By: Pete Sandel/AESC Safety and Membership

Pete Sandel, AESC Safety and Membership

Hand injuries continue to plague our industry and still leads the pack as the number one body part injured in oilfield accidents. In years past it was considered a “red badge of courage” of sorts to have missing fingers or part of a finger missing. An association friend of mine, new to the job of keeping tally of accidents, commented with wry humor that with so many thumbs missing, oilfield employees would have a hard time hitchhiking should the need ever arise. I am not making light of the situation and while we have made progress in reducing hand injuries, I use the story to illustrate that hand injuries remain to be a significant problem in our industry. To further illustrate, it took my Dad, who had the reputation back in the day as being one of the safest well service contractors in the industry, over 50 years to finally manage to lose the ends of four fingers by slipping into an unguarded pumpjack belt.

Considering our hands have 10 digits and routinely go where no hands should ever go, it is understandable but not acceptable that we have so many injuries. A typical workover rig crew member will, on any given job, be wrenching rods, using pipe wrenches, moving power tubing tongs on and off tubing, holding onto and guiding the tubing line on travelling blocks just to mention a few of the dangerous pinch points that are waiting and ready to trap the hands and fingers of a careless or unobservant or untrained worker. The end result is not only an injured worker, but typically a long-term, lost-time or light-duty situation for the employer.

Preventing hand injuries requires more than just monthly training or weekly tailgate safety meetings. Each individual must be trained in situational awareness and to practice it at all times during a work day. A classic example of this is when a crew member rests his hand on the polish rod and the stuffing box slides down and crushes his hand. If the individual was practicing situational awareness (paying attention in layman’s terms) he or she would never have put a hand on the polish rod with a sliding hunk of steel above the hand. Another example is when an individual has a hand resting on the tubing and it gets shut in the tubing elevators as they are latched. In this instance there are two people involved — the person latching the elevators and the person with the now injured hand — odd that it can happen, but it does repeatedly.

Through engineering controls our industry has evolved over the years to make the workplace as safe as possible. Some of the more notable controls are belt guards on pulleys, chain guards, door guards on power tubing and rod tongs, lock-out tag-out procedures to prevent unexpected start ups of pumpjacks and other machinery, and the list goes on.

Referring back to my Dad’s incident: if he had ensured that his well had the required belt guards in place he would not have lost his fingers. I can bet you that on any given day, in any part of the oilfield, you will find servicing crews rigging up, working on and rigging down on wells that have no belt guards in place. The responsibility here lies not only with the crew but with the supervisor or company owner to enforce and adhere to safe work practices.

Typically what happens is that the job is performed and if the crew is lucky, nothing happens. In the long run though, Murphy’s Law kicks in or the law of averages come into play and we have yet another totally preventable hand injury.

Another initiative to control hand injuries has been in the design of gloves used in the oil and gas servicing industry. Within our Association we have several companies that provide these gloves. I have used colored gloves — bright orange, red or yellow —to give everyone involved a better chance to see where hands are at any given time. But the two best ways to reduce and ultimately eliminate hand injuries are to train all employees in situational awareness, which is nothing more than saying “pay attention at all times to what is going on and look before you put your hands on tools or moving objects.” And secondly, to enforce and adhere to established safe work practices, especially in the areas of proven engineered safety controls. Make sure belts and chains have guards, power tong doors are in place and lock-out tag-out procedures are followed, just to name a few.

While I have focused on a well servicing crew, this applies to all wireline crews, truck drivers, and all oil and gas personnel in general. 

Think safe, work safe, be safe!