At least 51 workers have died in Colorado’s oil and gas fields yesterday …

The temperature dipped to 14 below zero, but the oil and gas industry does not take a day off, so neither did Matt Smith.

 

A high-pressure water line at his Weld County worksite had frozen solid in the cold, and Smith and his co-workers for energy giant Halliburton Co. took a blowtorch to thaw it. Suddenly, the line exploded, spraying water at more than 20 times the pressure of a fire hose.

 

Two co-workers were seriously injured and raced to a hospital. Smith — the right side of his face torn apart by the blast — was killed.

 

Smith’s death, in November 2014, was among the most recent of at least 51 fatalities since 2003 in Colorado’s oil and gas fields, according to federal data. And what happened next was typical of a system that falls short of consistently protecting workers and fails to hold companies strictly accountable.

 

Inspectors from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigated the incident and levied against Halliburton a $7,000 fine, which the multibillion-dollar company initially fought before agreeing to pay. Halliburton and the worksite’s operator failed to file a required report to state oil and gas officials, who, regardless, are powerless to regulate worker safety on the sites they oversee and don’t inform OSHA of safety problems. Smith’s family, blocked by workers’ compensation laws that protect employers even when they are at fault for an employee’s death, could not sue for punitive damages.

 

And another worker was laid to rest from an industry that, in good years, directly employs more than 35,000 people and generates more than $15 billion worth of production in Colorado but receives less scrutiny from workplace-safety inspectors than roofers and homebuilders.

“Trucking is more regulated and a lot safer,” said Matt Smith’s father, Carl, who also worked in the oil and gas business. “That same type of regulation could have saved my son.”