State fines Chevron for missing safety procedures
BY JOHN COX Californian staff writer jcox@bakersfield.com
State investigators fined Chevron $350 Friday for failing to put in writing certain safety procedures to protect employees working near a deadly sinkhole outside Taft.
In issuing the citation, Cal-OSHA said it was closing an investigation begun Sept. 29 and lifting an order put in place at that time prohibiting the company from using a method of enhanced oil recovery known as steam fracking.
Cal-OSHA's action does not allow Chevron to resume steam fracking, however, because of a separate ban issued by another state agency, the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources. DOGGR has said that steam fracking helped create the sinkhole that on June 21 killed Chevron construction supervisor Robert David Taylor in the prolific Midway-Sunset oil field. DOGGR continues to investigate the sinkhole.
A Chevron spokeswoman wrote in an email Friday that the company was still reviewing Cal-OSHA's citation and that it had no comment.
A Cal-OSHA inspector determined in September that Chevron North American Exploration & Production Co. had no established procedures for informing its employees of the hazards of "excessive subsidence movement in the ground" at Midway-Sunset. The agency's written order specifically mentioned the danger of sinkholes.
Friday's citation was more specific, saying Chevron's safety plan failed to address the use of tiltmeter tools by employees working to determine earth movement in the oil field. It also said the company did not write out "the necessary safeguards to protect those employees who were directed to work in the Well 20" zone where the sinkhole formed.
In August, DOGGR banned Chevron and its neighbor at Midway-Sunset, Taft-based TRC Operating Co Inc., from steam fracking within 800 feet of the sinkhole site. That was after two "eruptions" of oil, steam and other materials there.
Chevron said by email Wednesday that it has put in place a Cal-OSHA-approved site safety plan that "will further reduce the risk" from fluid seepage and eruptions. Only people needed to work in the area are allowed near the site, it said.
TRC said in a written statement Tuesday that it is making progress toward determining the cause of the sinkhole. The company stated that it is conducting testing so it can return to steam fracking at the site upon state approval.
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