Updated: I listened to this book while driving to and from the Eagle Ford Shale

The Legend of Colton H. Bryant
by Alexandra Fuller

This is a beautifully written book. The NY Times review both praised Fuller for her writing skill and criticized her for taking what the reviewer suspects are “shortcuts.”

Fuller strings together sentences that are as beautiful as anything you’ll read in contemporary fiction. It’s not a stretch to call them poetry. But the more I read of this book and the more I marveled at Fuller’s evocative descriptions of sunrises and mountain lakes and boisterous rodeos, the more one question kept nagging at me: can this really be called nonfiction? NY Times Book Review

From talking with oil and gas workers, their loved ones and reading their comments, reading about accidents and reading reports about accident frequency the essence of the book in depicting the brutality of working on the rigs is accurate. Whether there are shortcuts of not, this is a damn good story.

Update: Why are no Texas companies on OSHA’s list of the “worst of the worst” companies.

“There’s something wrong with a worst violator program where the companies that have killed the most people are not on the list, and they do need to fix that,” said John Newquist, a former OSHA assistant regional administrator from Chicago.

Deaths at Texas oil and gas companies uncharted.

A Houston Chronicle investigation found that 40% of the oilfield deaths happen in Texas yet no Texas companies are listed on the OSHA evere Violator Enforcement Program.