A Texas oil well operator has been indicted over the deaths of an employee and his wife, who inhaled a poisonous gas at a company facility.
Jacob and Natalee Dean died in 2019 after breathing in hydrogen sulfide – a lethal chemical also known as “swamp gas” – at a pump house run by Aghorn Operating Inc. On Tuesday, the US Department of Justice announced that it was charging Aghorn and its vice president, Trent Day, with violating the Clean Air Act and then obstructing an investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
“Our nation’s environmental laws are designed to protect our communities and workers from hazardous pollutants,” Agent Todd Adams of the Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement. “Today’s indictments demonstrate that companies intentionally violating those laws and endangering others will be held responsible for their crimes.”
On the night of 26 October, 2019, the indictment says, Mr Dean was asked to check on an Aghorn pump house in Odessa, Texas. When he didn’t return, his wife began calling him, but got no answer.
Beginning to worry, she drove to the pump house with her two children, aged nine and six. When she got out of the car, she was overwhelmed with the same toxic gas that, unbeknownst to her, had just killed her husband. A pump in the facility was leaking water contaminated with hydrogen sulfide.
Both Jacob and Natalee died at the scene. Their children, luckily, had stayed in the car and survived.
The Department of Justice is holding Mr Dean’s employer responsible.
“Aghorn was aware that its produced water contained high amounts of H2S [hydrogen sulfide] as well as the deadly nature of the gas,” the indictment says.
It also says both the company and its vice president, Mr Day, “knowingly violated their general duty to prevent the accidental release” of the gas and “placed another person in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury.”
In the aftermath, the Justice Department says, Mr Day and Aghorn made “false statements” to OSHA as it investigated what happened. The Department did not specify what sentence Mr Day might face.
The Independent has reached out to Aghorn for comment.
