It's harder to view oil and gas workers as disposable when their stories are told. And that's what Ray Ring does in the latest issue of High Country News. In a special report, Ring painstakingly documents the stories of oil and gas boom workers who have lost their lives and limbs in the past six years, all in the service of cheap energy. I won't quote much here, since the story simply must be read, but here's an small excerpt:
Workers get crushed by rig collapses, they fall off the steel ledges and the maze of catwalks and ladders and walkways, they get caught in spinning chains, winches and cables. Sometimes they get strangled by their own fall-protection harnesses. On or off the rigs, they handle flammables, and sometimes they get fireballed. They succumb to poisonous hydrogen sulfide, which occurs in natural gas before it's processed; one whiff is fatal. They get slammed by valves and pipes that explode under high pressure. They get hit by lightning, freeze to death and die of heat stroke, because the work takes place outside, and it goes on 24/7, 365 days a year, pretty much no matter what.
And Ring documents and tells all these stories in all their painful, gruesome, and important detail. Other great reports have been written on the human costs of the Interior West's oil and gas boom, many in the HCN's pages, but Ring's 10,000-word odyssey is one of the best I've read. He uses FOIAed information as well as personal accounts to craft a truly compelling narrative. There's a heartbreaking and poignant table listing all 89 deaths and their causes along with the article, and a photo gallery as well. If you live out West, I recommend picking up a copy in a bookstore, or if you don't and are interested, you should contact HCN's circulation department to ask for one -- the print version is just that much better.
Exploring the extreme frontiers of oil drilling
Two new documentaries—‘Crude’ and ‘Fuel’—examine two sides of our petroleum problem
Comments
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:36 am
09 Apr 2007
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GRLCowan Posted 3:54 am
09 Apr 2007
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:57 am
09 Apr 2007
You can bet they will.
Likewise, coal is rather safe. Assuming you ignore the dangerous parts.
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Tom Philpott Posted 4:09 am
09 Apr 2007
I think the environmental movement should focus on reconnecting people to what sustains them -- largely because current modes of food production and energy storage are seriously threatening the planet. And a big part of that is ripping back the curtain and displaying the dirty work being done on their behalf.
So thanks for posting this, Stephanie, and thanks for the wake-up call, Ray Ring.
Victual Reality
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GreenEngineer Posted 4:28 am
09 Apr 2007
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atreyger Posted 4:46 am
09 Apr 2007
Loggers
Cab drivers
Policemen
Firefighters
Wildland firefighters
Truckers
Miners
Etc.
These people are not dispensible, just like the oil/gas workers, they are simply doing their job and (hopefully) being well-compensated for it. High risk = high pay.
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Stephanie Ogburn Posted 6:08 am
09 Apr 2007
Stephanie
http://www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:16 am
09 Apr 2007
The bad part is the aspects that got them there in the first place.
And you aren't going to make all the dangerous jobs go away, or solve the whole social dilemma by removing gasoline.
_
While I agree this needs to get solved.
In effect your trying to say we should solve the problem with the wrong tool.
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Sam Wells Posted 7:38 am
09 Apr 2007
Hey man, more people go out to sea every day and risk their lives to catch a few fish - commercial fishing can really be considered one of the leading "most dangerous jobs."
Or how about being a soldier in Iraq? Sounds like a dangerous profession to me! /sammie
Onward through the fog
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GreenEngineer Posted 8:08 am
09 Apr 2007
But I think it's important for folks in our culture to remember that there's getting screwed, and then there's getting screwed. The worst injustices that we permit to be inflicted on our own people are nothing to the injustices we actively inflict on people in developing countries in the process of pursuing our lifestyle.
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Engineer Posted 8:26 am
09 Apr 2007
If everyone wore a tie and worked in an office, who would build the office buildings or fix the plumbing in them?
For that matter, the process of making solar PV cells involves quite a few toxic chemicals. A few years back a silicon chip facility near Moses Lake, WA (recently sold to REC which will be expanding it to produce PV cells) had a pipe blowout which killed two workers and injured two others. So there is a potential human 'cost' in any manufacturing or construction process, not just 'dirty' energy jobs.
As has been pointed out, there are many high risk jobs not related to the energy field.
Common sense is an oxymoron...
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GRLCowan Posted 8:31 am
09 Apr 2007
One can say this on a basis of comparison to alternative means of supplying the same demands. It is substantially more dangerous than the nuclear power plants that pushed it out of electricity supply in the 70s, and this risk reduction can extend beyond the electrical arena if nuclear standards of safety are brought to motor fuel, as I suggest they might be in my boron piece, linked below. One cannot make speeds sufficient to break the neck safe, but as in the San Francisco's collision with the seamount, one can make so the onboard energy supply doesn't add to the damage.
The fossil fuel industry: lucrative for the publically funded, deadly to workers, but not to them only.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes
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smoothsilk Posted 11:12 am
09 Apr 2007
http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html
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Nucbuddy Posted 9:33 pm
09 Apr 2007
lutins.org/nukes.html
How did you come to that conclusion? There is nothing at that website except for a list of U.S. nuclear accidents and emissions (some of which are falsely alleged, such as those associated with the Tooth Fairy Project).
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Sam Wells Posted 1:24 am
11 Apr 2007
But I do agree that the societal costs in terms of "innocent citizens in harms way" is tremdous and shouldn't be overlooked. Ever witness a refinery blow-down or a pipeline blow-up? And small "upset" as they call it in the industry can be equivalent to the annual emissions of 50,000 to hundreds of thousands of motor vehicles. Benzene and other toxics can expose millions of people to unknown health dangers - the "Black Triangle" in Houston and Port Arthur TX is comprised of several million people. And oil & gas is used to make other synthetic organic chemicals, too, like the plastic in your cell phone cover or you CD disk ... don't forget the upstream chemical companies that can result in Bhopal-like "upsets."
It's not the drilling, silly, it's what comes along with it!
sammie
Onward through the fog
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smoothsilk Posted 1:47 am
11 Apr 2007
I sometimes wonder how anyone could support something as expensive, and as dangerous as nuclear power. But then I remember how little information we get from the major media outlets. (The media, however, still do some good investigation sometimes, however as this report shows: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11996239/ )
Likewise, about a year ago, National Geographic had a an excellent documentary on the 3-mile island accident that really went into detail about the whole mess.
Here is another link, (http://www.ccnr.org/browns_ferry.html#ca) regarding the fire at the Browns-Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama in 1975. The story is actually comic, if you can ignore the potential lethality of what this fire almost resulted in, because it stands in such stark contradiction of the endless "nuclear is safe" propoganda that emanates out of the nuclear industry lobby.
They apparently successfully suppressed this story in the media, for although a resident of Alabama for most of my life (including 1975), I didn't know about it for years (and no, I wasn't living in an isolated cave without newspapers, radio and tv). This conspicuous failure to mention the fire continues to this day. At most, one only hears about 3-mile island and Chernobyl in the media, not Browns-Ferry, or the many others that have occurred thorugh nuclear power's history.
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GRLCowan Posted 3:59 am
11 Apr 2007
I understand why it safe. I think I understand why proof-by-assertion that it has "a horrendous safety record" is associated with defensiveness about fossil fuels' routine death-dealing to all and sundry: US$100 worth of fossil fuel, on which some tens of additional dollars go to the tax man and from him to the publically funded, is typically replaced with less than $5 worth of uranium. (The recent dramatic 18-dollar-a-pound uptick in the uranium price is, in oil-equivalent units, about equal to a dollar a barrel.)
Another reader compares Oil and Gas to things that aren't even industries or even exist, such as boron - oxygen motors.
Right. I'm trying to make the case that they should be brought into existence.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes
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atreyger Posted 4:06 am
11 Apr 2007
Geez...
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caniscandida Posted 4:12 am
11 Apr 2007
ATreyger, Adirondack pal, wrote this, which I think is beautiful:
<<
[new] GreenEngineer
Is right. They are compensated well, and there are hundreds of other jobs that are just as, if not more dangerous than that:
Loggers
Cab drivers
Policemen
Firefighters
Wildland firefighters
Truckers
Miners
Etc.
These people are not dispensible, just like the oil/gas workers, they are simply doing their job and (hopefully) being well-compensated for it. High risk = high pay.
by atreyger at 3:46 PM on 09 Apr 2007
[ Reply to This ]
>>
Hold onto that, ATreyger, maybe you can get yourself a publisher. The distinction between "firefighters" and "wildland firefighters" is great.
Well done.
Obviously, thanks to GreenEngineer are in order, and gladly offered.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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smoothsilk Posted 3:49 pm
11 Apr 2007
US$100 worth of fossil fuel, on which some tens of additional dollars go to the tax man and from him to the publically funded, is typically replaced with less than $5 worth of uranium. (The recent dramatic 18-dollar-a-pound uptick in the uranium price is, in oil-equivalent units, about equal to a dollar a barrel.)
What arguments like this ignore is the large government investments in nuclear that keep it going. Here are few examples (some of which come from Mark Zepezauer's 1996 book, Get the Rich off Welfare):
1. Nuclear power plants are licensed to operate for 40 years, but only one has made it past 30.
2. In 1996, the owner of the Yankee Rowe plant in Massachusetts (the first commercial nuclear power plant in the US) estimated that cost of decommissioning the plant would be $375 million, ten times what it cost to build the plant. Other estimates went as high as $500 million.
3. Although the utilities maintain trust funds to cover the cost of closing their old plants, there are invariably huge shortfalls. Chicago's Commonwealth Edison had a %73 shortfall to close six old nukes. What the utilities can't cover, the public has to. To help the industry, Congress lowered the income tax on these trust funds from 34 to 20 percent, further putting the burden on the taxpayers.
4. Most nuclear plants are near large bodies of water for coolng purposes. With rising sea levels likely, the possibility of contamination becomes even more likely, especially if more plants are built in such areas. Large scale contamination is inevitable if an accident occurs, even without any rising sea levels.
5. The area in Nevada near Yucca mountain has 33 known earthquake faults, the highest known number in the US. Why was Nevada chosen, then? Because they have the lowest population density, and thus the lowest Congressional clout to vote against being the dumping ground of everyone's nuclear waste. While it is true that the "majority rule" in a democracy, there is the correlate of "minority rights" being preserved at the same time -- which are not being observed at all for the people of Nevada.
6. Quote from the book, "Yucca mountain is supposed to be financed by the Nuclear Waste Fund, which is generated by charging utility customers a fee of 1/10 cent per kilowatt hour for nuclear generated power. But in the thirteen years [in 1996] of [its] existence, the fund has never been adjusted for inflation, which has cut its purchasing power by %45."
7. Since its inception, nuclear power plants were granted a limit on any financial liability an accident would cause. In 1959, this limit was $560 million per accident, later raised to $7 billion.
So -- based on these, and many other observations -- I don't see nuclear as a "cheaper" alternative to fossil fuels, which themselves are, as you rightly point out, heavily subsidized.
A study in the 1991 by the Dept. of Energy concluded that we could get all our electricity from wind by just using the wind resources in three states (Kansas, North Dakota, and Texas). See http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Out/Ote7_5.htm
(A recent "Alternative Energy" program on the History Channel states that only two states would be needed to provide the electricity of the US -- and this trend will probably continue as wind turbines get even more efficient).
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Nucbuddy Posted 7:39 pm
11 Apr 2007
Accessing this database page...
iaea.org/cgi-bin/db.page.pl/pris.powrea.htm?country=US&sort=Reactor.Status,&sortlong=By%20St
atus
...I count 47 U.S. commercial electric power reactor units that are more than 30 years old.
.
This page...
nei.org/documents/world_nuclear_power_plants_in_operation.pdf
...lists non-U.S. commercial electric power reactor units, from which I count 52 that are more than 30 years old.
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smoothsilk Posted 7:18 am
14 Apr 2007
..I count 47 U.S. commercial electric power reactor units that are more than 30 years old
As I stated in my post, I relied a lot on Mark Zepezauer's 1996 book, Get the Rich off Welfare. Since that was published over 10 years ago, that should help explain the discrepency. In addition, one of your links is to nuclear power plants across the entire globe. Mr. Zepezauer's book only was dealing with US power plants, and the rules of licensing as they existed in this country when he wrote that book. Evidently, some of these licenses have been extended beyond their original duration.
What is obvious to me is that nuclear power isn't cheap, as if often claimed (citing the cost of uranium alone, without factoring in the tens -- if not hundreds -- of other factors, is very misleading). For brevity, I left out some other major economic considerations, such as the fact that the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel rods is very expensive (and paid for by the taxpayer). Another: every year we spend millions on just studying the feasibility of the Yucca Mountain storage facility, and this is money that could easily have been used more productively.
Nor has the MSNBC story garnered any comments:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11996239/
Nor the Department of Defense study cited at http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Out/Ote7_5.htm
For that matter, the History Channel program, titled, "Alternative Energy" also mentions that the entire electrical needs of the USA could be met with solar thermal technology by filling a 100 square mile area of the Nevada desert with solar trough collectors.
The problem with the "alternative naysayers" is that they refuse to even examine the immense potential of other methods, and their relative cost compared to nuclear.
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Nucbuddy Posted 10:33 am
14 Apr 2007
world-nuclear.org/info/inf41.html#licence
As of January 2007 the NRC had renewed the licences of 48 reactors, nearly half of the US total. The NRC is still considering other licence renewal applications, and they are expected eventually for some 85 of the 103 US nuclear reactors.
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