Last month saw another truck accident related to the oil and gas boom happening right now in South Texas. A massive increase in tanker truck traffic has come along with this oil and gas boom, where truck drivers haul supplies to – and haul fossil fuels away from – the Eagle Ford Shale formation.
As Eva Ruth Moravec reports for the San Antonio Express-News, two Eagle Ford Shale workers (not tanker truck drivers in this case) lost their lives in a January accident involving just one vehicle, a pickup truck, which went off the road into the median and rolled over at nearly midnight.
The time of night is certainly a factor in this case.
While the report does not give any detail as to what caused the crash, it’s easy to speculate that these workers were tired and the driver should not have been behind the wheel. It’s likely, but not confirmed, that the driver fell asleep.
This is a problem that can happen not only to Eagle Ford Shale workers who do not drive tanker trucks; it’s more so a problem for those workers who are truck drivers, who feel the pressure to drive long hours to keep up with the demands of hydrofracking operations, and who get into truck accidents from fatigued driving.
Source: Oilfield workers die in Atascosa County crash