AP IMPACT: US oilfield deaths rise sharply

[Omaha Steve]

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gRxgEPKTtN94hhoPrG55KFH5KJHgD93426DO5

SNYDER, Texas (AP) — Less than two months into the job in the oilfields of West Texas, Brandon Garrett was sliced in half by a motorized spool of steel cable as he and other roughnecks struggled to get a drilling rig up and running.

Garrett's grisly end illustrates yet another soaring cost of America's unquenchable thirst for energy: Deaths among those working the nation's oil and gas fields have risen at an alarming rate, The Associated Press has found.

At least 598 workers died on the job between 2002 and 2007, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. During that period, the number of deaths per year rose by around 70 percent, from 72 victims in 2002 to 125 in 2006 and a preliminary count of 120 in 2007.

The number of people laboring in the nation's oil and gas fields has been soaring as part of a drilling boom that began in 2000-01, but that alone does not appear to explain the rising death toll, since the fatality rate — that is, the number killed relative to the number of workers — also climbed during the first half of the decade.

Many of those deaths have happened in Texas, the nation's largest producer of crude oil and natural gas.

Experts blame several factors for pushing the toll ever higher in an industry long considered one of the most dangerous in the nation. Among them:

_ A dramatic increase in drilling, spurred by record-breaking oil and natural gas prices. The number of workers in oil and gas jobs shot up from 290,000 in 2002 to 428,000 in 2007. In July 2002, 740 land-based oil and gas rigs were operating in the United States; today, there are about 2,000.

FULL story at link.