Midland Land Rig Explosion Lawyer
A rig explosion gives a crew seconds. Men on the floor are twenty feet up with two ways down, the doghouse is right there, and the engines that probably lit it are running the whole time.
By the time anybody is hurt, gas has reached surface it should never have reached and found an ignition source that should never have been in range. Both of those are decisions somebody made. Alex Horton is Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and he tries cases. If you were burned, or your family lost somebody, call before the location is cleared.
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
Land rig cases are different from other oilfield explosion cases, because the rig brings its own fuel and its own ignition sources and parks them within a hundred feet of each other.
Four questions, and the fourth is the one families call about. Go straight there if that is why you are here: can the family of a killed worker file a claim. For everything else in Midland County, start at the Midland oilfield accident lawyer page.
What is a land rig explosion?
Hydrocarbon gas reaching the surface on a drilling or workover rig and finding something hot enough to light it. The rig itself supplies both halves of that, which is what separates these from a tank battery fire or a refinery incident.
A land rig is a working industrial site with its own power plant. Diesel engines and generators run around the clock, the electrical gear is on location, and the well bore is a few dozen feet away. Areas near the well are supposed to be classified, which means only equipment rated for a flammable atmosphere is allowed in them. What gets parked, run and repaired inside those zones is one of the questions these cases turn on.
The gas normally arrives one of two ways. It comes up in the drilling fluid, as gas cut mud or connection gas, and should be stripped out by the degasser and the mud gas separator before the mud reaches the pits. Or the well gives a kick that is not caught early enough, and gas reaches surface with the crew on the floor.
The layout is why these injuries are so severe. The rig floor sits on a substructure, elevated, with limited routes down. The doghouse is on the floor. Men get burned where they stand, trapped between the substructure and the ground, or hurt getting off in a hurry. Where the fatalities happen is almost always a function of where people were standing and what was between them and the ground.
- The gas. Gas cut mud, connection gas, or an undetected kick
- The handling. Degasser, mud gas separator and vent line routing
- The ignition. Engines, generators, electrical gear, hot work, static
- The detection. Gas monitors, alarms, and what the crew was told to do when they sounded
Every one of those four leaves records, and every one of those records belongs to a company.
What causes a land rig fire?
A chain, not a single failure. Something let gas reach surface, something failed to strip it out or detect it, and something ignited it. Break any link and there is no fire, which is why blaming one man on the floor almost never survives a proper investigation.
Well Control Failure
A kick that was not detected or not shut in fast enough. Pit gain, flow with the pumps off and drilling breaks are all warnings, and they are recorded whether anybody acted on them or not.
Well Blowout Claims →Gas Separation Failure
A mud gas separator that was undersized for the job, overwhelmed, or vented somewhere the gas could reach the rig floor. This is one of the most common root causes and one of the most technical to prove.
Ignition Sources In The Zone
Equipment that was not rated for a classified area, running or being worked on inside it. Generators, welders, light plants, compressors and vehicles all appear in these cases.
Hot Work Without Gas Testing
Welding, cutting or grinding on location under a permit that was never written, signed by somebody who never walked the area, or extended past its window.
Detection And Alarms
Gas monitors out of calibration, alarms silenced or bypassed because they were nuisance tripping, and shutdown procedures that were never drilled. What the crew was supposed to do at the first alarm is a written procedure somewhere.
Fuel And Engine Systems
Diesel leaks, exhaust routing, missing spark arrestors and hot surfaces near the well bore. Maintenance history on the rig power package matters as much as anything downhole.
Rig Up And Rig Down
Moving and assembling a rig involves welding, cutting and heavy equipment on a location that may not be gas free. A disproportionate share of incidents happen while nobody is drilling anything.
Schedule Pressure
Not a mechanical cause, and frequently the one underneath all the others. Days behind on a well, a crew on the back end of a hitch, and a decision to keep going after the numbers stopped supporting it.
For the wider picture, see the common causes of oilfield and oil rig accidents and the safety violations that turn up most often on oil rigs. Federal standards are published by OSHA and Texas well operations sit under the Railroad Commission of Texas.
Who investigates a rig explosion in Texas?
Several bodies, at different speeds, for different purposes. The important thing to understand early is that not one of them is investigating on behalf of the injured worker or the family.
OSHA
The worker safety investigation. An employer has to report a workplace death within eight hours, and an inpatient hospitalisation, amputation or loss of an eye within twenty four. OSHA does not open a file on every incident and a citation can take months, but the investigation file behind it is usually far more useful than the citation itself.
Railroad Commission Of Texas
The operations regulator. Well control, casing and cementing, hydrogen sulphide and the condition of the well. It is not a worker safety agency and people conflate the two constantly.
Fire Investigators
Local fire authorities and, in some cases, the state fire marshal will work origin and cause. On a remote lease that response can be limited, and the scene may be released faster than anybody expects.
Not The Chemical Safety Board
The CSB investigates chemical incidents at fixed facilities such as refineries and gas plants. It does not usually take on drilling site incidents, so do not wait for a federal report that is never coming.
The Companies Themselves
The fastest and most thorough investigation on the location, and the one you will never see in full. Operators and contractors have investigators on site within hours, working for their lawyers and their insurers. The version a family gets shown is rarely the first one written.
Your Own
A fire origin and cause expert, a well control expert and a metallurgist, working from evidence that has been preserved rather than described. This is the only investigation being run for you, and it cannot start until somebody demands the scene and the records be held.
Preservation letters have to reach the operator, the drilling contractor and every service company inside days. Rig data systems overwrite on a fixed cycle, damaged equipment gets scrapped, the location gets regraded, and a released rig moves to the next well with its records on board.
Can the family of a killed worker file a claim?
Yes. Texas gives the family two separate claims, and they are not the same thing. One belongs to the surviving spouse, the children and the parents. The other belongs to the estate. Both need protecting from the same day.
Brought by the surviving spouse, the children, including adopted children, and the parents. Under Texas law that list is exclusive. Brothers and sisters are not on it, however close they were, which is a hard conversation and better had early than late.
It covers what the family lost: the financial support and the services he would have provided, loss of companionship and society, mental anguish, and loss of inheritance. On a Basin income the financial side alone runs to decades.
Belongs to the estate rather than the family directly, and covers what he suffered before he died. Conscious pain and mental anguish, the medical expenses incurred, and funeral costs.
In a fire case the conscious pain element is significant and it is proven from the medical records, the burn documentation and the accounts of the crew who were with him. It is grim work and it is part of the claim.
Even where the employer carries workers compensation, the surviving spouse and heirs can pursue exemplary damages against it in a death caused by gross negligence. Comp is not an absolute shield when a worker is killed. And comp never affected the claims against the operator, the other contractors on location or the manufacturer of whatever failed, none of which are protected by that policy at all.
Two years from the date of death to file, and much less than that in practice, because the evidence goes long before the deadline does. Read can families sue for wrongful death after an oilfield accident before agreeing to anything the company or its insurer puts in front of you, and see who is liable for oilfield injuries in Texas for who else can be named.
Burns, And Everything That Comes After Them
Serious burns out of the Basin are stabilised locally and then flown to a regional burn centre in Lubbock or the Metroplex, which means a family is suddenly managing this several hundred miles from home. The acute stay is the beginning. Grafting, scar revision, contracture release and pain management run for years.
Inhalation injury frequently outlasts the skin damage and gets missed in an early offer because it does not show in photographs. Disfigurement is a separate category of damages under Texas law and is one of the most consistently undervalued by adjusters. Where a company knew about the hazard and kept the crew on the floor, gross negligence puts exemplary damages on the table.
What To Do This Week
Sign Nothing
No recorded statement, no release, no arbitration agreement, no benefit plan enrollment, and nothing an insurer brings to a hospital or a house in the first week.
Get The Scene Held
Preservation letters to the operator, the drilling contractor and every service company, naming the equipment, the rig data, the permits and the original incident report.
Write Down The Well
Operator, rig name and number, the lease and well name, the depth, and what the crew was doing when it happened. Every company that had been on that well in the days before.
Find The Witnesses
Names and numbers for everyone on that crew, before they move to the next job or are told not to talk. Crews turn over fast out here.
Where These Happen And Where They Get Filed
The Midland Basin runs a large share of the land rigs working in the United States, and the operators that contract them keep their offices in this town. The wells are spread across Midland, Martin, Glasscock, Upton, Reagan, Andrews and Ector counties, and the crews mostly sleep in Midland and Odessa.
Midland Memorial Hospital takes most Midland County casualties, with the most serious going on to the Level II trauma centre at Medical Center Hospital in Odessa or flown out. Burn cases almost always leave the Basin.
Civil cases in Midland County are filed in the 142nd, 238th and 385th District Courts. Where a case gets filed depends on where the well is and where the defendants do business, not on where you live. See also our Midland oilfield accident lawyer page, our Odessa page and our San Angelo page, where the office is.
Land Rig Explosion Questions
My husband was killed. The company has already offered us money.
Do not sign anything in the first week. An early offer arrives before anybody knows what happened or what the claim is worth, and that is the point of it. It also frequently arrives with a release attached. Take the paperwork, keep it, and have somebody read it before you agree to anything.
His employer carried workers compensation. Are we blocked?
No. Comp affects the claim against his own employer only, and even there the surviving spouse and heirs can pursue exemplary damages for gross negligence in a death case. Everything against the operator, the other contractors on location and the equipment manufacturers is completely unaffected.
I am his brother. Can I file?
Not under the Texas wrongful death statute. It is limited to the surviving spouse, the children and the parents. The estate can bring the survival claim, which is a separate route, and if you are the one handling his affairs that may matter. Talk it through rather than assuming there is nothing.
OSHA has not been out. Does that mean there was nothing wrong?
No. OSHA does not investigate every incident, and even when it does the file can take months. A civil case does not wait for it and does not depend on it. The evidence that decides these cases is on the location and in the companies' own records, and both are on a clock.
They say the crew caused it.
That is the standard opening position. It is also worth testing, because a fire needs gas, a failure to detect or handle it, and an ignition source, and the crew controls very little of that chain. Texas comparative fault lets you recover as long as you are not more than fifty percent responsible, and a nonsubscriber employer cannot raise fault at all.
What does it cost to hire you?
Nothing up front. We take rig explosion 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 fire origin, well control and metallurgy experts these cases require.
Burned Or Bereaved By A Rig Fire? The Location Will Not Wait.
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 or its insurer has asked you to sign.