Texas oilfield severe injuries, 2015 to 2025

Key findings

• Texas oil and gas employers filed 1,566 severe injury reports with OSHA from January 2015 through November 2025, 9.0% of the 17,491 reports filed by all Texas employers in that period.
• The 14 Permian Basin counties in Texas account for 761 of those reports (48.6%). Midland County has the most of any Texas county (190), followed by Reeves (133) and Ector (72).
• 477 of the 1,566 oilfield reports (30.5%) involved an amputation, compared with 25.6% of severe injury reports across all Texas industries. 445 of the 477 amputations involved fingers.
• Contact with objects and equipment (being caught in, pinched by or struck by equipment) caused 993 of the 1,566 reports (63%). "Oil drilling rigs and machinery" is the most common recorded source, in 291 reports.
• Only 296 of the 1,566 reports (18.9%) carry an OSHA inspection number in the file.
• Oilfield service companies, not producers, file most reports: 1,090 came from support activities for oil and gas operations (NAICS 213112) and 354 from drilling contractors (213111), against 91 from oil and gas extraction companies (211).

By basin and county

Counties are assigned from each report's coordinates. A report is placed where the employer said the injury happened, which can be a company yard rather than the well site, so yard-heavy counties such as Midland and Ector can include injuries from surrounding counties.

Outside the three basins, Harris County (Houston) has 70 reports. Every county is in the CSV.

How the injuries happened

Pinch points dominate. The single most common event is "compressed or pinched by shifting objects or equipment" (152 reports), which is why finger amputations make up most of the oilfield total. For a service contractor, these are the injuries that drive workers' compensation costs and that an operator's safety prequalification (ISNetworld, Avetta) asks about. See workers' comp for Texas oilfield contractors.

By year

Reports fell in 2020 and 2021 and recovered from 2022. These are counts, not rates. OSHA's file has no hours worked or headcount, so a rising count can mean more work rather than less safe work.

Deaths: the federal count

Severe injury reports do not cover deaths. For those, the Bureau of Labor Statistics Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries publishes Texas totals for the mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction sector as a whole (BLS does not break out oil and gas separately at the state level).

Transportation incidents caused 64 of the sector's 113 Texas deaths from 2022 through 2024. On the injury side, caught-in and struck-by events lead; on the fatality side, the road does. That is the exposure behind the auto liability limits in an operator's MSA; see oilfield auto insurance and the MCS-90.

Method and limits

• Source: OSHA Severe Injury Reports, file January2015toNovember2025 (105,996 reports nationwide). Data runs January 1, 2015 through November 30, 2025, so 2025 covers 11 months.
• Filter: State is Texas and the primary NAICS code is 211 (oil and gas extraction), 213111 (drilling), 213112 (support activities for oil and gas operations) or 486 (pipeline transportation). Support for coal and metal mining (213113 to 213115) is excluded. Hot-shot and water hauling companies usually file under general trucking (484) and cannot be separated from other trucking, so they are not counted.
• Counties were assigned from each report's latitude and longitude with the U.S. Census Bureau geocoder (1,525 reports), or from the ZIP code where coordinates did not resolve (39). Two reports could not be placed.
• Injury events are grouped by the first digit of the OSHA event code (the division level of the BLS OIICS system), which stays consistent across coding versions.
• Reports are filed by employers, so under-reporting is likely. A report can count more than one injured worker and can carry both a hospitalization and an amputation.
• We did not name employers. Individual reports, including employer names, are public in OSHA's file.

Questions about the data or a custom cut for your county or service line: contact us. Oilfield Service Insurance explains insurance, not law. Coverage is placed through a licensed Texas insurance agency.