The oil and gas industry is global, but there are local lessons to be learned.
A bird roosts comfortably in her nest in the hollow of an old oil pumpjack. The melodic creeks of pumping units, chirping birds, and an occasional breeze combine to form the ambient background noise on this hot July day. This particular unit (the temporary bird house) is dormant, hibernating. The well is unplugged, but not producing.
My colleague, James Turitto with the Clean Air Task Force sets up a bulky OGI (Optical Gas Imaging) camera to make what is usually invisible, methane gas, visible. Methane is in fact what we know as natural gas. You know, the commercial product that sent European and Asian economies tumbling, the culprit behind the largest increase in American residential electricity prices in 40 years, and the resource responsible for pendulum prices which have redrawn the world’s political map?
But today, through James’s camera, I get to see whole clouds of the stuff puff out of a fitting here, a valve there. Below the surface, gas can escape through drilling casing and “migrate” through soil and into nearby water aquifers rendering them undrinkable. But we can’t see that through the camera.
Turitto prowls the perimeter of a gated gathering station, which processes oil and gas from multiple wells, assessing the best areas to capture potential leaks. Our presence does not escape notice. A truck is parked next to a small office on the edge of the road near the station, and a cleancut, young man walks our way, his face betraying his suspicion of our activities. It's a Saturday and his two small children sit in the truck waiting for him. James pulls out a sheet translated into Polish, Romanian, Italian, and German. Did I mention we were in Austria, a few miles outside of Vienna?
In Lower Austria, between the pumpjacks, wind turbines, and a large Cross on the top of a hill, one could easily imagine they were in West Texas - if Texas were twenty degrees cooler. James explains that we are checking for leaks with the OGI camera. The young man is immediately interested, “Did you find leaks? Can I see through the camera?” Turrito ushers him to the camera and demonstrates how to look through the viewer and what the man is seeing. The Austrian oil and gas worker is first impressed by the tool, the novel ability to clearly and immediately see what is typically detected by detergent bubble tests or sound (the telltale hiss of a percussive leak). Then he is concerned. He wants to document the leaks and repair them immediately. He may even make a recommendation to buy a camera for his team.
James explains that in his methane tracking odyssey throughout Europe, from Italy’s Cinque Terre to rural Poland, his interaction with oil and gas workers has been more or less the same. He describes an instance where he detected an ominous cloud of methane hovering over an empty field in Romania. He alerted nearby Romanian oil and gas workers of the mystery, and immediately a pipeline break was suspected. A careful excavation confirmed the hypothesis and the leak was quickly repaired. The workers were grateful for Turitto’s Good Samaritan notification and were also interested in procuring the piece of equipment.
Sitting in an Austrian Heuriger vineyard tavern, eating Grammelschmalz and drinking Weißer Spritzer, James explained, “Most oil and gas workers just want to do a good job. They live in these places and they don’t want this pollution affecting their families and communities.”
Visiting well after well with James Turitto, several thoughts occurred to me. First, no magical monitoring doo-dad or A.I. deus ex machina is going to fix this problem. Oil and gas wells are mechanical pieces of equipment subjected to physical pressures, chemical processes, and just general wear and tear. Bolts loosen just as easily on an oil and gas well as your kitchen sink (if not more). Expect and plan for routine maintenance. Second, this task should and does require plenty of well-trained workers. We wouldn’t expect a satellite to detect and fix a leak in your toilet any more than one of these wells. There’s too many rivets and seams. It will require people doing what James is doing today, bending over, crouching down, and inspecting from every which angle.
OMV, the majority Austrian state owned oil and gas company responded to the Clean Air Task Force’s investigation and press coverage with the installation of infrared cameras, modernization of facilities like compressor stations, a new leak detection and repair regime, and a new pipeline integrity program - which will no doubt require more workers, more routine inspections, and repair/replacement of this equipment.
Made in America
In the United States, the American government and the American people do not own an oil and gas company. We do, however, own public lands and waters that we “lease” to private oil and gas companies in exchange for bid fees and royalties. An alphabet soup of federal agencies BOEM (Bureau of Ocean Energy Management), BSEE (Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement), BLM (Bureau of Land Management), BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs), etc. oversees this leasing.
But most American oil and gas is drilled and produced on private lands. And in the United States there is no one single national agency that oversees this production. That responsibility is punted to the states under a rubric we call “cooperative federalism.” Congress passes laws, federal agencies fine tune those laws for implementation, and if they have “primacy,” state agencies implement and enforce those laws. Theoretically, all state regulators fall under the same rulebooks and standards (Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System). How states enforce these laws is determined locally, and the success of that enforcement is determined by things like how serious penalties are or how much staff is available to carry out the inspections (the Railroad Commission of Texas boasts 65 pipeline inspectors for the Lonestar State, which equates to one inspector per 4,000 miles of pipeline and in Louisiana the State Police are the primary regulator for pipelines). Not surprisingly, results are mixed.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently published a final rule intended to reduce methane emissions from American oil and natural gas operations for both production and processing as well as natural gas transmission and storage. Emissions like I saw are ubiquitous throughout the American oil and gas supply chain. With just under 180,000 producing oil and gas wells, and a labyrinth of compressor stations, gathering & boosting, transmission lines, & storage sites; there are plenty of junctions, seams, and conduits for a high pressured, odorless, and invisible gas to make its way to the outside world.
The obvious question is why should we care about methane pollution? Methane traps heat within the Earth’s atmosphere and is 80 times more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide until it breaks down chemically over the course of about 20 years...into carbon dioxide. It presses fast forward on current heating, and contributes to future heating. Neat.
Methane is also responsible for most ground-level (troposphere) ozone formation. Ozone significantly damages crop function, more than any other airborne pollutant. High ozone levels are also associated with long-term damage to lungs, leading to among many respiratory ailments, childhood asthma. Caddo Parish in Louisiana, for instance, is home to the Haynesville Shale production boom, which has led to the highest concentration of ozone in the state. It is also home to the highest age-adjusted rate of emergency room visits for childhood asthma of the 64 parishes. Thus, decreasing methane emissions not only supports climate goals, but also reduces ground-level ozone formation, leading to lower rates of death, less childhood asthma, and increased crop yields.
With a steady chorus of talking heads asserting that the United States is amidst an energy transition, this may feel like a niche issue of little importance. Yet news of the American oil and gas industry’s death is a gross exaggeration. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently released an analysis titled the “United States produces more crude oil than any country, ever.” Yes, companies in the United States are drilling more holes and extracting more oil than at any other point on the history of the planet. Whether you want to shut it down tomorrow or drill, baby, drill - the fact remains that it’s happening right now. The stakes to adequately oversee and prevent waste and pollution have never been higher.
It will require a great number of people to monitor, detect leaks, and maintain this infrastructure. Recent analysis in Texas, Appalachia (Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania) and Louisiana (note: I helped write this last report) shows that preventing pollution and waste from active production will create a tremendous amount of new jobs. In just these 6 states alone, 48,000 plus jobs will be required to monitor and repair this infrastructure. Maintenance is a fact of life and mechanics. We need well-trained people to perform that maintenance.The man we saw in Lower Austria drove a nice truck, supported two healthy children, likely paid a local mortgage, bought local groceries and wares, paid local and national taxes, and tithed to his local place of worship. It’s a virtuous cycle if I’ve ever heard one.
But we’ve been putting off that maintenance and shortchanged the people equipped to perform it. In 2022, True Transition carried out a national survey of American oil and gas workers. One survey respondent, a pipeline safety inspector, described how his pipeline company employed less people, but forced more work and responsibilities onto the remaining workers:
“Employers are reducing the number of people they have to employ by not hiring single [certified] inspectors and hiring people like me to do 3 or 4 people’s jobs. This leaves a lot of inspectors at the house unemployed, while working people like me to death, doing multiple inspector’s jobs.”
While there’s a great chorus asserting that “people just don’t want to work anymore,” - my observation has been that companies and governments are reluctant to pay people to do the work that needs doing.
I urge you to walk around your community today and note defrayed maintenance. Grass too high at the public park? That’s a job. Are power lines sagging closer to the tree for comfort? That’s a few jobs. The onramp to the highway seems more crumbly than usual (I have one in New Orleans in mind). That’s quite a few more jobs. It simply requires more workers to do a job well, then to let it languish, break, and become a public nuisance. The fact that oil and gas remains a central component of our current energy mix means that our governments should be forcing companies to maintain this infrastructure responsibly. It’s a matter of national and energy security. It’s a matter of local and economic stability. It’s a matter of basic public safety.
These new rules are a mandate to return to common sense. We can prevent pollution, conserve an economic resource, and create good middle class jobs. That’s the beauty of maintenance. As long as a piece of infrastructure exists, so too should the job maintaining it.
But if we want the job to be done well, we have to train, staff, and pay appropriately.
Countervailing Power: A Missing Ingredient
In Austria, there is a robust trade union tradition, but also a structural feature of the Austrian government that ensures workplace rights and standards are built into the governance and maintenance of the nation. All employed persons in Austria are required to be members of the Arbeiterkammer (Chamber of Labor for Worker and Employees). The AK provides its members legal services (such as representation for wrongful termination), legislative review of new laws, and political representation. It’s like a fourth branch of government (in addition to legislative, executive, and judicial). The Chamber of Labor was founded in 1920 after the collapse of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. After the Anschluss (when Austria was annexed under the German Reich) in 1935, the Nazi party immediately liquidated the Chamber of Labor (and its working class opposition). Following the war, one of the first actions by the restored Austrian government was re-establishing the Chamber of Labor in 1945.
Today, the AK closely coordinates with various sectoral trade unions. If employed by OMV, you are likely a member of PRO-GE, an industrial trade union, under ÖGB (the Austrian Trade Union Federation). Membership in both PRO-GE and ÖGB are voluntary. Both unions lead in collective bargaining on behalf of their members, represent their interests at the political level, and provide education and training. These worker-led organizations function as a countervailing force to the C-Suite directly from the rig-floor. It’s easy for a shadow in a suit to declare “why employ three when one will do?” But the consequences of such a call is what we saw in our survey: burned out and understaffed workers not able to achieve their work mandate. Labor unions ensure that the on-the-ground expertise is incorporated into executive decision-making. If we want the new methane standards to be successful and for these jobs to support middle-class careers, we have to restore some semblance of worker leverage.
Our latest report identifies our own national tradition of labor unionism as a possible bulwark against mediocre implementation of these rules and a strategy to protect workers on the job.
Because this work is not without real risks. In addition to methane gas, hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is a fatal specter in the oil and gas industry. Sharon Wilson, of Oilfield Witness, has repeatedly witnessed workers performing maintenance at an oilfield site only to be entirely engulfed in a cloud of gas through her own OGI camera.
In 2019, across the world from Austria in West Texas, an oil and gas worker was called to check on a “pump house” or gathering station. When he didn’t return home or answer calls, his wife rounded up their two children to check on him. She left the children in the car and went to the compressor station to look for her husband. She was immediately overcome and killed by a H2S gas cloud, falling not far from where her husband’s body lay. Thankfully, the children were safe, but now without parents to raise them.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) defines severe work-related injury as an amputation, in-patient hospitalization, or loss of an eye. Severe oilfield injuries commonly include: fingers or other body parts caught in equipment, falls or struck by objects, gas leaks, fires and explosions. Despite constituting .00005% of the total American civilian workforce, upstream oil and gas jobs constitute 3% of all workplace related hospitalizations and 4% of all workplace related amputations.
We analyzed OSHA’s Severe Injury Report, which includes incidents between 2015 and 2022. We parsed out incidents related to upstream, midstream and downstream oil and gas jobs.The leading types of injuries included fractures, amputations, heat, thermal burns, and lacerations. The leading causes of injuries were caught in or compressed by equipment, shifting objects or equipment, caught in running equipment or machinery during maintenance, cleaning, struck by dislodged flying object or equipment or object dropped by other person, and ignition of vapors. These are just the reported injuries. David Michaels, former Assistant Secretary for OSHA previously stated that the oil and gas industry has a relatively low injury rate because they “often don’t report their injuries. They have a very high fatality rate, so it’s simply not possible they have a low injury rate.”
While union representation cannot prevent all workplace risks, there is little doubt that union apprenticeships and memberships keep workers and worksites safer. A 2021 report surveying the construction industry based on publicly reported Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) data found that union worksites are 19% less likely to have an OSHA violation and had 34% fewer violations per OSHA inspection than non-union worksites. Overall, while unions represent 14% of the construction industry employees, their employers account for only 5% of the industry’s OSHA violations. Workers keep workers safe. Or more accurately, workers with rights, keep workers safe.
It’s also good business. As states compete between each other for skilled workers to perform this work, attracting and retaining these workers will be key. A 2022 study found that projects are 40 percent less likely to experience a shortage of skilled labor when union labor is sourced versus open shop labor. Turnover of labor on projects is one-third less likely when union labor is employed versus open shop labor. The 2022 study found that union contractors have access to local union referral systems and, especially on large projects (like tens of thousands of wells), contractors or government programs can access additional support from neighboring local unions facilitating more effective deployment of labor. This suggests that union halls are more effective at meeting project requirements for sufficient skilled labor than when labor comes from open shop sources.
It puts the good in good jobs. Unions play a pivotal role in lifting wages and benefits for their members while also providing large benefits to communities and the workforce Unions also have indirect effects, such as reducing racial resentment, boosting voter turnout, and championing policies that help all workers, such as increasing the minimum wage and securing paid sick and family leave, flexible work schedules, stronger unemployment insurance systems, better health insurance coverage, and less voter restrictions. Union apprentices also report a median hourly wage well above their nonunion peers and median per capita income.
It results in a job well done. American trade unions have deep expertise in developing state of the art curriculum and experience overseeing apprentices and supporting members across heavy industrial sectors and large scale government initiatives. In addition to apprenticeship training, union workers also go through routine training, both of which raise the skill levels for the craft and foremen. Union standards create a positive feedback loop that elevates the overall quality of a job site and outcome of the job.
Just as the counterweight of a pumpjack helps extract oil from beneath the earth, so too can the countervailing power of workers make that work safer and better for the workers themselves. We can create good jobs that support stable families and communities, prevent waste of an economically important resource, support climate goals, reduce ground-level ozone formation, leading to lower rates of death, less childhood asthma, and increased crop yields. From any vantage, whether through an OGI camera or nestled in a bird’s nest, this is a win for our nation and the world.
Comentarios