple them together. And the day of the accident was actually his first day working on the rig.

A blowout. Oil shot 50 feet in the air. Brendan was trapped. The well"s operator had injected saltwater to make the well safe to work on. Even so, the well exploded.

And I go out there and asked him where everybody"s at and how many are there? And he just says, derrick man"s dead, the derrick man"s dead. That"s when I looked up and I saw what I later find out is Brendan burning in the derrick.

Within hours, the rig was a twisted hulk of smoking steel, pinning Brendan"s body under the collapsed wreck. One other worker died. Another lost his legs and later committed suicide. It was the deadliest accident in the Bakken in the last decade.

ERIC BROOKS, Occupational Safety and Health Administration: And in this particular instance, you had an employee that was up on the mast. And so now you have a fire and an explosion. And he doesn"t have anywhere to go, because your emergency egress line wasn"t installed. So, his only avenue would have either been to jump or try to climb down into the flames.

First and foremost, we talk about what we call the exposing employer. You know, I work for you, that relationship. And that"s where the major accountability holds, is with that exposing employer.

There are many layers of contractors in the oil fields. In this case, Brendan was hired by Carlson Well Service, who in turn was working for Oasis Petroleum North America. They"re part of Oasis Petroleum, based in Houston.

A key way energy companies like Oasis further insulate themselves is to hire what are known as company men. They"re site supervisors, but they"re mostly independent contractors outside of OSHA"s purview.

By using independent contractors to oversee their wells, energy companies like Oasis can avoid penalties when things go awry. Oasis misjudged the pressure in the well, the root cause of the accident, says the lawyer for Brendan"s parents, Justin Williams.

JUSTIN WILLIAMS, Attorney for Wegners: All the decisions and all the information with regard to that well were made by Oasis. There was no decisions made that reflected a mentality towards safety.

Williams says Oasis had ultimate control over the site that day. Like most companies, Oasis Petroleum typically receives real-time data on well conditions, pressure, and progress. In fact, this e-mail shows that the very well Brendan was working on had been recognized for setting a drilling speed record just months before.

But OSHA gave Oasis cursory attention in its accident investigation. The attorney for Brendan"s parents says the agency lacks a sophisticated understanding of the oil and gas industry. One of its safety reports on the explosion included a quote straight from Wikipedia.

Oasis doesn"t have exposed employees on the job site. Rather, they hired a subcontractor. Now, that might sound like a bunch of legalese, but it is very important.

In fact, that means regulators could not cite the company. A handwritten note from an OSHA investigator shows that, while Baltrusch shut down the well the day before the explosion, the investigator still concluded no Oasis employee was on site.

As a result, while Carlson was fined $63,000, Oasis paid no penalty. Carlson, Baltrusch, and Oasis all declined to be interviewed, but Oasis said the well was safe to work on and sent us this statement: "Oasis puts worker and environmental safety first. Any suggestion that Mr. Baltrusch or Oasis Petroleum might have knowingly put workers in danger is patently false. The release of gas and the subsequent fire was caused by a kick, or sudden and unexpected flow of gas into the wellbore."

There"s another reason top energy companies are not held accountable. Attorney Paul Sanderson says oil field contracts can shield the companies even when they are responsible for accidents.

Sanderson crafted an anti-indemnification bill similar to ones that passed in other oil states like Texas. But Sanderson says he was outgunned by the oil lobby.

And by killing this bill, they certainly created a system where they are continued to allow them to shift the responsibility for their own negligence onto other parties.

Literally, you got the fox in the henhouse. It"s easy to see why they — everybody wants to come to North Dakota and do business, because there"s no restrictions.

And that is one reason the Bakken is so dangerous. Schmitz says it"s often hard for contractors to insist on safety if that gets in the way of production.

If they are incentivized in the wrong way, it is very difficult to tell the person who literally carries the balance of work for your entire company, no, we can"t do this, or, no, we can"t do it that way because it"s unsafe.

Heading to the site of Brendan"s accident, I could see another rig drilling on the very same spot. The new oil well is less than 100 feet from the one that blew up. A simple wood cross commemorates the spot where Brendan was killed four years ago.

His parents reached a settlement with Oasis for an undisclosed amount. But the indemnification helped the oil giant pass on part of these costs to their contractor"s insurance company. Brendan"s father says there"s no real incentive for oil companies to keep workers safe.

To them, there"s just dollar signs coming out of the ground. I don"t think they have any regards to how they"re getting it, and I think they should be responsible for the well-being of the people working on their site.

Our story was produced by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. You can subscribe to their podcast on iTunes and hear their monthly show on public radio stations across the country. Find a link to their full investigation on our Web site.