Working in the oil and gas industry is dangerous - Inside Energy reported earlier this year that these jobs are in fact six times more dangerous than the average American job. A new training center opening up in central Wyoming next fall is designed to address those risks -- by training students as young as 16 on the heavy equipment used in the oil and gas fields. The Wind River Job Corps Center is the first in Wyoming, and the first in the nation to focus on energy. Leigh Paterson with our Inside Energy team reports.
(SOUND UP- construction)
I make my way past workers, wires, and wet paint- (SOUND UP PAINTING)... on a tour of the job corps site, with former Riverton mayor John Vincent. We look through a window out onto a field of low-rise buildings framed by mountain peaks
(SOUNDBITE JOHN VINCENT, FORMER MAYOR) “The first golf course in Riverton was up here. And it had sand greens and you’d tee off and hit through the sagebrush. And before that, it was the goat farm! Seriously I’m not kidding.”
Whatever the property’s history, its now being transformed into a mock oil and gas field
(SOUND UP ARCHITECT: And if you went this way, you would be able to see…)
An endless expanse of frozen prairie but Department of Labor representative Justin Swift explains that this spring
(SOUND UP ARCHITECT: “That’s where the energy partners equipment will be installed.”)
Like a flare stack, a pumping unit, and an oil tank...
As mayor a decade ago, Vincent was an early advocate for the project. He signed the application that was eventually approved by the Department of Labor -- an agency that runs 125 existing job corps centers across the country.
(SOUNDBITE JOHN VINCENT, FORMER MAYOR) “These kids will get to see real equipment, and they’re gonna have an idea of what it looks like and sounds like. They don’t call it easy neckin, they call it rough neckin, you know.”
And seeing the construction so far along,
(SOUNDBITE JOHN VINCENT, FORMER MAYOR)“Its really neat, I don’t know. Its hard to believe really, for me.”
But its more than just a pet project. Vincent used to be a lawyer FOR the industry but now represents injured workers. Because during the last oil and gas boom in Wyoming - about 10 years ago - injuries and fatalities soared. And his neighbors lost their son in an accident on a rig.
“That was a breaking point for me. I decided I had to do something about it.” .
The Wind River Job Corps Center has several industry partners- that’s part of the national job corps model. They donate equipment, and help write curriculum. Encana Oil and Gas is partner here. So, I called them (ring ring) to talk about their own safety training programs. Here’s John Schmidt, an operations supervisor:
“He will go through all of the upfront safety trainings, we send him to defensive driving school. When we get him back after that week, we put him with one of our seasoned employees and we’re very very careful about what we let him do.”
By comparison, a student will spend 8 months in the Job Corps program learning about wellheads and oil tanks but also how to weld and use microsoft excel. Its kind of like community college for oil and gas workers. And that’s a good thing, according to Encana.
(John Schmidt) “This is a dangerous industry. and I think the more safety training everyone can get, the safer they’re going to be.”
But these big oil and gas companies contract OUT large parts of their operations….so safety standards aren’t always under their control.
(SOUND UP)(ring doorbell) Oh hello there! Hey John. Nice to meet you
That’s what happened to John, who I met at his second home in Arizona. After 40 years in the business, John fell into an open hole on a rig in Wyoming last year… and broke his leg and ankle. He asked we only use his first name because he’s suing the oil and gas equipment contractor.
“A lot of what’s going on with training, in my opinion, is just to appease insurance companies. I saw so many of those young guys come out to the rig that weren’t prepared to go to work on a drilling rig/”
As we sit on John’s porch, overlooking a manicured putting green, we are a world away from the scrubby, wind blown, golf course that will be home to Riverton’s Job Corps Center. But former mayor John Vincent is THIS John’s lawyer and got him interested- in donating equipment or maybe even teaching at the center.
“I had a lot of really good people that paid attention to me and helped teach me things, and the proper way of doing things. And I’d like to pay that forward.”
Construction of the Wind River Job Corps Center is projected to cost nearly fifty million dollars- all paid for by the U.S Department of Labor. The program is only open to low income students. And for them, this training program is free.
For Inside Energy, I’m Leigh Paterson.
(ANCHOR TAG)
Inside Energy is a public media collaboration focusing on America’s energy issues.
