Platform fire puts focus on company's use of Filipino workers

The most seriously injured workers in Friday's oil platform fire in the Gulf of Mexico were Filipino guest laborers at a Galliano oilfield construction company.

Filipino workers have said they were recruited from their homeland with the lure of a fat paycheck and a better life. But they said they later found themselves living in substandard conditions, working far out in the Gulf, making only modest wages.

Grand Isle Shipyard's use of the foreign workers – along with the recruiting agencies that helped bring them to Louisiana – has been criticized for more than a year.

Those criticisms are outlined in a lawsuit that claims the company conduct “rises to the level” of human trafficking, involuntary servitude and forced-labor offenses.

The alleged practices already attracted the attention of the Embassy of the Philippines. Now, in light of last week's disaster, the company is under even more scrutiny.

"We need to know more details,” Jose L. Cusia Jr., the ambassador of the Philippines to the U.S., told Eyewitness News. “Their contracts for example, how were they brought to the U.S.?”

In November 2011, Grand Isle Shipyard and several recruiting agencies were named as defendants in a class action lawsuit that claims Filipinos were brought to Louisiana and forced to work in inhumane conditions.

Grand Isle Shipyard and the other defendants are trying to to dismiss the suit, saying the allegations are false. The companies noted in court filings that they never discriminated, mistreated or harassed Filipino employees.

All of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are citizens of the Philippines and were recruited and brought to Louisiana to work for Grand Isle Shipyard.

The workers were desperate for employment, and two Filipino recruitment agencies promised to help them obtain visas and earn substantial pay, according to the lawsuit.

Two U.S.-based placement agencies allegedly helped usher the Filipino workers into Louisiana and into the Grand Isle Shipyard’s business.

“Specifically, from the minute plaintiffs and other Filipino workers set foot in Louisiana, they were essentially imprisoned,” the attorneys wrote in one filing.

The lawsuit claims the Filipino workers were forced to stay in substandard bunkhouses. Workers reported that at times, six men slept on racks in a 10-foot by 10-foot room.

Among the other claims: Filipino workers were monitored so they would not escape, forced to abide by a strict curfew, and prohibited from obtaining driver’s licenses or even riding in a car with an American worker.

The lawsuit alleges that though the Filipinos were promised a substantial income, the employer “deducted an excessive and unreasonable amount” from their wages, upwards of $3,500 a month, for housing and living expenses. Also, the company “often deducted the cost of protective equipment and tools from the paychecks” of Filipino workers.

Because the Filipino workers were working on temporary visas in an unfamiliar place, “they had no option but to bow to the exploitative and unlawful employment practices thrust upon them,” the lawsuit states.

The civil suit claims Grand Isle Shipyard and the recruiting agencies had leverage over the workers, and if questioned, would intimidate the workers. The company allegedly didn’t treat its non-Filipino employees this way.

Several former workers said they could only leave the company’s facility to work, or for a weekly trip to a local Walmart while supervised by a Grand Isle Shipyard representative.

The Filipinos were forced to work about 12 hours per day, about six to seven days a week without being paid properly for overtime, said Attorney Joseph Peiffer.

"We had a client who had told to us that he was told that he had to weld for 24 straight hours and that he went temporarily blind as a result of it,” Peiffer said. “It's a number of these kinds of things that we are alleging."

Peiffer said he believes the lawsuit affects hundreds of current or former Grand Isle Shipyard workers.

Some of them reported that Mark Pregeant, Grand Isle Shipyard’s chief executive officer, made Filipinos wash his car, work on his home and perform other personal tasks.

Pregeant did not respond today to a request for comment. Attorneys for his company, as well as recruiting companies named in the lawsuit, did not get back to us.

In court, these attorneys have called the allegations false and are trying to get the suit tossed out.

The lead plaintiff in the case is Isidro Baricautro Jr. His story highlights a pipeline from the Philippines to a Gulf of Mexico oil platform.

Baricuatro says he was recruited to work as a welder in the United States. The recruiter secured him an E-2 visa and a welding job with Grand Isle Shipyard, where he worked off and on from January 2007 through December 2010, often in months-long stints, according to the lawsuit.

He claimed the recruiter promised him an eventual green card or citizenship in the United States in exchange for his work.

The lawsuit is pending in federal court in New Orleans. None of the plaintiffs are involved in last week’s deadly platform fire.

Earlier this year, after the lawsuit was filed, a group of the workers said company officials had intimidated them and threatened deportation unless they dropped the suit. Attorneys for the defendants denied such claims.

U.S. District Court Judge Kurt Engelhardt ordered Grand Isle Shipyard and the recruitment companies not to contact those workers.

Jose Cuisia, the ambassador, is currently in Louisiana, working as a liaison to the workers’ families back home. Cuisia said the injured workers were part of a much larger group recruited to work for Grand Isle Shipyard.

“I understand there were 162 scaffolders, and different types of workers who work on an oil rig, who were hired from the Philippines,” he said.

Cuisia said job opportunities in the Philippines are "not sufficient" and workers who can't find jobs there venture elsewhere for other opportunities.

Source :www.wwltv.com/news/eyewitness/brendanmccarthy/Filipino-workers-on-platform-explosion-describe-substandard-living-conditions-180053211.html.

President Obama to Visit New Mexico Oil Field Jobs

Oil Field Jobs -It's always busy at Linda's Grill at lunchtime as oil field jobs from around the region fill the lone restaurant in Maljamar, a no-stoplight town of 38 in the middle of the oil-rich area.On Wednesday, some of the restaurant's eight tables were filled with a rare sight: men in suits and ties. They were from the White House and stopped for a meal before President Barack Obama's visit to New Mexico's petroleum fields outside of town later in the day.

Maljamar resident Bill Gideon, 64-year-old husband to the grill's namesake, sat there about an hour before grabbing a meal and going back to work. He owns L&B Trucking and his six trucks haul piping for drilling to oil rig jobs all over the region. The economy is OK, he said, and people have jobs, but it could be busier.Companies have moved rig operations west because "the permits weren't coming fast enough, it was slow," Gideon said.

The complaints about a slow permitting process were being echoed across the industry here as Obama was scheduled to step into solid Republican territory to visit oil fields on federal lands and tout the fact that domestic oil and gas production has increased each year he has been in office.The industry is also upset over the administration's consideration of listing the dunes sagebrush lizard as an endangered species, which it fears could curtail development.

The visit was part of a three-state swing the president is making to defend his energy agenda in the face of rising gas prices. His first stop was to a solar panel plant in Nevada, then to the oil and gas fields in New Mexico and the site of a future oil pipeline in Oklahoma.The White House said in a news release that the stop will "highlight the Administration's commitment to expanding domestic oil and gas production." Oil production is at an eight-year high and natural gas output is at an all-time high, it said.

But Steve Henke, president of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, said production could be even higher. And he was hoping that Obama might be announcing more funding for the Bureau of Land Management office in Carlsbad, which he says is unable to keep up with demand for the drilling permits needed to accelerate the development of federally owned oil and gas resources in the state, he said.
"We feel that if the administration wants to invest with a partner to create jobs and revenue, that they should invest in the BLM and the Carlsbad field office," 

Maljamar is about 280 miles southeast of Albuquerque near the Texas border.According to the menu at Linda's Grill, "William Mitchell, president of Maljamar Oil & Gas Company(Alberta Oil Careers), which brought the first oil well to southeastern New Mexico in 1926, reportedly named the town for his three children, Malcolm, Janet and Margaret."

The world’s fastest-growing Oil Rig Jobs

Oil Rig Jobs -Collapsing natural gas prices have yielded an unexpected boon for North Dakota’s shale oil bonanza, easing a shortage of fracking crews that had tempered the biggest U.S. oil boom in a generation.Energy companies in the Bakken shale patch have boosted activity recently thanks to an exceptionally mild winter and an influx of oil workers trained in the specialized tasks required to prepare wells for production, principally the controversial technique of hydraulic fracturing.

State data released this month showed energy companies in January fracked more wells than they drilled for the first time in five months, suggesting oil field jobs output could grow even faster than last year’s 35 percent surge as a year-long shortage of workers and equipment finally begins to subside.As output accelerates, North Dakota should overtake Alaska as the second-largest U.S. producer within months, extending an unexpected oil rush that has already upended the global crude market, clipped U.S. oil imports, and made the state’s economy the fastest-growing in the union.

Six new crews trained in “well completion” - fracking and other work that follows drilling - have moved into North Dakota in the past two months alone, according to the state regulator and industry sources. Back in December, the state was 10 crews short of the number needed to keep up with newly drilled wells.“Three to four months ago, the operators were begging for fracking crews,” said Monte Besler, who consults companies on fracking jobs in North Dakota’s Bakken shale prospect. Now “companies are calling, asking if we have a well to frack.”

For the last three years, smaller oil rig jobs companies with thin pockets were forced to wait for two to three months before they could book fracking crews and get oil out of their wells. As more and more wells were drilled, that backlog has grown.Last year, an average 12 percent of all oil wells were idled in North Dakota. Even so, output in January hit 546,000 barrels per day, doubling in the last two years and pushing the state ahead of California as the country’s third-largest producer.

FEWER WELLS IDLE:

Fracking, which unlocks trapped oil by injecting tight shale seams with a slurry of water, sand and chemicals, has drawn fierce protests in some parts of the country, but it has not generated heated opposition in North Dakota.

The number of idle wells waiting to be completed in the state reached a record 908 last June, the result of a new drilling rush and heavy spring floods. Only 733 wells were idle in August as crews caught up, but the figure crept steadily higher until the start of this year.Now, the industry may be turning a corner in North Dakota, the fastest-growing oil frontier in the world.“Both rig count and hydraulic fracturing crews are limiting factors. Should they continue to rise together, production will not only increase, it will accelerate,” said Lynn Helms, director of the state Industrial Commission’s Oil and Gas Division.

The tame winter likely played an important role in helping reduce the number of idle wells - those that have been drilled but not yet fracked and prepped for production. That number fell by 11 in January, as oil operations that would normally be slowed by blizzards were able to carry on, experts said.

Residents of the northern Midwest state - accustomed to temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit (-40 Celsius) in winter and snow piles as high as 107 inches (2.7 meters) -this year enjoyed the fourth warmest since 1894, according to the National Weather Service.The milder conditions also helped prevent the usual exodus of warm-weather workers that occurs when blizzards set in.“Not everyone wants to work in North Dakota in the winter,” Besler said.

The backlog of unfinished wells has also begun to subside because the pace with which new wells are drilled has leveled off. The state hasn’t added new rigs since November.The latest state data shows oil companies brought 37 new rigs to North Dakota’s in 2011 but have not added more since November. The rig count held steady at 200 in January 2012, although more than 200 new wells were drilled in that period.

SLUMPING NATGAS PRICE PROVIDES RELIEF:

North Dakota has gotten a boost from the fall-off in natural gas drilling due to the collapse in prices to 10-year lows. Energy companies such as Chesapeake CHK.N and Encana ECA.TO have shut existing natural gas wells and cut back on new ones.

Last week, the number of rigs drilling for gas in the United States sank to the lowest level in 10 years as major producers slimmed down their gas business, according to data from Houston-based oil services firm Baker Hughes.The fewer gas wells drilled, the less need for skilled fracking crews in the country’s shale gas outposts.

Fracking in oil patches is similar to the process used in gas wells, except for the inherent power of the pumps employed. Crews inject high-pressure water, sand and chemicals to free hydrocarbons trapped in shale rock.
So big service firms such as Halliburton, Baker Hughes and Schlumberger SLB.N are reshuffling crews from shale gas fields to oil prospects in the badlands.“We have moved or are moving about eight crews. Some of those crews are moving as we speak,” Mark McCollum, Halliburton’s chief financial officer, said at an industry summit in February. Halliburton declined to specify where the crews were moving.

Calgary-based Calfrac moved one crew into the Bakken in late 2011, according to an SEC filing. Privately owned FTS International no longer works in the gas-rich Barnett shale but has set up operations in the Utica, an emerging prospect in Ohio and western Pennsylvania, according to a company representative.The reallocations come with some efficiency losses. Halliburton had to scale back its 24-hour operations and is still trying to solve logistical problems.

“You actually take the crew from one basin and they have to go stay in motels, you have to pay them per diems for a while. And then you have to double up your personnel while you’re training new, locally based crew on the equipment once it is moved,” McCollum said.At the same time, a shortage of key equipment such as pressure pumps is easing as companies start taking delivery of material ordered months or even years ago.

It takes about 15 such pumps to frack a gas well, and many more for oil wells.The total pressure-pumping capacity in the United States at the end of 2012 will be 19 million horsepower, two-and-a-half times more than in 2009, according to Dan Pickering, analyst with Tudor Holt and Pickering in Houston.

FRACKING AROUND THE NATION:

Easing personnel constraints suggest recruiters may be meeting with success in nationwide campaigns to attract workers with specialized knowledge of complex pumps and hazmat trucks - and a willingness to brave harsh conditions.Even with U.S. unemployment at 8.3 percent, such skilled labor remains in short supply despite salaries from $70,000 to $120,000 a year. In North Dakota, unemployment was just 3.2 percent in January, the lowest rate in the nation.

Fracking crews, much like roughnecks on drilling rigs, clock in 12-hour shifts for two straight weeks before getting a day off. They live in camps far from cities and towns. Jobs are transient -a few weeks at a single location. Most workers divide their time between the California desert, Texas ranchlands and the freezing badlands of the Midwest state.

Companies have scrambled to nab talent, with recruiters scouring far and wide. Military bases have gotten frequent visits, and some companies have hired truckers from Europe.“There’s definitely a push to look all over for people who have good experience since it takes at least six months to train someone how to use a fracking pump,” said David Vaucher, analyst with IHS Cambridge Energy Research.For more detail visit Alberta Oil Careers.

Oil Field Jobs eBook Educates Public on Shale Oil Plays

Oil Field jobs in North Dakota has created a media and jobs frenzy in recent months. Most published newspaper stories or 5 minute news spots do little more than communicate the fact that there is newly discovered oil and thousands of jobs available in North Dakota. These types of stories leave most people, who are uneducated about the industry, wondering if the jobs oasis really exists or if it is a hoax.

The logical next step for someone who is interested in learning more about The oil field jobs is to research it to see what it is all about and if there really are jobs available. This is where the difficultly begins. There is very little comprehensive information online or in print about The oil field jobs, much less how to go about getting a job in North Dakota.

The solution for many, however, has been a newly released eBook entitled the “Shale Oil Revolution,” by Matt King of albertaoilcareers.com. The book clearly outlines the processes which made this new oil rig jobs economically viable, and arms its readers with baseline knowledge to excel in an interview or to simply gain a better understanding of what is going on. The greatest benefit of this eBook is that although it describes the technical processes of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, it is still easy enough for anyone outside the oil industry to understand.

When asked why he wrote this eBook, Matt King said, “I was tasked to gain an expert knowledge level of new shale oil field jobs in the country for my position, but there was not a consistent resource I could draw from to be able to explain the industry to my colleagues and boss. I started my oil industry career knowing absolutely nothing about these new oil field jobs and after several years of research, I became a relied upon speaker on the subject for a Fortune 500 company. This book is the result of my research and speaking with and shadowing current industry leaders in The oil field in North Dakota.”

He also said that his main goal for writing the “Shale Oil Revolution” was to educate the general public about the new shale oil industry and to help potential oil industry applicants with a solid foundation in order to stand out in an interview.

The book covers several topics in detail from the historical oil production methods to the modern methods of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. In addition, the book walks through a typical Well from leasing the land and minerals to producing and refining the oil and gas. The embedded graphics and clear descriptions throughout do not leave much to the imagination, which is great for those who have not been exposed to the industry before.

The release of this book will no doubt help the hundreds of thousands of people who search daily on the internet for information about The Bakken and other new oil discoveries.

About the Website:

Alberta Oil Careers is a recently launched website dedicated to educating the public about the emergence of new oil discoveries, unconventional resource production. The website also provides links to Oil Jobs information and resources about other emerging such plays such as the Niobrara, The Eagle Ford, and North Slope Shale Plays.