A 57-year-old trucker with five children was found by fellow oil workers slumped over dead next to a tank hatch at an oil well near Ardmore, Okla., on March 20, 2014. It was his second day back hauling for an oil and gas industry transportation contractor, which owned the trailer hooked to the back of his truck. He had been assigned to haul a load of crude oil. The driver parked his truck and climbed a catwalk to the top of the tanks. Before they fill up their tankers, truckers need to measure and sample the tanks. To do this, they pop the “thief hatch” atop the tank, potentially exposing themselves to toxic gases. Then, they dip in their instruments for measurements.
The victim wore a meter to detect hydrogen sulfide, or “sour gas,” which smells like rotten eggs. Hydrogen sulfide is a well-known killer in the oil fields. But the meter was not designed to detect hydrocarbons.