A former employee of a subcontractor at Brookhaven National Laboratory has filed a $25 million lawsuit against the lab manager and the manufacturers of a cleaning solvent he claims caused his cancer. Joseph Marino, who worked as a computer technician at the Upton, New York lab in 1999 and 2000, has been diagnosed with clear cell renal carcinoma.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) just got to check off three more items on its 2019-2020 Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements. The latest three, intended to improve pipeline safety, call for improved inspection programs, better records and documentation of natural gas systems, and procedures to mitigate risks identified during management of change operations.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has issued a new safety digest on the value of worker participation to prevent chemical incidents. The digest notes that lack of worker participation was a factor in several major incidents investigated by the CSB because workers and their representatives were not engaged to help identify hazards and reduce risks.

In March, 2019, United Piping, Inc, a pipeline construction company based in Duluth, MN and founded in 1997, surpassed a milestone – two million man hours worked without a lost-time injury. Key to this achievement in a hazardous industry is UPI Piping’s strong culture of safety values and practices.

California Natural Resources is conducting an internal review of thousands of permits issued to petroleum companies in wake of a report on so-called "dummy" files created by the state oil regulator. The review would look at whether the permits were properly issued. Frustrated employees at the oil and gas regulator say that the placeholder files have been used by higher-ups to give petroleum companies a shortcut around legally required safety and environmental reviews.

BP has announced it is selling all of its Alaska operations to Hilcorp, a privately-owned company with a troubled safety and environmental track-record. The $5.6 billion sale includes BP's stakes in the Trans Alaska Pipeline and the Prudhoe Bay oil field, one of the nation's largest and once its most productive oil field, which BP currently operates.

Oil majors and others are coming together more and more to figure out how to best tackle the challenges and opportunities that digital technologies provide. In an area that is particularly critical for all of them to get right, experts joined to discuss how new technologies and digitalization are transforming safety.

Drones have entered the oil and gas domain as a more comprehensive method of inspection – providing not only a flexible and cost-effective way to conduct inspections, but also a data-intensive structure for inspecting assets in a non-destructive manner.