You may remember the 2019 event where the worker left home for the facility to check on an alarm in a pump house. He did not return, so the wife put their children in their child seats and went to the facility to check on her husband. She arrived and found him unconscious inside a shack. She entered to check on him, and she too was overcome by Hydrogen Sulfide. The children were too young to get out of the car seat, and this saved their lives.
An oilfield executive and a service company entered guilty pleas and were sentenced yesterday to criminal worker safety and federal clean air and safe drinking water violations. According to court documents, the oilfield company owns and operates oil wells in and near Odessa, Texas. Odessa is in the Permian basin, where oil reserves are “sour,” meaning they have high hydrogen sulfide content. Hydrogen sulfide gas can be deadly at high concentrations.
The case leading to these pleas is the result of an investigation of the Oct. 26, 2019, death of an employee and his wife. Both were overcome by hydrogen sulfide at a facility in Odessa.
The oilfield company VP agreed to plead guilty to a Clean Air Act (CAA) negligent endangerment charge and serve five months in prison. The company also pleaded guilty to an Occupational Safety and Health Act willful violation count for the death.
The service company pleaded guilty to a felony violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act for falsifying oil well integrity tests.
From the Chemical Safety Board investigation report…