INDUSTRY REPORT · OIL & GAS
Stop Managing Safety From the Rear-View Mirror.
Start Measuring Risk on the Rig Floor.
The oil and gas extraction industry runs at roughly seven times the all-industry fatality rate, and nearly four of every five workers killed are contractors — the well-servicing and drilling crews doing the physical work. This report gives operations and safety leaders a five-dimension benchmark to measure whether the practices that prevent those fatalities actually happen, on every crew and every job.
Free PDF · No email required · 5-dimension maturity model · Grounded in NIOSH FOG data & API RP 754.
THE STATISTICAL REALITY
Sources: NIOSH Fatalities in Oil and Gas Extraction (FOG) Database (2014–2019), BLS Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, and OSHA hazard data. Full citations in the report.
THE OPERATIONAL BLIND SPOT
The Gap Isn't Knowing What to Do.
It's Seeing Whether It Happened.
The industry has codified the right practices for decades. The modern gap is real-time visibility into whether those practices are executed, at quality, on every crew — and it's widest exactly where the hazard is most concentrated: among the contractor crews doing the physical work.
01
The JSA You Barely Measure
The Job Safety Analysis is the most important safety moment before a task — yet on paper or in clunky software it degrades into “same as last time.” Leaders see high completion rates but have no visibility into whether the crew actually identified the changed condition. When the analysis is pencil-whipped, the API RP 754 Tier 4 metric it feeds is corrupted at the source.
02
Contractors Bear the Risk and Go Dark
Well-servicing and drilling contractors execute the highest-hazard work — tripping pipe, cementing, wireline, well intervention — and account for 78% of OGE fatalities. Yet per-seat licensing keeps transient crews outside the operator's safety system entirely. The people most likely to die have the least integration into enterprise safety data.
03
The EHS Software Disconnect
Global EHS software spend grew roughly four-fold in a decade, but serious-incident and fatality rates didn't follow. Capital flowed into back-office ESG dashboards, not tools a roughneck can use in gloves on a pad with no signal — so more reports on thin field data don't prevent incidents at the point of work.
THE BENCHMARK
Five Dimensions, Scored Where the Work Happens.
The Field Safety Benchmark bypasses corporate metrics and scores one thing: how well the safety system reaches the physical point of work and turns what happens there into leading indicators leadership can trust.
01
Field Capture Velocity & Reliability
How fast, reliable, and low-friction is it for a crew to capture safety data at the point of work — on the rig floor, in the weather, wearing gloves?
LEVEL 1 · AT RISK
Paper forms or clunky mobile apps that crews actively avoid, resulting in delayed, incomplete, or missing data.
LEVEL 4 · TRUSTED
Capture takes under a minute with voice-to-text and photos, works entirely offline, and captures the crew's real-time adjustments when field conditions change. If the tool costs more time than it saves, adoption fails.
02
Hazard Analysis Quality
When the crew completes a JSA, does the system ensure authentic cognitive engagement — or does it become a box-checking exercise?
LEVEL 1 · AT RISK
JSAs devolve into rote compliance, with workers repeatedly entering “same as last time” to clear a screen and return to operations.
LEVEL 4 · TRUSTED
Localized AI processes a photo of the worksite and flags missing controls, missing PPE, or unidentified hazards before submission — shifting the worker from data-entry clerk to validator of system-generated intelligence.
03
Contractor & Subcontractor Reach
What share of your external workforce — well-servicing crews, drilling contractors, and short-term subcontractors — captures safety data natively in your system?
LEVEL 1 · AT RISK
Total separation between operator and contractor systems; the operator has no leading visibility into the crews who bear ~80% of the fatal risk.
LEVEL 4 · TRUSTED
Every worker on site — regardless of W-2 employer or short-term status — scans a QR code and enters the digital safety ecosystem via guest access, with no per-seat penalty and real-time two-way hazard exchange.
04
Trusted Leading Indicators
Can the organization detect risk compounding before an incident, using field data that maps to real leading indicators — not just the rear-view mirror?
LEVEL 1 · AT RISK
The organization monitors only OSHA recordables and days-away rates — the lagging API RP 754 Tier 1 and Tier 2 indicators that only show the system has already failed.
LEVEL 4 · TRUSTED
Full synchronization with API RP 754: predictive, site-level field data maps to Tier 3 and Tier 4 indicators, letting leadership track operating discipline — like hazard-analysis quality before high-risk cementing jobs — before a loss of containment.
05
Closeout & Field Learning
When a crew reports an unanticipated hazard or a near-miss, how efficiently is that knowledge acted on and transferred across the organization?
LEVEL 1 · AT RISK
Reports are filed and never reviewed or acted upon — the “black hole” effect that drives reporting fatigue and destroys field adoption.
LEVEL 4 · TRUSTED
A closed-loop system synthesizes each hazard observation into targeted micro-learnings routed back to crews executing similar tasks — a near-miss on a high-pressure line in the Permian reaches every similar crew within hours.
Score each dimension Level 1–4 for a total out of 20 — but the shape of the score matters more than the total. An operator can score 16/20 and still carry a fatal blind spot if it earns Level 4s in back-office reporting while sitting at Level 1 in Field Capture or Contractor Reach. Your true risk profile is defined by your lowest field-facing dimension.
IMPLEMENTATION
Not an Audit.
A 90-Day Diagnostic.
The benchmark surfaces the gap between safety theory and field reality. Put the five dimensions in front of the people who actually see the field — operations directors, rig supervisors, safety reps, and contractor foremen — score it honestly, then run a targeted quarterly cycle.
STEP 1 · ISOLATE
Pick the Weakest Link
Choose your lowest field-facing dimension — usually Field Capture or Contractor Reach — and make it the focus for the quarter.
STEP 2 · TRUST ONE METRIC
Prove Hazard-Analysis Quality
Define one or two leading indicators you'd genuinely trust. Start reviewing the actual content of JSAs before high-risk jobs — not completion rates.
STEP 3 · STRESS TEST
Re-Score at Peak Activity
Re-score in 90 days during a rig move, completion campaign, or turnaround. Transient-crew surges are the ultimate test of how fast safety communication breaks down.
Get the Full Benchmark.
See Where Your Program Really Stands.
The Complete Report, Scoring Guide, and 90-Day Playbook.
Download the full report to score your own organization across all five dimensions — or book 20 minutes to walk through how Field1st pushes operators toward Level 4 at the point of work.
