workover rig companies in north dakota brands

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…

Manages tools on the workover rig floor and assists in daily maintenance. Must have a minimum of 1 year of experience as a workover rig floorhand to be…

Spot in, rig up, and rig down well service unit (rig). Minimum of 1 year operating rig. Workover rig experience (minimum 6 months verified experience).

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

Operate the rig safely during rig up/down and pulling operations. Perform all required equipment inspections-workover rig, fall arrest system, derrick, hoisting…

The successful candidate will have an outstanding track record of success in workover rig experience in operating heavy equipment while ensuring communication…

Ensures all crew members are at the rig and prepared to work at the scheduled time. Determines how a service job will be performed based on specific conditions…

Inspects the setting up, taking down and transportation of the assigned workover rig. The Rig Operator, reporting to the assigned Tool Pusher/Field Supervisor,…

Operate the rig safely during rig up/down and pulling operations. Perform all required equipment inspections-workover rig, fall arrest system, derrick, hoisting…

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

3+ years workover rig / wellsite supervisory experience. Ensures efficient maintenance of assigned rig and equipment. High school diploma, equivalent or higher.

The Floor Hand position is part of a 4-5 person workover rig crew on a well service rig, who are responsible for performing services on oil and gas wells…

Operate the rig safely during rig up/down and pulling operations. Perform all required equipment inspections-workover rig, fall arrest system, derrick, hoisting…

Perform services on oil and gas wells as part of a 3-5 person workover rig crew. Lifts, removes, installs and operates well head pump, jacks and performs other…

We are immediately hiring full snubbing crews for 170k stand alone rig assist and 150k rig assist snubbing units! High school diploma, GED or equivalent.

MINOT, N.D. - Bob Mau"s oil well service company, Eagle Operating, of Kenmare, used to refurbish the workover rigs it uses to complete and maintain wells.

But Mau and his associates decided it was so much work they could just as well build a completely new rig and incorporate features and improvements not found on other such rigs.

"A lot of it is our own design. We"ve got patents," said Bob Mau, owner and president, standing next to a brand new rig on display in the State Fair Center in Minot on Monday. It was easily the biggest exhibit of the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference and Expo.

The expo this year drew more than twice the particpants as last year, and brought in people and companies from 27 states, four Canadian provinces and at least two European countries, said North Dakota Petroleum Council PResident Ron Ness. He said booth space was sold out more than a month in advance, with interest climbing after a federal report said North Dakota"s Bakken formation holds billions of barrels of oil.

The expo attracted longtime North Dakota oil patch business like Mau and Baker Hughes, as well as companies just looking to get into the game, like Park Construction Co. of Grand Forks, which does heavy duty contracting such as dams, roads and excavating.

"That"s kind of the piece of the pie we"re trying to get--a little bit of that market," he said. He said they hadn"t firmed up any work by the end of the day, but had made valuable contacts and learned a lot about what the work would involve.

Tom Rolfstad, longtime economic development director in Williston, has spent many years trying to attract jobs to the city. But now his job is trying to find workers for the surplus of jobs that have developed with the expanding oil industry.

Rolfstad and other Williston officials blanketed the expo with "Rockin" the Bakken" bumper stickers, shirts and doo-dads, as part of their ongoing effort to recruit workers to the area.

"We feel we needed something catchy," he said while staffing the Williston booth at the expo. And the Bakken oil formation that has caused an up-tick in drilling is a rock formation, so it fits.

It may be a challenge to get the people to western North Dakota from a place like Michigan, but "the people who do come out and spend some time out here find we"re kind of a Mayberry (lifestyle)," Rolfstad said. For instance, they are shocked that kids can safely walk to school. "That"s what captivates people as much as anything," he said.

Superior drives true value to its business units. Strategically positioned enterprise-wide and in alignment with our Shared Core Values, we can act with agility to provide support, financial discipline, and leadership. Empowered, our portfolio companies can focus on maintaining performance, profitability, safety, and operational excellence.

With nearly 88,000 employees passionate about providing a great guest experience, Chipotle is a longtime leader and innovator in the food industry. Primary Location: North Dakota - Fargo - 2359 - Fargo - Prairie Stone-(02359) For more information or to place an order online, visit WWW.CHIPOTLE.COM. Chipotle had over 2,750 restaurants as of December 31, 2020, in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Germany and is the only restaurant company of its size that owns and operates all its restaurants. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE: CMG) is cultivating a better world by serving responsibly sourced, classically-cooked, real food with wholesome ingredients without artificial colors, flavors or preservatives. Chipotle is committed to making its food more accessible to everyone while continuing to be a brand with a demonstrated purpose as it leads the way in digital, technology and sustainable business practices. At Chipotle, we"ve created a better place to eat and work. 2359 - Fargo - Prairie Stone-(02359) Chipotle has always done things differently, both in and out of our restaurants. Steve Ells, founder, first opened Chipotle with a single restaurant in Denver, Colorado in 1993.

RockPile Energy Services, which operated primarily as a hydraulic fracturing operation during the Bakken oilfield"s boom years, was acquired earlier this month by Houston-based White Deer Energy. RockPile was previously a subsidiary of Triangle Petroleum Corp.

"It puts us in a debt-free situation, which in this time and day is exceptional compared to our peers, and most of them are in some really big debt," said Howard Rough, RockPile"s vice president of sales and marketing.

The acquisition of AWS doubles RockPile"s workover rig fleet to 12, giving it a presence in both the northern and southern regions of the Williston Basin. Despite the slowdown in drilling operations throughout the Bakken, workover rig work throughout the state has been relatively steady.

"We believe this provides RockPile with a great platform to serve our clients across the Bakken and makes us as significant player in the North Dakota workover market," Dacar said in a news release.

While the financial details of the deals weren"t disclosed, RockPile"s won"t change its name nor will its management structure under White Deer Energy, a private equity firm that focuses on oil and energy service companies and equipment manufacturing.

"We have observed RockPile"s industry leading performance for some time and jumped at the opportunity to add the company to our portfolio," Jim Meneely, a partner in White Deer Energy, said in a release.

RockPile has around 400 employees nationwide with more than half of them in North Dakota, Rough said. Ninety percent of those employed in the state are based out of RockPile"s Dickinson office.

RockPile Energy Services, which employees around 200 people in North Dakota, has been bought out by White Deer Energy. However, it won"t change its name and is expanding. (Dustin Monke / The Dickinson Press)

Manufacturer of standard & mobile rigs & carriers for oilfield applications. Includes well servicing from 14,000 ft. to 22,000 ft., workovers from 10,000 ft. to 16,000 ft. & drilling from 6000 ft. to 10,000 ft. Specifications include brakes range from 28 in. dia. x 8 in. wide to 42 in. dia. x 12 in. wide, barrels from 12 3/4 in. x 38 in. to 18 in. x 43 in., chains from 1 1/4 in. to 1 3/4 in., clutches of 24 in. with single & 2 plate air friction outboards, shafts of 5 in. dia. to 6 1/2 in. dia. & gross weights from 63,200 lbs. to 115,000 lbs. Also includes forged steel, demountable options, mufflers with spark arrestors, dry type air cleaners, transmissions with torque converters, water splash brake cooling & up to 6 axles.

This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.

At CORE, we differ from most physical therapy clinics in St. Louis because at CORE Services you will receive one-on-one treatment every visit with the same physical therapist. While we believe that every person must take an active role in his or her treatment and recovery, we a…

Fisher Industries is a vertically integrated family of businesses that serves all aspects of the aggregate processing and land development industries.

We are a heavy civil and infrastructure contractor that pursues challenging projects with complex problems, difficult conditions, and aggressive schedules.

Wanzek Construction takes pride in providing the highest quality heavy industrial construction and specialty services to a wide cross-section of industries.

At E&M Services, we are committed to North Dakota, our employees, their families, and our communities. Our core values are reflected in every thing we do.

This website is for sale! progresssolutions.com is your first and best source for all of the information you’re looking for. From general topics to more of what you would expect to find here, progresssolutions.com has it all. We hope you find what you are searching for!

Since 1981, B. J. Kadrmas, Inc. has provided energy land services to clients working throughout North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.  Based in Dickinson, North Dakota, B. J. Kadrmas, Inc. operates throughout the Williston Basin, and near the epicenter of one …

Cintas is a leader in servicing the oil, gas, and mining industries with rental and direct purchase uniform apparel, accessories, and facility products and services that meet today’s regulations and safety standards. We outfit over 1 million employees in North America in the rig…

Empire Oil Company offers a wide range of services to our clientele. We have the knowledge, skills, and experience to deliver fast, accurate results. Our areas of expertise include:·         Mineral and Leasehold Ownership·         Lease Acquisition·         Abstracting Land, Mi…

Paladin Resources, Inc. is a North Dakota owned and operated company providing a complete line of land services to the oil and gas industry including title examination, lease acquisition, right-of-way acquisition, due diligence examination, title curative, title abstracts and va…

Petra Environmental Systems, Inc. (PETRA) was founded in 1997 by its current Owner/President, who owned and operated oil wells and was a workover rig contractor prior to establishing PETRA. This experience, coupled with an understanding of oil & gas well operational cost control…

RSI formulates, manufactures and provides technical service for the use of process and production treating chemicals for the oil field, including production, pipeline, refinery, and gas plants.

SECURE Energy Services Inc. is a leading North American energy services company providing safe and environmentally responsible fluids and solids solutions to energy companies operating in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (“WCSB”) and North Dakota. For more information cont…

For over 60 years, Wisco has delivered integrated midstream solutions to customers in the oil and gas industry. Our operations include the transporta…

We are an Oil & Gas service company located in the Bakken Region of North Dakota. We strive to provide the best services to meet our clients" needs. Our services include hotshot, semi, crane, winch, equipment rental and warehousing. We also provide rig moves and string-up/down s…

B&G Oilfield Services, celebrating over 54 years of excellence, is a multi-service provider with a priority focus on customer service and safety. Founded in Williston in 1966, B&G Oilfield Services has employee-driven commitment to provide solutions with the following maintenanc…

This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.

North Dakota’s top oil regulator wants to extend the state’s abandoned well plugging program by tapping into $4 billion made available in the federal infrastructure bill for the purpose of cleaning up old oil and gas sites across the nation.

Tens of millions of dollars could potentially come North Dakota’s way each year over the next decade to continue the work the Oil and Gas Division started in 2020 to clean up hundreds of wells. Other oil and gas states also are eligible to apply, and advocates for North Dakota landowners say the rest of the country could learn from the state’s experience.

The funding is meant “to tackle this problem nationwide and to improve state regulations and federal regulations so that the problem not only doesn’t continue to grow but doesn’t continue to extend and require another infusion of money at some point in the future,” State Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms said.

North Dakota spent tens of millions of dollars in federal coronavirus aid plugging more than 300 abandoned wells and reclaiming the sites over the past two years. The cleanup work is ongoing. State officials billed the program as a way to keep oil workers employed when the pandemic prompted a downturn in their industry, as well as a means to address the growing number of wells producers had abandoned.

“If they would be more thoughtful in the approach to this, we could do a much better job than last time when it was very rushed,” said Troy Coons, chairman of the Northwest Landowners Association.

Coons’ group released a report last month evaluating North Dakota’s program. Among the concerns it raised is that reclamation work meant to restore a well site to its original state was sometimes left incomplete, with contamination from saltwater spills still lingering. Saltwater is a byproduct of oil production and can render land infertile if it leaks.

Reclamation work in North Dakota over the past two years has cost $148,000 per well on average, but it can vary widely, according to data from the Oil and Gas Division. One site cost nearly $1.9 million. That’s in addition to the plugging process, which took place first and cost $134,000 on average per well.

Helms said the state initially overestimated how quickly it could complete reclamation work during colder fall and winter weather. The additional funds available through the infrastructure bill President Joe Biden signed into law earlier this month could help North Dakota address the unfinished work.

“You can very quickly plug a lot of wells and pretty quickly remove the equipment and eliminate the potential for future contamination, but the process of cleaning up past contamination and actually reclaiming and remediating the site is a multi-year process,” Helms said.

The bill designates some money specifically for improving regulations surrounding abandoned wells, and Helms said all 31 oil and gas producing states are eyeing it.

The Northwest Landowners Association has for years called for stronger bonding requirements to ensure enough money is available to plug wells if their owners shirk their cleanup responsibilities at the end of a well’s life.

The group would like to see the state no longer allow multiple wells to be placed on the same bond and instead require that oil companies secure a bond for each well they operate. Regulators in a number of states are looking at the issue, said Derrick Braaten, an attorney for the association. The costs associated with plugging and reclamation in North Dakota over the past two years were at times more than regulators expected, and that data could be particularly useful for people elsewhere to study, he said.

The state should also be more stringent about which idled wells qualify for assistance, said Scott Skokos, executive director of the Dakota Resource Council.

“It should probably be for wells that don’t have owners or have bankrupt owners," he said. “If that’s not the case, then it’s just a bailout to existing operators.”

Meanwhile, North Dakota legislators earlier this month approved spending $3.2 million of American Rescue Plan Act money to convert 16 abandoned oil wells into freshwater wells for drinking water. Private landowners or grazing associations will use the wells, especially for providing livestock with water.

The state has already converted five such wells over the past two years, Helms said. The process involves somewhat different procedures than if the state were to completely plug a well up to the surface, and it’s slightly cheaper, he said.

The infrastructure bill also makes $11 billion available for abandoned mine cleanup. In North Dakota, the Public Service Commission is tasked with cleaning up old coal mines that operated before stricter laws took effect in the 1970s surrounding reclamation.

He would like more information about requirements surrounding the federal program, but he said he would be interested in having North Dakota apply. The state receives about $2.8 million each year for mine cleanup via a federal reclamation fee.

In the early evening of Sept. 14, 2011, Jebadiah Stanfill was working near the top of an oil rig at a bend in the Missouri River in North Dakota. Jolted by a deafening boom in the distance, he swung around from his perch and saw a pillar of black smoke twisting into the sky.

Stanfill, a compact and muscular man in his 30s, descended to the ground and hopped into the bed of a red pickup driven by a co-worker. Bruce Jorgenson, a manager overseeing the work of Stanfill and his crew, jumped into the passenger seat, and they raced to the explosion.

A few minutes later, they reached the burning rig and pulled up next to Doug Hysjulien, who was wandering in a valley and clutching the front of his underwear. The rest of his clothes were gone.

Stanfill sprinted until he spotted Ray Hardy, who had been hurled into a patch of gravel. His skin was charred black and peeling. His nails were bent back, exposing the stark white bones of his fingers.

“He’s over there,” Hardy responded, gazing toward a field near the rig. Stanfill scrambled over a berm and waded through knee-high wheat until he found Michael Twinn, lying on his back naked and seared. His hair was singed and his work boots had curled up in the heat. He cried out in agony.

Brendan Wegner, 21, had been scrambling down a derrick ladder when the well exploded, consuming him in a fiery tornado of oil and petroleum vapors. Rescuers found his body pinned under a heap of twisted steel pipes melted by the inferno. His charred hands were recovered later, still gripping the derrick ladder. It was his first day on the rig.

Hardy died the next day of his burns. Twinn had his lower legs amputated. Dogged by post-traumatic stress disorder, he killed himself in October 2013. Each left behind three children. Hysjulien suffered debilitating third-degree burns over half of his body. He is the lone survivor.

To this day, the explosion – pieced together from interviews, court documents and federal and local reports – remains the worst accident in the expansive Bakken oil fields since the boom began in 2006.

Beyond the human toll from that day, which continues to haunt Stanfill and others, the 2011 explosion offers a striking illustration of how big oil companies have largely written the rules governing their own accountability for accidents.

Across the Bakken, deeply entrenched corporate practices and weak federal oversight inoculate energy producers against responsibility when workers are killed or injured, while shifting the blame to others. Oil companies also offer financial incentives to workers for speeding up production – potentially jeopardizing their safety – and shield themselves through a web of companies to avoid paying the full cost of settlements to workers and their families when something goes wrong.

An estimated 7.4 billion barrels of undiscovered oil is sitting in the U.S. portion of the Bakken and Three Forks formations of the Williston Basin, a 170,000-square-mile area that stretches from southern Saskatchewan, Canada, to northern South Dakota. North Dakota now ranks just behind Texas with the second-largest oil reserve in the U.S. Both states now account for half of all the crude oil production in the country.

But the boom also has been a serial killer. On average, someone dies about every six weeks from an accident in the Bakken – at least 74 since 2006, according to an analysis by Reveal, the first comprehensive accounting of such deaths using data obtained from Canadian and U.S. regulators. The number of deaths is likely higher because federal regulators don’t have a systematic way to record oil- and gas-related deaths, and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration doesn’t include certain fatalities, such as those of independent contractors.

Only one energy operator that leases or owns wells has been cited for worker deaths in North Dakota or Montana over the past five years, Reveal’s analysis has found. Slawson Exploration Co. Inc. paid a $7,000 penalty in 2013 after a contract worker died in an explosion.

OSHA officials say they are concerned that plummeting oil prices in the past year are prompting energy producers to shortchange safety even more. To others, the deaths and injuries would be preventable if not for a combination of greed, inadequate training and lack of government oversight.

Oil companies offer financial incentives to workers for speeding up production, potentially jeopardizing their safety. Credit: Adithya Sambamurthy/Reveal

On the day of the North Dakota explosion in 2011, the job of Brendan Wegner and the three other workers of Carlson Well Service was to get the well to produce more oil. Carlson was hired by the well’s owner, Oasis Petroleum North America LLC, which is part of Houston-based oil giant Oasis Petroleum Inc.

Michael Twinn, an experienced floorhand on the rig, had told his co-workers soon after they started work that day that he was worried about the well because it was “talking,” meaning it was showing signs of being under pressure. He had warned Loren Baltrusch, an independent contractor hired through Mitchell’s Oil Field Service who was supervising the site for Oasis, that there might have been a buildup of hydrocarbon gas, according to Justin Williams, a lawyer for Doug Hysjulien, the lone survivor, and Wegner’s parents, who spoke with Twinn about his ordeal before he died. Carlson Well Service officials later would testify that Wegner and his crew were not trained to work on wells under pressure.

Oasis declined an interview, but in a written statement, spokesman Brian Kennedy said: “Pressure gauge readings confirmed that the well was in fact static when operations began. Any suggestion that Mr. Baltrusch or Oasis Petroleum might have knowingly put workers in danger is patently false.”

The day before the accident, Baltrusch pumped heavy salt water into the well to prevent volatile gases from escaping before the crew set to work the next day, OSHA documents show. But on the day of the explosion, the well started to overflow with oil as the crew inserted more pipes into the well hole. That’s when the workers saw the oil rocketing 50 feet into the air. Then the inferno. Then their bodies burning.

“It shook my whole shack,” Bruce Jorgenson said in an interview. He was in a trailer less than a mile away working for Oasis, which had hired him through RPM Consulting Inc. to oversee another well site. “I went outside to investigate; that’s when all I saw was just a fireball.”

“We needed to try to help them in any way we could,” Jorgenson said. “Ray (Hardy) just seemed in shock … and Mike (Twinn) was in a lot of pain; he was screaming.”

When he saw Doug Hysjulien, Jorgenson recognized him immediately. They had both lived in Powers Lake, North Dakota, at one point. “His skin was very red. At first, I thought it was strings from his gloves hanging off of his hands, but it was his skin.”

Jebadiah Stanfill helped load Hardy and Twinn into the back of a pickup. When they placed Hardy in the bed of the truck, the coarse lining sheared skin off his scorched back. Stanfill cradled Twinn as they raced across the cratered dirt road to an ambulance on the main road. The flames had turned their skin to wax.

“There’s been an accident at the rig, and your husband wants to talk to you,” Stanfill said urgently into the phone to Twinn’s wife before putting her on speaker.

An estimated 7.4 billion barrels of undiscovered oil is sitting in the U.S. portion of the Bakken and Three Forks formations. Credit: Adithya Sambamurthy/Reveal

The rig was still smoldering when federal investigators drove to the scene the next day and began their work. Staff from the small OSHA office that serves the area interviewed witnesses and company officials in an attempt to re-create the blowout.

In 2011, the year of the deadly explosion, the agency’s office in Bismarck, North Dakota, had five field investigators – compared with eight this year – to handle tasks ranging from fielding complaints about butcher shops to triaging construction site hazards, along with far more technical cases involving oil and gas. The office covers roughly 148,000 square miles in North Dakota and South Dakota, including more than 12,000 producing wells in North Dakota alone.

From the start, the agency’s focus mainly fell on Carlson Well Service, the North Dakota-based company that employed Brendan Wegner and his three co-workers. The well itself was owned by Oasis Petroleum North America.

Investigators took dozens of photographs and several videos of the smoking nest of pipes and bent rig. They sifted through Carlson’s internal company documents such as work invoices and researched the company’s equipment. Over the course of six months, investigators interviewed about a dozen people and drafted reports totaling more than 200 pages.

Part of their investigation included researching the equipment they were inspecting – on Wikipedia. OSHA’s safety narrative report on the accident includes diagrams and information credited to the website’s entries for “blowout preventer” and “pumpjack.”

In the end, OSHA inspectors gave Oasis Petroleum cursory attention in their reports. A handwritten note from an OSHA investigator shows that Loren Baltrusch killed the well, or temporarily closed it, the day before the explosion, yet he was deemed an independent contractor. This was key because it is difficult for OSHA to cite energy producers that do not have direct employees on a worksite.

Instead, OSHA penalized Carlson for failing to properly install and test the blowout preventer, a mechanism that can help control an oil and gas well, as well as failing to provide flame-resistant clothing and an emergency escape line for Wegner to abandon the rig.

None of these steps would have prevented the accident in the first place, said Williams, adding that Oasis bore ultimate responsibility for making the proper engineering decisions that would have prevented the dangerous pressure buildup.

“It’s a simple engineering calculation,” he said. “They should have people qualified to do so, but they didn’t do that to start with.” Williams added that an expert he consulted said it would have taken no more than three tanker trucks of heavy brine water, costing about $1,500 combined, to properly kill the well.

Oasis’ Brian Kennedy said it was Baltrusch who arranged and oversaw the salt water injections – both the day before and the morning of the explosion – which he maintained rendered the well “static when work began.”

In March 2012, Carlson was fined $84,000, in part for failing to provide required safety equipment. The company’s lawyers hit back, arguing that one of the violations was not “willful,” as OSHA investigators had claimed. After negotiations, federal officials reduced that fine to $63,000. A top Carlson official declined to comment on the accident or OSHA fines. Carlson sold its business last year.

Like Carlson, many smaller contractors in the Bakken often receive fines, rather than the energy producers that own and lease the wells. Even though large companies often exert the most control over safety on their well sites, there is no specific federal workplace safety standard that applies to the oil and gas industry, which allows producers to dodge severe penalties.

In 1983, OSHA proposed workplace safety requirements for the oil and gas industry, but the rules never were imposed, leaving a “bit of a hole,” said Eric Brooks, director of OSHA’s Bismarck Area Office. As a result, OSHA primarily relies on the so-called general duty clause, which requires all employers to provide a safe workplace.

By contrast, the mining and construction industries are subject to stringent federal workplace safety regulations that address specific hazards. In fact, the Mine Safety and Health Administration enforces specific health and safety rules for the nation’s mines to reduce deaths and injuries.

In the absence of comprehensive workplace safety regulations, OSHA frequently invokes standards written by the industry itself, including those from the American Petroleum Institute, to determine whether employees are being exposed to hazards.

For example, companies involved in drilling and well servicing activities such as hydraulic fracturing are exempt from federal workplace safety laws requiring machines and equipment that are undergoing maintenance or repairs to be locked and tagged to prevent injuries. The American Petroleum Institute recommends such practices but does not require them.

“This premise is counterintuitive to the intent of government oversight. The problem with this scenario is that API is the lobbying arm of the industry,” said Dennis Schmitz, a former oil worker who is the chairman of the MonDaks Safety Network, an organization in North Dakota that promotes safety in the oil fields.

Following the accident, OSHA investigators interviewed Oasis officials and scrutinized Baltrusch’s role to determine how much control Oasis exercised over Carlson’s crew, Brooks said. OSHA didn’t fine the company because “in the absence of federal laws directly covering work on oil and gas sites, we couldn’t support a citation against Oasis,” Brooks said.

Brooks said that given another chance, OSHA likely would reverse itself and penalize Oasis. “If I had to look back on it, do I think things would be done differently? Absolutely,” he said. “I think we might have taken our chances and issued citations on that.”

After major accidents like the one that killed Ray Hardy and Brendan Wegner, big oil companies are insulated from financial costs. A spiderweb of corporate relationships allows big energy firms to shield themselves from collateral damage by forcing insurance companies for contractors at the bottom of the pecking order to pay.

Even though the government did not cite Oasis for responsibility for the accident, the company negotiated four separate settlements for undisclosed amounts with Wegner’s parents, Peggy and Kevin; Doug Hysjulien; Michael Twinn; and Hardy’s wife. During this process, disputes arose over who should pay the victims.

So the companies and their insurers took it to federal court. In the first lawsuit, Carlson Well Service argued that it should not have to defend or indemnify Oasis under their contract. The case ultimately was dismissed in June 2013 as part of a confidential settlement agreement.

In a second case, filed in the same court on the same day, Carlson’s insurance company argued that it did not have to pay damages to the injured workers on behalf of Oasis. In the end, Carlson’s insurance company agreed to share part of the settlement costs with Oasis’ insurance company, interviews show. The insurance company for Mitchell’s Oil Field Service, Loren Baltrusch’s employer, also contributed to the settlements.

“We found a way to protect Oasis,” said Kevin Cook, a Texas attorney who represented Carlson’s insurance company in the lawsuit against Oasis and its insurer in North Dakota federal court. “We resolved our differences with Oasis and their insurer by agreeing with them to divide these settlements.”

To Peggy Wegner, the shifting responsibility and finger-pointing means that Oasis “has never been held accountable” for the accident that killed her son. “It’s just another way to cover their ass,” she said. “It’s bizarre to me that a contract like this can even take place.”

In a more recent case, for example, Continental Resources Inc. won a favorable decision in February following a well blowout that injured three contract workers in July 2011 near Beach, North Dakota. The workers’ employer, Cyclone Drilling Inc., had signed a contract containing an indemnity provision in favor of Continental that was unlimited and without regard to the cause of the accident, according to the agreement.

In addition, Cyclone’s insurance policy included coverage for Continental protecting it from paying the cost of any suits brought by Cyclone’s workers who were injured or families of workers killed on the job. As a result, a federal judge allowed Continental and its contractors to shift up to $6 million for the workers’ injuries to Cyclone’s insurance company, court records show.

“As to the cause of the incident the public records show who was cited,” Eric Eissenstat, Continental’s senior vice president, general counsel, chief risk officer and secretary, said in an email.

If the top energy producers that control sites with fracked wells – in which oil and gas are extracted from shale with high-pressure mixtures of water, sand or gravel and chemicals – are permitted to offload the responsibility to smaller contractors, then there is little incentive to make worksites safer, said Paul Sanderson, a North Dakota attorney who frequently has encountered these agreements.

This phenomenon seems to be lost on the federal regulators who cover the Bakken. Asked whether these agreements could make energy producers indifferent to worker safety, Eric Brooks, OSHA’s Bismarck office director, said of the practice: “I’m not aware of that at all.”

“The Bakken is the most dangerous oil field to work in the U.S.,” Williams said. “The energy producers never pay for their mistakes; the insurance company for the contractor pays. It doesn’t give them any incentive to change the procedures that are unsafe.”

While Oasis contends that Carlson Well Service was largely at fault in the 2011 explosion, the contractor’s experience afterward is not uncommon. Smaller contractors have little choice but to agree to the terms in their contracts. Their insurance companies often end up shouldering part or all of the costs of settlements with workers and their families.

“This bill could have saved lives. When everyone is held responsible for their own conduct … it’s going to create a safer work environment.”— Paul Sanderson, North Dakota lawyer

“The big oil companies have you locked in,” said Connie Krinke, business manager for Diamond H Service LLC, an oil and gas service company based in Bowman, North Dakota.

“You really don’t have the ability to refuse to sign these agreements because most of these companies are billion-dollar companies, and we’re just a small pea in the big pod of people that work for them,” she added. “They have really good lawyers.”

A bill proposed in the state Legislative Assembly in January 2011 sought to prevent companies from adding provisions to oil and gas production contracts that required smaller contractors to indemnify them when people are injured or die because of the action of the companies or their independent contractors.

“If you break it, you buy it,” said Paul Sanderson, a North Dakota lawyer who crafted the bill in response to growing concern among insurers following several oil field accidents. “When a person is not responsible for their actions, they disregard the consequences.”

The bill passed out of the House Judiciary Committee. But the effort was torpedoed nearly a week later after heavy lobbying from the oil industry, Sanderson said. The bill was unnecessary and interfered with contracting in the oil industry, a lobbyist for the North Dakota Petroleum Council argued at the time. The bill was defeated 63-27 on the House floor, state legislative records show.

Yet the dangerous nature of the oil and gas industry has prompted four of the largest energy-producing states – Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Wyoming – to adopt statutes that prevent or limit oil companies from shifting liability, including legal costs, jury awards and settlements for workers’ injuries or wrongful death suits, to smaller contractors.

Today in North Dakota, under some agreements, oil companies and smaller contractors indemnify each other, meaning each will shoulder the cost of claims for damages made by their own employees involved in accidents, regardless of who is at fault. But this works only if large companies dispatch direct employees to work on their well sites, which they often do not.

“This bill could have saved lives,” Sanderson said, adding: “When everyone is held responsible for their own conduct … it’s going to create a safer work environment. You have situations where the oil companies know they are not going to be held responsible.”

Bill or not, safety is the top priority for oil and gas companies in the Bakken, said Kari Cutting, vice president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, which represents 550 companies. “Any language written in a contract is not going to change where safety is in their priorities. A lot of these companies are very savvy and don’t want to be the headline in any news cycle.”

Oasis’ company man the day of the 2011 explosion was Loren Baltrusch. Soon after the accident, he gave conflicting accounts to authorities and regulators of his precise role that day.

Soon after the interview begins, an unidentified man interrupts: “Hey Loren, that’s the guys in Houston; they’re very concerned about you,” he says in an apparent reference to Oasis officials. “You need to get checked out.

Baltrusch later told OSHA investigators that he was charged with consulting with Oasis on the engineering aspects and directing servicing activities on the well. But then he said he “really did not know what his authority was since it had never been explained to him,” OSHA records show. Baltrusch declined to comment.

This loophole has allowed Oasis and other energy producers to shift blame and protect their bottom lines from government fines when workers are injured or killed. They hire so-called company men to be their eyes and ears, executing orders and supervising drilling and other tasks.

“If you ask anyone who is in control at these well sites, they’ll tell you the company man,” said Eric Brooks, OSHA’s Bismarck office director. “They are dictating what you’re doing, how you’re doing it. They’re communicating every detail in real time to the companies about what’s happening with the drilling process.”

But because most of these managers are independent contractors, they are not covered under federal workplace safety laws. So company men generally allow energy producers to duck federal fines for accidents.

“Company men became independent contractors to protect the company,” said Tom Dickson, an attorney in Bismarck who has represented dozens of workers in personal injury and wrongful death suits. “They’re not accountable to anybody when something bad happens. It protects the top dog from accountability.”

That’s what happened after an explosion at the Zacher oil well in Mountrail County, North Dakota, in 2007. EOG Resources Inc., formerly known as Enron Oil and Gas Co., was using an open-top tank to reclaim wastewater from a fracking well to save money, according to court records.

When EOG’s company man, Paul Berger, decided to jump-start a defective light tower late one evening, gas vapors wafting from the experimental tank ignited, scorching the crew. Berger said he was under pressure from EOG to get the well flowing, according to a deposition.

After the explosion, EOG prevailed in a lawsuit in federal court in North Dakota, arguing that a provision of its contract required its contractors to indemnify the company, the well’s owner and operator, against other lawsuits that three injured workers had brought against EOG. While EOG ultimately controlled the well site, OSHA did not cite or fine the company.

Few suffered the consequences of that thirst for cash more than Ted Seidler, one of the workers injured at the EOG site, who underwent a series of operations after he was burned on his hands, legs, face and backside.

“It was hell,” Seidler said in a phone interview from his home in North Dakota. “It was a whole year that I never worked because of the burns. My wife quit her job to take care of me.”

Seidler, 66, tried to return to his old job. But the confluence of North Dakota’s extreme temperatures and his tender skin forced him to quit the oil fields. In 2009, Seidler settled with EOG and several of its contractors for an undisclosed amount after filing a lawsuit in state court.

“Everybody was passing the buck,” Seidler said. “They shouldn’t be allowed to do that. EOG should be the one who should be held accountable for the whole deal because they are the owners of the well.”

There have been at least 74 deaths in Bakken accidents since 2006, according to a Reveal analysis using data from Canadian and U.S. regulators. Credit: Adithya Sambamurthy/Reveal

Oasis provides workers with financial incentives to drill quickly and has lavished them with praise for setting records when they reach target well depths.

Four months before Brendan Wegner died, Joseph Kronberg, a 52-year-old father of three, was electrocuted and died at another North Dakota well owned by Oasis Petroleum North America.

Oasis paid bonuses worth a combined $33,000 to 23 of Kronberg’s co-workers in part for working quickly – even after Kronberg died, internal company records show. At a well on the same site where Kronberg died and another nearby well, Oasis paid workers performance bonuses of $150 per day for drilling quickly, compared with $40 a day for drilling safely, records show.

“Safety is tantamount at Oasis,” spokesman Brian Kennedy said, but when pressed, he acknowledged that in the case of Kronberg’s co-workers, “bonuses should not have been paid, and we regret that they were.”

“Nabors 149 just set a new record for Oasis on the Kline with Stoneham 18 following close behind on the Lynn. Congrats guys, keep it up!!” Laura Strong, an Oasis drilling engineer, wrote in a May 27, 2011, email to top company officials and company men.

“If you have a bonus that is simply based on getting it done faster… you’ve got a recipe for disaster.”— Eric Brooks, OSHA’s Bismarck Area Office director

In a lawsuit filed in January 2013 in federal court in North Dakota, lawyers for Kronberg’s widow, Margo, asserted that the company fosters a culture of recklessness in which there is one imperative: speed.

In court papers, lawyers for Oasis said Nabors Drilling USA LP, a contractor, would be required to cover the cost of any judgment in the case under its drilling contract. A federal judge concluded that Oasis was not responsible for Joseph Kronberg’s death, concluding that Oasis didn’t exercise a sufficient degree of control over the company man or any of the smaller contractors on site.

In the case, the judge reviewed a string of emails between Oasis and its company men, but ruled that they “merely constitute evidence as to Oasis’ end goal for the Ross well.” In addition, the judge ruled, Oasis did not owe a duty to exercise reasonable care to prevent this kind of accident.

Margo Kronberg was prevented from suing Nabors under North Dakota law, which generally prohibits employees who are injured on the job and their families from suing their employers.

Insiders overseeing drilling in the Bakken oil fields say Oasis is not the only company that pays bonuses for increasing production and profit. They say top companies such as EOG, Whiting Petroleum Corp. and many others also dole out incentives.

On EOG sites, for example, some workers earn $1,600 to $3,000 for “beating the curve,” or rapidly drilling their wells, according to two workers who declined to be identified for fear it would jeopardize their jobs.

“Over the past five or six years, there’s been a culture that’s been primarily focused on the production side,” said Dennis Schmitz of the MonDaks Safety Network. “There’s been a culture of gettin’ it done.”

Among the most common oil field injuries are amputations, broken bones and burns, which can severely disfigure workers and diminish their career prospects, OSHA’s Eric Brooks said. Despite the dangers, workers are drawn to the Bakken for hefty salaries, some in the six figures.

Drilling and well servicing in the Bakken is high stakes, at an average cost of about $9 million per well, according to the North Dakota Industrial Commission’s Department of Mineral Resources. The faster the oil gushes, the faster it gets to market to turn a profit, which averages $27 million per well.

That was true when oil was $100 a barrel. And now that oil has slipped to about $60 a barrel, that pressure has intensified, Schmitz said. In addition, with slimmer margins, Schmitz said several companies have fired their safety managers.

On their websites, many energy producers promote a “stop work” culture, in which workers are encouraged to speak out and stop the job if they deem something unsafe. But dozens of workers interviewed in the Bakken said that when they’re drilling, time is money.

“You’ve seen that in a lot of the accidents that happen out here, guys saying yes and meaning no,” said Matthew Danks, vice president and partner of Oilfield Support Services, a New Town, North Dakota-based company that builds facilities after wells are drilled to separate oil, gas and water.

Asked about speed bonuses, Brooks said that while he has not seen any specific examples, he would consider asking his investigators to scrutinize the practice.

For his efforts in trying to save his brethren, Stanfill says he was fired from his job at Xtreme Drilling and Coil Services Corp. Stanfill said he was told by managers at Xtreme and Oasis that he’d gone beyond his “scope of employment.” He should have remained on his own rig instead of rushing to the scene.

Oasis spokesman Brian Kennedy said: “As Mr. Stanfill was an employee of Xtreme Drilling and not Oasis Petroleum, we were not party to or responsible for any decisions regarding his employment.”

Benjamin Smith, Xtreme’s vice president of human resources, said Stanfill’s claim is “bogus.” Instead, Smith said Stanfill was fired for turning off a valve that cut power to a drilling rig, which he said endangered other employees – a claim that Stanfill dismissed as “a bald-faced lie.”

“Why would I put my life on the line for those men on the burning rig and then turn off the power on a rig so that my own co-workers will die?” Stanfill said. “That makes no sense. I don’t even know how to turn off a rig.”

Now a handyman living in Alabama, he said he still struggles with PTSD, often wearing black work gloves to prevent the sight of his hands from triggering memories of skin sliding off in his palms.

When Bruce Jorgenson returned to the site this past March to start drilling the new well, “the anxiety came back. I relived every minute of it. I’ve been involved in other bad things in the oil field, and this one was the only one that gave me nightmares.”

Even so, Jorgenson said he hasn’t discussed the explosion with his current crew. “I didn’t want them freaked out by it in any way. I wanted their mind on what we were doing.”

Jennifer Gollan can be reached atjgollan@revealnews.org. Follow her on Twitter:@jennifergollan.Taking on powerful interests demands lots of time, a strong backbone and your support.

We are located in Wyoming but also have the ability to work in Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota as well. Customers in all three states can rely on us for exceptional oil well servicing. Safety is a top priority of ours and is not taken lightly. We always have experienced tool-pushers to assist with any technical decisions that occur between the client and the rig crew. We also have a safety and compliance officer available at all times to address any safety issues and ensure each job is OSHA-compliant.