WASHINGTON — The U.S. Chemical Safety Board will release a study in September with recommendations to combat a little-known frightening trend among young people during the last three decades: teens and young adults being killed or injured in explosions at unattended oil production sites.
From 1983 to 2010, there were 26 accidental explosions, killing 44 young people and injuring 26. More than a third of those deaths occurred in the last decade, with 16 deaths – all victims under age 25 – since 2003.
Bridget Serchak, a spokeswoman for the CSB, said teenagers in rural communities like to hang around unattended oil pumping stations. Even if the tank appears empty, the fumes within are still flammable and can easily ignite with just a spark, creating a powerful explosion. So if teens are smoking near the holding tank, or try to peer inside the holding tank using a lighter, they may accidentally cause an explosion.
Young people often grow up with unattended oil stations as part of their landscape. “They don’t view the sites as dangerous because they are ubiquitous,” said CSB investigator Vidisha Parasram.
The sites are often unsecured and people can easily get to the holding tanks. Young people congregate at them. Hunters even use them for hunting posts.
The CSB first learned about the explosions after a tank blew up in Palestine, Texas, in 2003, killing four people. It only became actively involved after an Oct. 31, 2009, explosion killed two teenage boys in Carnes, Miss. At that point, the incidents had received relatively little attention, and the CSB began investigating the explosion.
On April 13, 2010, the CSB issued an 11-minute video in a press release and on its website about the Mississippi accident called “No Place to Hang Out.” The video targets teens who are unaware the dangers of entering oil production areas. Over the next several months, the CSB also created other educational materials which it distributed to Mississippi school superintendents.
But just one day after the video’s release, an explosion in Weleetka, Okla., killed a 21-year-old man. Another explosion on April 26, 2010, in New London, Texas, killed a 24-year-old woman and seriously injured a 24-year-old man.
In response to these incidents and the Mississippi explosion, the CSB created a task force to examine what went wrong at the oil sites.
The report that resulted from the investigation is being reviewed by stakeholders (such as oil and gas producers, government agencies, the public health community and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), before being revised and released in September. Parasram said the study will include:
• Summaries of the three accidents;
• Suggestions for regulating safety measures at unattended oil sites;
• Suggestions for educating the public about the dangers of unattended oil sites, focusing on how to reach younger audiences.
Parasram said the investigation did not look at whether all the oil sites that exploded since 1983 were active. Of the three most recent explosions the sites in Mississippi and Oklahoma were active and easily accessible by the public. The Texas site was inactive but still contained fuel.
Past investigations analyzing federal, state and local standards for securing oil and gas sites revealed no federal or industry standards for security or public protection measures. As a result, oil sites often have no fences, barriers or warning signs, and tank hatches are not locked. The three sites focused on in this investigation lacked fencing, gates and signs.
The CSB has found that there are inconsistent state or municipal regulations for perimeter fencing, gates, locks, and warning signs. Some states mandate specific safeguards at oil and gas sites. In addition to fencing, Ohio requires tank hatches to be sealed and locked at unattended sites. Sites in areas of California must have barbed-wire fencing around facilities “where it is necessary to protect life and property.”
According to Lisa Ivshin, executive director of the Mississippi Oil and Gas Board, the state requires that oil and gas companies post signs stating that the facilities are for authorized personnel only. All sites must have gates and locks on their stairways to prevent access to catwalks. At sites that have hydrogen sulfide gas, which is toxic, there must be fences around the facilities. In September, an ordinance was passed in Forrest County, Miss., where Carnes is located, mandating that fencing, signs and other measures be placed around hazardous oil sites.
Oklahoma has had the highest number of deadly oil site explosions since 1990. Four caused multiple fatalities.
According to the CSB, Oklahoma has approximately 257,000 active and unplugged oil and gas production sites. Most of the production sites near the location of the Weleetka explosion were unsecured and had no warning signs. The state requires fencing and warning signs only at sites that have hydrogen sulfide gas hazards.
Mindy Stitt, executive director of the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board, an industry-funded organization which restores abandoned oil sites and educates the community about well site safety and other issues, said educating people about the danger of accidents and about why they should not enter private property to hang around the stations is a top priority.
Stitt thinks they have been successful in reaching parents and children. Given how many total production sites there are in the state, the number of accidents is “fairly low.”
Members of the industry agree. Ivshin said that despite all of Mississippi’s safety precautions to discourage public access to oil sites, it still might not be enough because kids and teens still find ways to gain access to them. “I don’t know if anything is 100 percent (secure) with young kids,” she said.
Michael Bernard of the Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association of Oklahoma, an industry trade group, said facility operators should put warning signs up at the sites, but “you shouldn’t be climbing on top of the equipment in the first place.” “We have to make sure (teens) are aware it’s not playground equipment.”