Well Blowout Injury Lawyer in Odessa and West Texas
A blowout is the one failure on a rig where everybody knew the warning signs were there. Somebody saw the pit gain. Somebody made a call about the cement. The question is who, and when.
Loss of well control does not happen to one company. The operator wrote the well plan, a drilling contractor ran the rig, a cementing company set the casing, a mud company built the fluid, and a service company tested the preventers. Alex Horton is Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and he tries cases. If you were hurt or a family member was killed in a blowout, call before the rig moves.
Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Texas Super Lawyer for more than ten years. Former clerk at the Supreme Court of Texas. More about Alex Horton
Blowouts are rare and they are never simple. By the time anyone is hurt, three separate barriers have already failed, and every one of those barriers belonged to somebody with a contract and an insurer.
This page covers the four questions that decide these cases. For everything else about oilfield claims in Ector County, start at the Odessa oilfield injury lawyer page, or see the Midland and San Angelo pages.
What is a blowout preventer and what happens when it fails?
A blowout preventer is a stack of hydraulic valves sitting on the wellhead, designed to seal the well when pressure from the formation starts pushing back. It is the second line of defence, not the first, and by the time it is being asked to work something else has already gone wrong.
The first line of defence is the drilling fluid. Mud weight holds back formation pressure through simple hydrostatic head. Lose that balance, by drilling into higher pressure than the plan expected, by swabbing the well while tripping pipe, or by letting the hole go without fill, and formation fluid enters the wellbore. That influx is a kick.
The preventer stack is what you close on a kick. An annular preventer seals around whatever is in the hole. Pipe rams close on a specific pipe size, variable bore rams on a range. Blind rams close an empty hole and blind shear rams cut the pipe and seal, which is the last option anybody wants to use. Hydraulic pressure to close it comes from an accumulator unit that has to hold enough charge to operate the stack with no other power available.
Failure is rarely the steel. It is an accumulator that was low, a ram that was never function tested, a pressure test that was signed but not performed, a set of rams that did not match the pipe in the hole, a control line damaged and not repaired, or a crew that closed the wrong element under pressure. All of that leaves records, and all of those records belong to a company.
- Primary. Drilling fluid weight holding back formation pressure
- Secondary. The blowout preventer stack and the choke and kill lines
- Tertiary. Capping, killing the well, and in the worst case a relief well
Somebody has to have failed at the first before the second is tested. Any investigation that starts and ends at the preventer is looking at the wrong company.
Who is liable for a well blowout?
Almost never one company, and frequently not the one whose name is on the rig. Texas assigns a share of responsibility to everyone who contributed, which is why a blowout claim is worth investigating properly rather than settling against your employer alone.
The Operator
Wrote the well plan, set the mud program and the casing design, and made the decisions its company man made on location. Pushing ahead on a schedule after the numbers stopped supporting it shows up in these files constantly.
The Drilling Contractor
Supplied the rig, the preventer stack and the crew. Owns equipment maintenance, function and pressure testing, and the well control competence of the people on the floor.
The Cementing Company
A bad cement job is one of the most common root causes of a blowout. Slurry design, centralisation, displacement volumes and how the job was evaluated afterwards all get examined.
The Mud Company
Built and maintained the fluid, monitored properties, and should have flagged when the weight no longer matched what the well was telling everybody.
The Casing And Wireline Crews
Running casing, setting plugs, perforating and logging. Any of it can compromise a barrier, and any of it can be the last thing done before the well started flowing.
Equipment And Testing Companies
Whoever manufactured, refurbished, maintained or certified the preventer stack and the accumulator. If a component failed rather than a person, this is where it goes.
Texas asks who had the right to control the work at the moment it went wrong, decided by what happened on location rather than by what the master service agreement said. Chapter 95 limits when a property owner answers for a contractor's injury and it turns on retained control and actual knowledge, which is exactly what a company man directing operations looks like. And if your employer carries no workers compensation that helps you, because a nonsubscriber gives up contributory negligence, assumption of risk and the fellow servant defense. See who is liable for oilfield injuries in Texas, contractor claims against oil companies and suing your oilfield employer.
What is the difference between a blowout and a well control incident?
Control. A well control incident is an influx that was caught and circulated out. A blowout is flow that got away and reached surface, or crossed into another formation underground. The distinction matters far more than it sounds, because the companies involved get to choose which word goes in the report.
Kick
Formation fluid enters the wellbore. Detected as a pit gain, flow with the pumps off, a drilling break, or a change in pump pressure. Caught early it is routine.
Well Control Incident
The kick required the preventer to be closed and the influx circulated out. The well was regained. Nobody outside the rig necessarily hears about it, and it may never leave the daily report.
Underground Blowout
Flow is uncontrolled but it is going into another formation rather than to surface. There may be almost nothing visible at the wellhead while serious damage is happening below.
Surface Blowout
Uncontrolled flow reaching the wellhead. Gas at surface with a rig floor full of ignition sources is how these become fires and fatalities within seconds.
Two things follow from this for your case. The first is that prior well control incidents on the same well, the same rig or the same crew are powerful evidence, because they show the companies already knew. The second is that the label in the report is a decision somebody made, not a fact, and it is worth testing against the mud logs and the pit data rather than accepting.
How is a blowout investigated?
Through the data, hour by hour, backwards from the moment the well started flowing. A blowout is one of the best documented accidents in industry, because a rig records almost everything it does. The problem is that every one of those records sits with a company you are about to sue.
Preservation First
Letters to the operator, the drilling contractor, the mud company, the cementing company and every service company on that well, within days. Rig data systems overwrite on a fixed cycle and a released rig takes its records with it.
The Well Data
Mud logs, pit volume totalizer traces, the electronic drilling recorder, flow and return readings, pump strokes and standpipe pressure. This is where the kick shows up, usually earlier than anybody admits.
The Barrier Records
Preventer function and pressure test records, accumulator certification, cement job tickets and volumes, cement evaluation logs, casing design and running reports.
The Decisions
Daily drilling reports, the well plan and every revision to it, morning report emails, and the traffic between the company man and town in the hours before. This is where schedule pressure lives.
The People
Well control certification for everyone on the floor and in the doghouse, training records, hours worked and the crew rotation. An expired certificate is a straightforward finding.
The Regulators
OSHA investigates worker deaths and serious injuries and its file becomes discoverable. Texas well operations, including casing, cementing and well control requirements, sit under the Railroad Commission of Texas and Statewide Rule 13.
Expect the companies to run their own investigation immediately and to offer you its conclusion. That report is prepared for their lawyers and their insurers, not for you, and the version you are shown is rarely the first one written. For the wider safety picture see top safety violations on oil rigs and the common causes of oilfield and oil rig accidents. Federal standards are published by OSHA.
Blowouts Do Not Produce Minor Injuries
Gas at surface finds an ignition source, and what follows is burns, inhalation injury, blast trauma and fatalities. Men are thrown from the rig floor or trapped by fire between the substructure and the ground. Survivors face burn unit stays, grafting and reconstructive surgery running for years.
Value is built from future earning capacity, lifetime medical need, permanent impairment and disfigurement, which is a separate category of damages under Texas law. Where a company knew about a hazard and kept drilling, gross negligence puts exemplary damages on the table. If the blowout was fatal, the wrongful death claim belongs to the surviving spouse, children and parents and the survival claim belongs to the estate. Read can families sue for wrongful death after an oilfield accident before agreeing to anything.
Odessa Is Where The Crews And The Iron Come From
The Permian runs a large share of the land rigs working in the United States, and the crews, the preventer stacks and the service companies stage out of Odessa. The wells themselves are spread across Ector, Midland, Crane, Ward, Winkler, Andrews, Upton and Reagan counties, and the men on them mostly sleep in town.
Serious injuries go to Medical Center Hospital in Odessa, the Level II trauma centre for the region, with burn cases usually transferred on to Lubbock or the Metroplex. Civil cases in Ector County are filed in the 161st, 244th and 358th District Courts.
Where a case gets filed depends on where the well is and where the defendants do business, not on where you live. Basin crews come from all over Texas and beyond, and we handle the travel.
Two Years, And Much Less Than That In Practice
Texas generally gives you two years from the date of injury or death to file. If a governmental entity is involved, written notice can be due in as little as six months. The statute is at Chapter 16.
On a blowout the real deadline is far earlier and it is about data rather than paperwork. Rig recording systems overwrite. The rig gets released and moves to the next well with its records. Damaged equipment is refurbished or scrapped. By the time two years is a concern, the case has already been decided by what was preserved in the first month.
What To Do This Week
Get Treated Properly
Burn depth, surface area and any airway involvement recorded properly at admission. Tell the provider it was a work injury and describe the mechanism accurately.
Write Down The Well
Operator, rig name and number, the lease and well name, and every service company that had been on that well in the days before. Depth and what the crew was doing when it started flowing.
Sign Nothing
No recorded statement, no release, no arbitration agreement, no benefit plan enrollment. If you already signed something, bring it in rather than assuming it is settled.
Call Before The Rig Moves
Preservation letters have to reach every company on that well while the data still exists. This is the single step that most often decides a blowout case.
Well Blowout Claim Questions
My employer carries workers compensation. Do I still have a blowout case?
Very possibly. Comp blocks a claim against your own employer only. A blowout involves the operator, the drilling contractor, the mud company, the cementing company and usually several more, and none of them are protected by your employer's policy.
The company says the crew missed the kick. Does that end my claim?
No, and it is worth testing. Kick detection depends on equipment that was calibrated by somebody, data displayed by a system somebody maintained, and a crew somebody trained, staffed and rostered. A missed kick at hour eleven of a hitch on a short crew is not simply a crew failure. Texas comparative fault also lets you recover as long as you are not more than fifty percent responsible.
There was a well control incident on the same rig a month before. Does that matter?
It matters a great deal. A prior incident on the same well, the same rig or the same crew shows the companies already knew, and that is the evidence that supports a claim for exemplary damages. It is also the kind of record that quietly disappears if nobody demands it early.
They have already given me their investigation report.
Read it, keep it, and do not treat it as the answer. That report was prepared for their lawyers and their insurers, the version you were shown is rarely the first one written, and it is worth checking against the mud logs and the pit data rather than accepting.
My husband was killed. Where do we start?
Do not sign anything the employer or its insurer puts in front of you in the first week, and do not let the rig be released without a preservation letter going out. The wrongful death claim belongs to the surviving spouse, children and parents, and the survival claim belongs to the estate. Both need protecting from the same day.
What does it cost to hire a well blowout lawyer?
Nothing up front. We take blowout cases on a contingency fee, so we are paid a percentage of what we recover and you owe no fee if there is no recovery. The firm advances case expenses, including the well control and cementing experts these cases require.
Hurt When The Well Got Away? The Data Is Already Being Overwritten.
Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law. Free consultation, no fee unless we recover, and we come to you if you are in a burn unit or cannot travel. Bring anything the company has asked you to sign.