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 The 32-year-old rig worker and equipment handler lasted about a year
before relapsing.
"It's easy to get back into that mentality," said Forsythe, of
Midland, Texas, who said he no longer uses drugs after several
stints in rehab since 2015. "I'd work 24 hours ... I was just
plagued with fatigue and needed something to improve my work ethic."
Forsythe's experience and others like it reflect a painful flipside
of the nation's shale oil boom - a parallel increase in substance
abuse, drug crime and related social ills.
While drug use is a problem among industrial workers nationwide, it
raises particular concern in the oil patch as U.S. production surges
to record levels in what is already one of the nation's most
dangerous sectors - with a fatality rate about three times the
average for other industries, according to 2015 federal statistics.
Drug use is a significant factor in workplace injuries and crimes
involving oilfield workers, according to drug counselors, hospital
and police officials and court records in West Texas, the epicenter
of the U.S. shale sector.
As the shale revolution has spawned waves of hiring here since 2010,
law enforcement authorities have tracked a boom in drug trafficking
and related crime. In Midland and Ector counties, home to many
Permian Basin oil workers, state and local police in 2016 seized
more than 95 pounds of methamphetamine - up from less than four
pounds in 2010.
Meth and cocaine are stimulants of choice in the oil patch to get
though long oilfield shifts, but alcohol and pain killers such as
opioids are also widely abused - often to soften the crash after
taking stimulants, drug addicts and counselors said.
Drug charges in the industry town of Midland more than doubled
between 2012 and 2016, to 942 from 491, according to police data. In
neighboring Odessa, total drug arrests doubled between 2010 and
2016, to 1291 from 756, according to Odessa Police Department data.
The increase in drug crime stretched through two boom periods in the
West Texas oil patch, before and after a crude price crash that hit
in 2014.
Oil companies typically drug test job applicants and often conduct
additional random tests on employees. For truck drivers and those
involved with hazardous materials, tests are also conducted under
federal programs run by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Several oil firms with major operations in the Permian Basin
declined to discuss how they handle drugs in the oil patch or did
not respond to inquiries.
Schlumberger NV <SLB.N>, Halliburton Co <HAL.N> and Exxon Mobil Corp
<XOM.N> declined to comment. Exxon referred Reuters to its alcohol
and drug policy.
Pioneer Natural Resources Co. <PXD.N> and ConocoPhillips <COP.N> did
not respond to requests for comment.
The American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade group, declined
to comment.
LONG HOURS - ON METH
Despite corporate and regulatory efforts to curb drug abuse, many
oilfield workers regularly use stimulants on long shifts of grueling
work for relatively high pay, said drug counselors, local law
enforcement officials and oil field workers recovering from
addictions.
More than a third of clients at Midland's Springboard drug
rehabilitation center are currently involved in the oil and gas
industry, said Executive Director Steve Thomason.
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Rising oil prices have brought more admissions for methamphetamine
abuse, Thomason said.
"People say they can work on it for 24 hours straight," he said.
Long shifts are common in the oil industry because expensive
drilling equipment, often leased at high daily rates, runs through
the night, and workers often have to commute to wells in remote
locations. Most oil producers subcontract oilfield services to
smaller companies that are not unionized.
Springboard's admissions of methamphetamine users went up 20 percent
in the first six months of this year compared with the last half of
2016, he said. The number of rigs operating in the Permian Basin
increased more than 38 percent during the same period, according to
data from energy services firm Baker Hughes.
Corporal Steve LeSueur, a spokesman for the Odessa police, said the
influx of drugs in the oil patch is stretching police resources.
"The jail has been full," he said. "A lot of crimes that are
committed are drug-related – simple property crimes, forgeries to
feed their drug habits."
METH AND MURDER
Some offenses are more severe.
In 2016, Shawn Pinson, an employee of a well construction company,
was convicted of murdering an acquaintance following a drug-related
dispute.
The murder occurred around the same time he was arrested for
possession of methamphetamine, police records show. The victim
tested positive for meth at the time of the murder, according to an
autopsy.
At his trial, witnesses close to Pinson testified he had become
addicted to methamphetamine while working in the oilfield, according
to a prosecutor and a defense attorney involved in the case.
Pinson did not respond to a letter seeking comment and his current
attorney, Michele Greene, did not respond to a request for comment.
When oil jobs are plentiful, companies desperate for labor sometimes
will disregard signs of substance abuse, said three recovering drug
addicts who worked in the oilfield.
"These oilfield bosses - they party, too,” Forsythe said. “As long
as you're getting the job done and not making a scene, they won't
drug test you."
One recovering addict, who declined to use his name because he still
works in the industry, said he was often high during long-haul trips
driving trucks transporting oil.
"I could do a little coke and speed and it would give me the extra
stretch," he said. "It ended up running me to the ground."
(Reporting by Liz Hampton in Midland, Texas; Editing by Gary
McWilliams and Brian Thevenot)
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