Attorneys contend driller was warned of faulty equipment before deadly Oklahoma rig explosion

A new report reveals that company officials were warned of faulty equipment that eventually led to the January 2018 oil rig explosion that killed five men in southeastern Oklahoma.

E and E News says the warning came two days before the deadly blast and fire. The energy news letter reported that the rig superintendent had received an emailed report alerting him that the rig’s blowout preventer was not in good shape.

A skull and crossbones highlighted the alert that a key part was in disrepair — “severity level 4.” But the supervisor didn’t see it because he didn’t open the email.

Even if he had seen it, he has testified he didn’t know the policy of his company — a subsidiary of Patterson-UTI Energy Inc. — on what to do about it.

When the crew lost control of the well and it exploded in flame last January near Quinton, Okla., the blowout preventer failed, the gas ignited and the inferno burned for eight hours.

The failure to see problems with the blowout preventer was one in a crescendo of errors and lapses laid out in a recent filing by attorneys for one of the men killed in the Jan. 22 blowout about 100 miles southeast of Tulsa.

The filing points most of the blame at Patterson, which was drilling the well. The Houston-based company has a history of frequent worker deaths.

“Patterson had not properly trained these people,” said Michael Lyons, the Dallas-based attorney for the family of Parker Waldridge. “They turned a blind eye to their own safety practices.”

Among the problems Lyons laid out in the filings, based on deposition testimony from Patterson employees and others:

  • Patterson employees disabled alarms that might have warned the crew. The suit says that in the 10 hours before the blowout, more than 1,000 different alarms went off on the rig, but the crew didn’t hear them.
  • Company employees incorrectly constructed a “well-control ECD pill,” which led to the clogging of the drill pipe.
  • Workers’ route of escape from the “doghouse,” or control room, was impeded by a poorly designed door that was partially blocked by an air conditioner. Patterson modified the rig by moving a “quick-escape” staircase to a less-accessible spot. The bodies of the five men killed were found in the doghouse.
  • Results of laboratory testing showed that hydraulic fluid in a key part of the blowout was “milky, contaminated with water, and had lost all viscosity.” It said that water contamination was “at a critical level for hydraulic systems.” After the blowout, the blind rams on the preventer failed to close down the well.
  • Moments before the blowout, the “driller” on duty for Patterson, Josh Ray, notified the crew he was going to try to shut the well in. Patterson’s rig manager, standing on the rig floor, was surprised when the well didn’t close.
  • When the rig manager tried to close the rams manually in the seconds after the blowout, he diverted power away from the blind rams, making it even less likely they would close.

Beyond that, Lyons said that Patterson has not undertaken any internal investigation or instituted any changes, and its employees have testified they don’t know what they would have done differently.

“We’ve asked every Patterson employee — what would you do differently, to your knowledge, what has Patterson done to correct problems?” Lyons said. “The testimony, uniformly, has been ‘nothing.'”

Patterson, through a representative, declined to comment.

Attorneys for the families of other men killed in the fire have pointed the blame at Red Mountain Energy LLC, the operator of the well, for choosing a risky drilling plan to save money, then failing to respond to warning signs.

But Lyons said Patterson was responsible because it was the company drilling the well.

“At the end of the day, it’s Patterson’s airplane,” Lyons said.

Red Mountain Energy President Tony Say said the new filing shows it was Patterson that failed on safety.

“Their gross negligence led to a terrible tragedy, which could have been prevented,” Say said in a statement to news organizations. “Red Mountain remains committed to the highest safety standards, which will always be our top priority.”

David Rumley, the attorney who has pointed blame at Red Mountain, said Lyons’ argument diverts blame away from Waldridge, a consultant who was serving as the “company man” running the well site.

“The real tragedy is the company man’s refusal to shut in the well when numerous demands were made by the Patterson crew to shut it in,” Rumley told E&E News.

Liability

It may fall to a jury to sort out which among the cascade of errors were the most direct causes. But Red Mountain and Patterson argue that Oklahoma workers’ compensation laws prevent them from being held liable.

The cause of the fatal fire is being hashed out in court filings as the U.S. Chemical Safety Board conducts an investigation that is expected to conclude by the middle of next year. CSB’s reports so far have detailed the technical problems leading to the blowout but have not looked at the decisionmaking by company managers or made any findings about the cause.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is seeking penalties against Patterson and two other employers, but its investigation did not offer a cause for the accident.

State officials finished their investigation without pointing to a cause or taking punitive action. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission has rules governing blowout preventers, but the commission has determined those rules were not violated (Energywire, Oct. 25).

The rig fire was the deadliest oil field accident since at least 2010, when 11 men were killed in the BP PLC explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.

Since 2008, when a Senate committee called Patterson “one of the worst violators of workplace safety laws,” at least 12 of the company’s workers have been killed on the job. Lyons’ filing states Patterson has been involved in the deaths of at least 50 workers since 1999.

Patterson CEO Andy Hendricks’ $14 million in compensation was reduced last year by an estimated $250,000 because of the fatal accident (Energywire, May 23).