Hydrogen Sulfide Killed Two People at an Odessa Oil Facility — What Their Families Need to Know
The Permian Basin runs on sour gas. The crude that comes up from the wells around Odessa carries hydrogen sulfide — a poison so fast and so quiet that a man can walk out to check a pump and never walk back. And when his wife comes looking for him, she does not walk back either. That is not a freak accident. That is the exact pattern hydrogen sulfide has followed in the oilfield for decades, and the companies that run these facilities know it down to their bones.
Two people died that way in Odessa on October 26, 2019. An oilfield worker went to check a pump at a company facility and was overcome by H2S. His wife came looking for him when he stopped answering his phone. She was overcome too. Both of them died at the facility.
Now, more than five years later, two West Texas companies and a company executive have been criminally convicted for it. The operator and a service company were ordered to pay a combined $1.4 million in criminal fines. The executive was sentenced to five months in prison. The Justice Department said it plainly:
“If they had done what the law requires, Jacob and Natalee might still be with us today. The Justice Department can’t stand by when employers put workers at such risk.”
That statement is from a public official whose job is to prosecute environmental crimes on behalf of the United States. It is not our opinion. It is the federal government’s own conclusion, delivered after a criminal investigation and guilty pleas.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We handle wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases in Texas, including oilfield toxic exposure deaths in the Permian Basin. This page is for anyone whose family has been torn open by a hydrogen sulfide death at an oil and gas facility — in Odessa, in Midland, anywhere in the Texas oilfield where sour gas takes a life and the company calls it an accident. It is written to tell you exactly what happened, what the law allows your family to do about it, what the criminal convictions mean for your civil case, and what the clock looks like right now.
We do not represent the families involved in this specific incident. We are writing as a resource — the education, the governing law, the evidence deadlines, and the honest evaluation of what a case like this is worth. If you are facing a similar loss, the information here applies to your situation with full force. Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911 and we will talk through your case at no cost.
Who Is Responsible: The Operator, the Executive, and the Company That Falsified the Records
A wrongful death case in the oilfield is rarely one defendant. The Permian Basin operates on a web of companies — operators, service contractors, equipment providers, well-completion specialists — each with its own role and its own legal exposure. In this Odessa case, the criminal proceedings identified three distinct defendants, each with a different theory of civil liability.
Aghorn Operating — the facility owner and employer
Aghorn Operating was the oil and gas company that owned and operated the facility where the deaths occurred. It was also the employer of the husband who went to check the pump. Aghorn pleaded guilty to two criminal charges: Clean Air Act negligent endangerment and an OSHA willful violation for the death of the employee.
The Clean Air Act’s criminal enforcement provisions authorize prosecution when a defendant’s failure to comply with emission standards places others in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury. Aghorn admitted, through its guilty plea, that it failed to control H2S emissions and that this failure put people in imminent danger. The OSHA willful violation designation means the company knowingly disregarded, or acted with plain indifference to, employee safety regarding H2S exposure — a hazard that has been the subject of OSHA guidance, NIOSH alerts, and industry safety standards for decades.
In the civil case, Aghorn faces two different paths depending on whether it carried workers’ compensation insurance — a fork we will examine in detail below. But regardless of that fork, the criminal convictions are admissible evidence in the civil proceeding. Aghorn cannot relitigate the question of whether it failed to control H2S. It already admitted it.
Trent Day — the executive with personal criminal liability
Trent Day was an executive at Aghorn Operating. He pleaded guilty to Clean Air Act negligent endangerment and was sentenced to five months in prison. His plea agreement included an admission that he should have controlled H2S emissions and that his failure to do so placed others in imminent danger.
This is significant because it establishes individual corporate-officer liability. Under Texas law, a corporate officer can be held personally liable for safety decisions within their sphere of control when they personally participate in the negligent conduct or knowingly approve it. Day’s criminal admission — that he personally failed to control H2S — is direct evidence of personal negligence that a civil plaintiff can use against him individually, separate from the company’s liability.
Five months in prison is a criminal sentence. It is not a measure of what two lives were worth. It does not compensate the families. It does not replace the earning capacity, the companionship, the future that was taken. The criminal system punished the defendant on behalf of society. The civil system exists to make the defendant answer directly to the family — in dollars, because that is the only currency the civil law has.
Kodiak Roustabout — the company that falsified the well integrity tests
Kodiak Roustabout was a separate oilfield services company that provided services to Aghorn. Kodiak pleaded guilty to a felony violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act for falsifying oil well integrity tests. Specifically, Kodiak admitted that it sent forms and charts to the Texas Railroad Commission regarding pressure tests and claimed they were for specific wells — when in fact they were not the actual records of tests on those wells.
This is a separate and potentially devastating theory of civil liability. Well integrity testing exists to ensure that injection wells are structurally sound and that fluids — including gases like H2S — cannot migrate through compromised well casings into unintended zones or surface facilities. When a company falsifies well integrity tests, it masks dangerous conditions that the testing regime was designed to catch. If the H2S that killed two people at the Aghorn facility migrated through a well whose integrity was never actually tested — because Kodiak submitted fake records — Kodiak shares responsibility for those deaths.
The connection between Kodiak’s falsified records and the H2S release at the Aghorn facility is a question for civil discovery. It requires a petroleum engineer to trace the H2S migration pathway and determine whether well integrity failures — concealed by Kodiak’s falsified reports — contributed to the uncontrolled gas release. But the falsification itself is already proven by the criminal conviction. Kodiak cannot deny that it lied to the Railroad Commission. The only open question is whether those lies contributed to the deaths — and that is a question a jury can answer.
Potential additional defendants
Beyond the three criminally convicted parties, civil discovery may identify additional defendants who share responsibility:
- Any contractor responsible for installing, maintaining, or calibrating H2S detection equipment at the facility
- The manufacturer of gas detection or monitoring equipment if the equipment was defectively designed or failed to function
- Any safety consultant or training provider who was supposed to prepare workers for H2S hazards
- Any entity involved in the well completion or injection well operations that may have contributed to H2S migration
The generalist names the company on the door and stops. The toxic tort and corporate-structure analyst traces every entity that touched the facility, the well, the detection system, and the training program — because each one may carry separate insurance and separate liability.
The Workers’ Compensation Fork: Why Your Loved One’s Employment Status Changes Everything
Texas is the only state in the country that allows employers to opt out of the workers’ compensation system entirely. This creates a fork in every oilfield death case that the generalist routinely misses — and it changes the entire legal landscape depending on which path applies.
If Aghorn carried workers’ compensation insurance (subscriber)
When an employer subscribes to workers’ comp, the workers’ compensation system is the exclusive remedy for an injured employee against that employer. The employee’s family generally cannot sue the employer in tort for negligence. The death benefit under workers’ comp is a capped, scheduled payment — typically a percentage of the worker’s wages paid to surviving beneficiaries, with a statutory maximum. It is a fraction of what a wrongful death verdict would produce.
But there is a critical exception: gross negligence. Under Texas law, if the employer’s conduct constitutes gross negligence, the exclusive remedy bar is defeated and the family can sue the employer for full tort damages, including exemplary (punitive) damages. Gross negligence in Texas means an act or omission involving an extreme degree of risk, considering the probability and magnitude of the potential harm to others, of which the defendant has actual, subjective awareness, but nevertheless proceeds with conscious indifference to the rights, safety, or welfare of others.
The criminal convictions in this case are powerful evidence of gross negligence. An OSHA willful violation means the company knowingly disregarded or acted with plain indifference to employee safety. A Clean Air Act negligent endangerment conviction means the company failed to control a lethal gas and placed people in imminent danger. An executive’s personal guilty plea for failing to control H2S emissions is direct evidence of subjective awareness. These are not circumstantial inference arguments. They are admissions.
The generalist tells the family that workers’ comp is their only remedy. The trial lawyer asks whether the criminal convictions unlock the gross negligence exception — and in this case, they almost certainly do.
If Aghorn did not carry workers’ compensation (non-subscriber)
If Aghorn was a non-subscriber — meaning it chose not to carry workers’ comp — the landscape flips entirely. Texas non-subscriber law strips the employer of every common-law defense: contributory negligence, assumption of risk, fellow-servant negligence, and proximate cause challenges based on the employee’s own conduct. The employer is exposed to full negligence damages with virtually no defenses. The family can sue for the complete measure of wrongful death and survival damages, including non-economic losses like mental anguish and loss of companionship, which workers’ comp never pays.
Determining whether Aghorn was a subscriber or non-subscriber at the time of the deaths is one of the first questions a workplace accident attorney investigates. The Texas Department of Insurance maintains records of which employers carry workers’ comp coverage. This single fact — subscriber or non-subscriber — determines the entire strategy of the case.
Natalee’s claim bypasses the fork entirely
Here is what the generalist misses entirely: the wife was not an employee of Aghorn. She was a visitor to the facility — someone who came looking for her husband when he did not answer his phone. The workers’ compensation exclusive remedy bar applies only to employees. It does not apply to non-employee visitors.
Natalee’s claim against Aghorn is a premises liability claim, pure and simple. As the possessor of the premises, Aghorn owed her a duty to warn of known dangers and to protect against conditions that could cause harm. The H2S at the facility was a known danger — the company’s own criminal admissions confirm that. The facility lacked adequate warnings, barriers, or gas-monitoring alarms that would have prevented a visitor from walking into a lethal exposure zone.
There is no workers’ comp bar to Natalee’s claim. There is no exclusive remedy defense. The premises liability case against Aghorn for her death is direct, unobstructed, and supported by the criminal convictions. This is the strongest claim in the entire case — and it is the one the generalist is most likely to overlook.
The Statute of Limitations: Has the Clock Already Run?
Texas imposes a two-year statute of limitations on wrongful death claims, running from the date of death. For deaths that occurred on October 26, 2019, the standard limitations period expired on or about October 26, 2021.
This is the hardest fact in this case, and we will not sugarcoat it. If no civil wrongful death or survival action was filed within two years of the deaths, the standard deadline has passed. But several legal doctrines may extend or reopen that window, and only a consultation with a Texas wrongful death attorney can determine whether any apply to your situation.
Tolling during criminal proceedings
Some jurisdictions toll (pause) the civil statute of limitations during the pendency of related criminal proceedings. Whether this doctrine applies in Texas, and under what circumstances, is a legal question that requires case-specific analysis. The criminal proceedings in this case took more than five years from the deaths to sentencing — a period that far exceeds the two-year civil SOL. If tolling applies, the civil deadline may have been extended. If it does not, the deadline may have passed.
The discovery rule
For toxic exposure cases, Texas law sometimes applies a discovery rule — the clock does not start running until the plaintiff knew or reasonably should have known of the injury and its cause. In a wrongful death context, the application of the discovery rule is different from a latent disease case (where the disease appears decades after exposure). Here, the deaths were immediate and the cause was apparent. The discovery rule may not extend the SOL for the deaths themselves. But if the full extent of the defendants’ wrongdoing — including Kodiak’s falsified well tests — was not discovered until the criminal proceedings revealed it, a tolling argument based on fraudulent concealment may exist.
Minority tolling
If any statutory beneficiary was a minor at the time of death, the SOL may be tolled until the beneficiary reaches the age of majority. This is a critical question for families with minor children. If the deceased couple had children who were under 18 in 2019, those children’s claims may still be alive even if the adults’ claims have expired.
If suits were already filed
If civil wrongful death and survival actions were filed within the two-year limitations period, the criminal convictions strengthen those cases dramatically. The guilty pleas would be admissible as substantive evidence, the OSHA willful violation supports gross negligence, and the Stowers leverage is extraordinary. If you are a family member and you know whether suits were filed, that information is essential.
What this means for you
The generalist tells the family it is too late. The trial lawyer asks whether the criminal proceedings tolled the clock, whether the discovery rule applies, whether a beneficiary was a minor, and whether fraudulent concealment extends the deadline — because each of those can reopen a door that looked closed.
If you are reading this page and wondering whether you still have time, the answer depends on facts we do not have. Call us. We will tell you honestly whether the deadline has passed or whether a path remains. That call costs nothing.
The Evidence Clock: What Records Still Exist — and What May Be Gone
Five and a half years have passed between the deaths and the criminal sentencing. In that time, evidence has been aging, disappearing, and legally dying. Understanding what still exists — and what may be gone — is essential for evaluating any remaining civil claims.
What is permanently preserved
Criminal plea agreements, sentencing memoranda, and DOJ press releases. These are in the public federal court record. Certified copies can be obtained from the clerk of the Western District of Texas. They contain the defendants’ admissions — the most valuable evidence in the civil case. These records do not expire.
OSHA investigation file and willful violation citation. The OSHA file is a government record that is preserved, though supporting witness statements and field notes may have retention limits. It can be requested through FOIA and civil subpoena. The willful violation designation is documented and does not expire.
Texas Railroad Commission records. RRC maintains records of well permits, integrity tests, and correspondence. Kodiak’s falsified records are part of the RRC file. These are government records that are preserved.
What may be gone
H2S monitoring data, gas detection equipment records, and alarm calibration logs. If these were not seized by OSHA or EPA investigators during the criminal investigation, they may have been destroyed in routine retention cycles. Criminal case preservation orders may have expired after sentencing. If the facility had no functioning detection equipment (which the criminal convictions suggest), there may be no records to find — and the absence of records is itself proof of negligence.
Aghorn safety training records and H2S awareness programs. Five-plus years post-incident, personnel turnover at a small operator typically results in lost records within two to three years. If training records show that the employee was never properly trained on H2S hazards and emergency response, that gap supports both negligence and gross negligence claims. But the records may no longer exist.
Kodiak internal documents. While RRC records are maintained, internal Kodiak documents — emails, internal test data, communications with Aghorn — may have been destroyed. The criminal case may have preserved some through discovery, but criminal case discovery materials are not automatically available to civil plaintiffs.
Facility site conditions. Court-ordered improvements at the Aghorn facility may have changed the physical evidence. The pump station where the deaths occurred may have been modified, repaired, or demolished. Site photographs from the criminal investigation may exist in the government file.
The preservation letter
If a civil case is active or can still be filed, the first action is a preservation letter — a formal demand that the defendants and their insurers preserve all remaining evidence, including electronic records, physical equipment, site conditions, and insurance policies. A preservation letter creates legal consequences if evidence is destroyed after it is received. It does not bring back what is already gone, but it freezes what remains.
The day you call is the day the preservation letter goes out. Not the day after. Not next week. That day.
How an H2S Wrongful Death Case Is Built
Here is how a case like this is actually built — from the first call through resolution.
Week one: preservation and intake
The day you call, the preservation letter goes out to every potential defendant and their insurers. The letter demands that they freeze all evidence: H2S monitoring records, detection equipment calibration logs, safety training files, well integrity test records, facility photographs, insurance policies, and corporate communications. Simultaneously, the attorney determines whether the employer was a workers’ comp subscriber or non-subscriber by checking the Texas Department of Insurance database. The attorney also confirms whether civil suits were previously filed within the SOL period and, if not, begins analyzing tolling arguments.
The expert team
An H2S wrongful death case requires a specific team of experts:
- A board-certified toxicologist or industrial hygienist to reconstruct the H2S exposure: what concentration was present, how it accumulated, how long it took to reach lethal levels, and what detection equipment should have caught it. This expert translates the chemistry of H2S into terms a jury can see and feel.
- A petroleum engineer to analyze well integrity, injection well operations, and H2S migration pathways. This expert traces whether the gas that killed two people came through a well whose integrity was never actually tested because Kodiak submitted falsified records.
- A forensic economist to calculate lost earning capacity using Permian Basin-specific wage data, worklife expectancy tables, and present value discount rates. This expert builds the dollar figure that represents what two lives were economically worth.
- An OSHA/regulatory expert to explain what the company was required to do under OSHA standards, the Texas Railroad Commission’s H2S rules, API Recommended Practice 49, and NIOSH guidance — and how each requirement was violated.
Discovery
Discovery in an oilfield death case targets the corporate relationship between Aghorn and Kodiak — whether they share ownership, personnel, or contractual arrangements that support veil-piercing or joint and several liability. It targets the insurance coverage tower: commercial general liability, environmental impairment liability, and excess/umbrella policies. It targets internal communications — emails, text messages, safety meeting minutes — that show what the company knew about the H2S hazard and when it knew it.
The criminal case records are obtained in certified form from the federal court clerk. The OSHA investigation file is requested through FOIA. The RRC records are pulled for well permits and integrity test history.
Depositions
The safety director (or whoever held that role) is deposed about the company’s H2S safety program — or the absence of one. The executive is deposed about his personal admissions in the criminal plea. The Kodiak personnel who falsified the well tests are deposed about what they knew and who directed the falsification.
Settlement and trial
Given the criminal convictions, a Stowers-style settlement demand at or near policy limits is issued early in the case. The demand letter details the criminal admissions, the gross negligence evidence, and the exposure to a verdict far exceeding policy limits. If the insurer refuses to settle within policy limits and the verdict exceeds those limits, the insurer faces bad-faith exposure for the excess.
If the case proceeds to trial, the venue is Ector County for state court or the Western District of Texas for federal court. Voir dire in an Ector County courtroom must carefully explore jurors’ connections to the oil and gas industry — Permian Basin jurors often have personal or family ties to oilfield work, which can cut both ways. Some jurors understand the H2S hazard from personal experience and will hold the company to a high standard. Others may identify with the industry and resist holding a company accountable. Screening is everything.
Why Attorney911
We are The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC — operating as Attorney911. We are Legal Emergency Lawyers. We handle wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases in Texas, including oilfield toxic exposure deaths, refinery explosions, and industrial accidents across the Permian Basin.
Ralph P. Manginello is our Managing Partner. He has been licensed in Texas since November 6, 1998 — 27 years of trial practice, including in federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he knows how to find the story the evidence tells and present it to a jury in language they understand. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He has spent his career in courtrooms fighting for injured people and grieving families. Read more about Ralph.
Lupe Peña is our Associate Attorney. He has been licensed in Texas since December 6, 2012 — 13 years of practice, also in federal court. Before he joined this firm, Lupe worked inside a national insurance-defense firm. He sat in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows how the reserve is set in the first 48 hours, how the recorded-statement call is engineered, how the valuation software discounts pain it cannot see. Now he uses that knowledge for injured clients. Lupe is fluent in Spanish — he conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. Read more about Lupe.
We work on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. Our fee is 33.33 percent before trial and 40 percent if the case goes to trial. The consultation is free. You will not write us a check to find out whether you have a case.
We have recovered more than $50 million for our clients over 24 years in practice. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the experience behind that record is what we bring to every new case — the knowledge of how these cases are built, how the insurance industry fights them, and how to win them.
We have offices in Houston and Austin, and we handle cases across Texas — including the Permian Basin, Ector County, and the Midland-Odessa region. We have experience with refinery and industrial accident cases and with the specific regulatory regime that governs oil and gas operations in Texas. We know what the Texas Railroad Commission requires. We know what OSHA requires. We know what the Clean Air Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act require. And we know what happens when companies ignore all of it.
Hablamos Español. If your family prefers to work in Spanish, Lupe will conduct your entire consultation and handle your case in Spanish — not through an interpreter, but directly, in the language you are most comfortable speaking.
Free Consultation — Call 1-888-ATTY-911
If your family has been affected by an oilfield hydrogen sulfide death — in Odessa, in the Permian Basin, or anywhere in Texas — call us. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. We will listen to what happened, evaluate your situation honestly, and tell you whether you have a case and what the deadline looks like.
1-888-ATTY-911 — that is 1-888-288-9911. We answer 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You will speak to a live person, not an answering service.
No fee unless we win your case.
Hablamos Español.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Every case depends on its specific facts. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Contacting the firm is free and confidential.