Oil and gas safety meeting in Torrington

The Wyoming Oil and Gas Industry Safety Alliance will meet at 1:30 p.m. Thursday April 21 at the Eastern Wyoming College campus. Organizers said they encourage managers to bring along their key employees.

The industry group was formed last year following a year-long process by state and industry officials to find out

why Wyoming was suffering from the highest workplace fatality rate in the nation. That’s not the case currently, but Wyoming still ranks among the worst.

WOGISA organizers say they want to establish some “best practices” for the industry. They’re meeting in Torrington this week because they want to encourage participation by companies in the Niobrara play that might be new to Wyoming.

It’s unclear whether the group or its subcommittees will address the blowout prevention issue in the Powder River Basin coal-bed methane gas play. But one topic sure to get a lot of attention at WOGISA is the issue of highway safety and seatbelts. Initial data gathered in Wyoming’s review of workplace fatalities suggested that, by far, most workplace fatalities occur on the road. That’s a particular concern in the Niobrara play, which spans a wide portion of southeast Wyoming where thousands of semis and pickups will be coursing through a network of roads that are not built for high or industrial traffic.

For a perspective on Wyoming’s effort to address workplace safety, this column written a year ago still does a good job of summing things up.

– Contact Dustin Bleizeffer at 307-577-6069 or dustin@wyofile.com.