What Happened at Carpenter: The EOG Compressor Station Explosion
If you are reading this page, you or someone you love was burned in an oilfield explosion in Wyoming. You are sitting in a hospital room or at a kitchen table covered in medical bills, and someone — your employer, the site operator’s insurance company, a coworker who means well — has probably told you that workers’ compensation is your only option. That is the first thing the company wants you to believe, and it is wrong. We are going to tell you why, in detail, with the law and the evidence and the money and the medicine — because you deserve to understand exactly what happened to you and exactly what your rights are before you sign anything or talk to anyone.
On December 5, 2019, an explosion erupted at a natural gas compressor station at an EOG Resources well site west of Carpenter, in Laramie County, Wyoming. Three workers were on duty that night — all employed by Archrock Services, L.P., a contractor that EOG had hired to maintain the compressor. Two of the workers were inside the compressor building when the blast hit. One was nearby. All three were thrown to the ground. All three suffered severe burns. One was rushed directly to the Western States Burn Center in Greeley, Colorado — roughly one hundred miles south of Carpenter — because the burns were too severe for the local hospital. The other two were taken to Cheyenne Regional Medical Center, a Level III trauma center, for initial stabilization before the full extent of their injuries could be assessed.
It took Laramie County Fire District 4 and other responders about four hours to douse the flames. Four hours. In that time, the fire was not only burning — it was consuming evidence. The compressor building, the piping, the monitoring equipment, the scene itself — all of it was being altered or destroyed while the workers were being transported to hospitals in two different states.
According to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, the workers were adjusting the compressor’s timing and fuel ratios — routine maintenance work they had been sent there to perform — when an external pipe failed and began leaking gas. The gas ignited. The explosion followed. The complaint states it plainly:
“The pipe failed and caused the explosion because EOG failed to correctly design, install, secure and configure it.”
That sentence is the heart of the case. The pipe did not fail because the workers were careless. It failed because, according to the allegations, EOG Resources — the company that owned the well site, controlled the operations, and retained final decision-making authority over every safety decision — built it wrong, maintained it wrong, or both. And before the workers ever walked into that compressor building, EOG allegedly knew the compressor was malfunctioning and told the workers the site was safe.
That last fact is the one that changes everything. A company that knows its equipment is broken and sends workers in anyway — telling them it is safe — is not just negligent. Under Wyoming law, that is the kind of conduct that opens the door to punitive damages. We will explain exactly what that means for the value of your case, but first you need to understand the most important thing: workers’ compensation is not your only option, and the company that controlled the site is counting on you not knowing that.
Your Real Legal Right: Workers’ Comp Is Not Your Only Option
Here is the fork in the road that the company hopes you miss. When you are injured at work in Wyoming, two legal lanes open at the same time — and they lead to completely different places.
The workers’ compensation lane: Wyoming’s Workers’ Compensation Act provides benefits through your employer — in this case, Archrock Services. It is a no-fault system, which means you do not have to prove anyone was careless to receive benefits. It covers your medical bills and provides partial wage replacement while you cannot work. But it is capped, it is scheduled, and it pays nothing — nothing — for pain and suffering, disfigurement, mental anguish, or the loss of the life you had before the explosion. Workers’ comp is also the exclusive remedy against your employer. You cannot sue Archrock for negligence. That door is closed by law.
The third-party tort lane: This is the door the company does not want you to find. When a company other than your employer — a site operator, a premises owner, a contractor, an equipment manufacturer — is responsible for your injuries, you can bring a full tort claim against that company. EOG Resources is not your employer. EOG is a third party. And under Wyoming law, third-party tort claims against non-employer defendants are expressly permitted. This is the lane where the full value of your catastrophic injuries lives: past and future medical care, lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, permanent disfigurement, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life — and, if the conduct was reckless enough, punitive damages.
The difference between these two lanes is not subtle. Workers’ comp pays a fraction of your wages and your medical bills. A third-party tort claim can recover the complete picture of what was taken from you — every dollar you will never earn, every surgery you will need for the rest of your life, every night you wake up in pain, every scar that will be visible for as long as you live.
If you want to learn more about how these two systems interact, our workers’ compensation practice page explains the intersection in detail. And if your loved one did not survive an explosion like this one, a wrongful death claim is the separate action that holds the responsible company accountable for the value of the life that was lost.
Who Is Responsible: EOG Resources and the Contractor Liability Structure
EOG Resources, Inc. (NYSE: EOG) is one of the largest independent oil and natural gas exploration and production companies in the United States. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, EOG maintains a major operational footprint in the Denver-Julesburg (DJ) Basin — the geological formation that extends from Colorado into Wyoming and hosts the intensive drilling, compression, and gathering infrastructure that defines the oil and gas corridor through Laramie County. The well site west of Carpenter where this explosion occurred sits squarely in that corridor, under the regulatory oversight of the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and WY-OSHA, Wyoming’s OSHA-approved state plan.
What makes EOG the right defendant — and what makes this a third-party claim rather than a workers’ comp case — is control. The complaint alleges:
“EOG oversaw, managed and controlled well-servicing operations at EOG’s well and well site, and retained final decision-making authority over all such operations, including over the critical operational, management, and safety decisions that were proximate causes of the catastrophic accident that is the subject of this action.”
That sentence is legal dynamite. It establishes that EOG was not a passive bystander who happened to own the land. EOG controlled the operations. EOG made the safety decisions. EOG decided whether the compressor was safe enough for workers to enter the building. And according to the complaint, EOG knew the compressor was malfunctioning — and told the workers the site was safe anyway.
In premises liability law, the duty owed to a visitor depends on their status. These workers were business invitees — they were on the site for a purpose benefiting EOG, under EOG’s control, performing work EOG had hired their employer to perform. Under Wyoming law, as in nearly every jurisdiction, a landowner owes its business invitees the highest duty of care: the duty to inspect the premises for dangerous conditions, the duty to warn of known dangers, and the duty to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe condition. EOG did not need to promise the workers a safe workplace — the law imposed that duty automatically, the moment those workers stepped onto an EOG-controlled site.
But the complaint goes further than a simple premises claim. It alleges that EOG designed, installed, secured, and configured the pipe that failed. That is not just a failure to warn — that is a failure to build the facility correctly in the first place. A pipe that fails because it was improperly designed, installed, or configured is a pipe that was dangerous from the moment it was put in place. The workers were sent into a building with a bomb in the plumbing, and EOG — according to the complaint — built the bomb.
The lawsuit also names five “John Doe” defendants — entities and individuals presently unknown who were under EOG’s direction and control and may have contributed to the injuries. These John Does are likely engineering firms, pipe fabricators, installation contractors, or safety consultants who were involved in the compressor station’s design, construction, or maintenance. As discovery proceeds and the metallurgical analysis of the failed pipe identifies who manufactured or fabricated it, these unknown defendants will be identified — and some of them may carry their own insurance coverage, adding additional layers to the recovery.
EOG’s insurance coverage is typical of a large-cap E&P company: commercial general liability, excess umbrella, and potentially environmental or pollution liability policies. With a market capitalization historically in the tens of billions of dollars, EOG represents an exceptionally deep-pocket defendant with full collectibility. This is not a case where you win a verdict and cannot collect. The money is there. The question is whether you build the case strong enough to make them pay it.
The Evidence That Is Disappearing Right Now
This is the section that should make you pick up the phone today, not next week. Every piece of evidence that proves what happened on December 5, 2019, is on a clock — and some of those clocks are very short.
The failed pipe section — CRITICAL. The external pipe that failed, leaked gas, and caused the explosion is the single most important piece of physical evidence in this case. A metallurgical forensic expert can examine the failed pipe and determine whether it failed because of a design defect, improper installation, material fatigue, corrosion, or a configuration error. That analysis is what proves the complaint’s central allegation — that EOG failed to correctly design, install, secure, and configure the pipe. But here is the danger: after an explosion, site remediation begins almost immediately. Pipes get repaired. Pipes get replaced. Pipes get discarded. If the failed pipe section was repaired, replaced, or thrown away during post-incident cleanup — and no one demanded its preservation — the single most important physical evidence in the case may already be gone. Even though the lawsuit has been filed, a formal preservation demand is essential to lock down this evidence and secure the right to inspect it.
SCADA and compressor monitoring data — HIGH URGENCY. Every modern compressor station is instrumented with SCADA — Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition — systems that continuously record operating conditions: pressure readings, temperature data, flow rates, alarm history, and compressor performance metrics. This data shows what the compressor was doing in the hours and minutes before the explosion, whether alarms were triggered and ignored, and whether the operating conditions were abnormal — corroborating the allegation that EOG knew the compressor was malfunctioning. But SCADA systems store data on electronic media with finite capacity. Data retention cycles vary by system, and automated overwrite can erase the very data that proves what was happening inside that compressor building. A litigation hold and forensic data recovery demand must be served immediately to prevent routine overwrite from destroying the operating record.
EOG internal communications — HIGH URGENCY. The allegation that EOG knew the compressor was malfunctioning and represented the site as safe to the workers is the cornerstone of both liability and punitive damages. The proof lives in EOG’s internal communications — emails, text messages, operations reports, maintenance requests, safety meeting notes, and dispatch records that show what EOG knew and when. Email and communication retention policies routinely purge older records on automated schedules. The longer the delay in serving a litigation hold, the more of this evidence disappears into routine corporate housekeeping.
Maintenance and inspection records — MODERATE URGENCY. EOG was required to maintain inspection and maintenance records for the compressor and its piping. These records establish the repair history, known issues, inspection intervals, and whether EOG addressed the malfunction or deferred maintenance. Formal records are typically retained per regulatory requirements, but informal maintenance logs, work orders, and crew notes can be lost quickly.
WY-OSHA investigation report — MODERATE URGENCY. WY-OSHA, as Wyoming’s OSHA-approved state plan, would have investigated this incident. The investigation report is an official government determination of cause, contributing factors, and any regulatory violations. It is powerful evidence of negligence — and potentially negligence per se, depending on how Wyoming courts treat OSHA violations in civil suits. Given the December 2019 incident date, the WY-OSHA investigation should be complete. But obtaining the findings requires a FOIA request or subpoena. That request needs to go out now.
Scene photographs and fire investigation report — MODERATE URGENCY. Laramie County Fire District 4’s records, along with any fire investigation report, document the origin point of the fire, its extent, and its progression. Scene photographs capture the condition of the site before remediation alters it. Fire district records are typically retained per department policy, but the scene itself has long since been cleaned up. Photographs taken by responders, workers, and bystanders in the immediate aftermath may be the only visual record of the pre-remediation scene.
Archrock work orders, dispatch records, and safety briefings — MODERATE URGENCY. These records show what tasks were assigned to the workers, what safety information was provided before they were deployed, and whether Archrock or EOG directed the compressor adjustment work. They establish that the workers were doing what they were told to do — not freelancing — which is central to defeating the comparative fault defense.
The preservation letter that freezes all of this evidence goes out the day you call us. Not the week after. Not after you have finished your medical treatment. Not after the insurance adjuster has called you three times. The day you call. Because every day that passes is a day the company can legally destroy evidence that proves what it did wrong.
Wyoming Law: Comparative Fault, Punitive Damages, and the Third-Party Claim
Wyoming’s legal framework for a case like this has three pillars that the defense will try to use against you — and that we know how to counter.
The Comparative Fault Rule
Wyoming follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51% bar. Here is what that means in plain English: if you are found to be 51% or more at fault for your own injuries, you recover nothing. If you are 50% or less at fault, your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault — but you still recover.
The defense in this case will almost certainly argue that the workers were at fault because they were “adjusting the compressor’s timing and fuel ratios” when the pipe failed. The implication is that the workers’ adjustments caused or contributed to the pipe failure. This is the defense’s strongest card, and we need to take it away early.
The counter is built on three facts. First, the workers were performing work that EOG directed and controlled — they were sent to the site to maintain a compressor that EOG owned and operated. Second, EOG represented the site as safe — the workers relied on that representation. Third, the complaint alleges that the pipe failed because EOG failed to correctly design, install, secure, and configure it — not because of anything the workers did with the timing and fuel ratios. The pipe was a ticking bomb before the workers ever touched the compressor. Their adjustments were the match that lit the fuse, but EOG built the bomb.
Under the 51% bar, even if the defense could pin some percentage of fault on the workers — say, 10% or 20% — the workers would still recover, with their award reduced by that percentage. The defense’s goal is to push the workers past 50%, which would bar recovery entirely. That is why establishing EOG’s control, knowledge, and misrepresentation is so critical — it drives EOG’s fault percentage up and the workers’ down.
Punitive Damages for Reckless Disregard
Wyoming recognizes punitive damages — also called exemplary damages — upon a showing of reckless disregard or willful and wanton misconduct. This is a higher standard than ordinary negligence. It requires proof that the defendant acted with conscious disregard of a known risk to the safety of others.
The allegations in this case, if proven, clear that bar. EOG allegedly knew the compressor was malfunctioning. EOG allegedly told the workers the site was safe. EOG allegedly controlled the safety decisions and chose to send workers into a building with a malfunctioning compressor and a pipe that was improperly designed, installed, or configured. That is not a careless mistake. That is a company that knew the danger, looked at it, and decided to send people in anyway.
Wyoming has statutory provisions governing exemplary damages, and those limitations may apply to the amount of punitive damages that can be recovered. The specific cap rules should be confirmed against the current Wyoming statute at the time of filing — but the availability of punitive damages is clear, and the factual basis for them in this case is strong.
No General Cap on Compensatory Damages
Wyoming imposes no general cap on compensatory damages in personal injury cases. That means there is no statutory ceiling on what a jury can award for your medical expenses, lost wages, lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, disfigurement, and mental anguish. The full measure of your loss is recoverable — limited only by the evidence and the jury’s judgment.
This is why the life-care plan and the forensic economist matter so much. When there is no cap, the size of the verdict is driven by the size of the provable loss. A life-care planner projects decades of burn-related medical needs — scar revision surgeries, physical therapy, psychological treatment for PTSD, infection management, and the prosthetic or assistive devices that severe burn scarring may require. A forensic economist reduces all of that to present value, adds the lost earning capacity, and produces the economic foundation of the demand. The adjuster’s first offer will be a fraction of that number. The trial is where the full amount is put in front of a jury.
The Statute of Limitations
Wyoming’s statute of limitations for personal injury claims is four years — one of the longer limitation periods in the country. The clock starts running from the date of the injury, which in this case is December 5, 2019. That gives you until December 2023 to file a lawsuit. Four years may sound like a long time, but consider this: the evidence that proves your case — the pipe, the SCADA data, the internal communications — is on clocks measured in months, not years. The statute of limitations gives you the right to file. The evidence clock determines whether you have anything to file with.
The Federal Regulatory Framework: What EOG Was Required to Do
Beyond Wyoming state law, EOG Resources was subject to a web of federal and state regulatory requirements that establish the standard of care — and that may supply powerful evidence of negligence.
OSHA Process Safety Management (29 CFR 1910.119)
OSHA’s Process Safety Management standard is the federal rulebook for facilities that handle highly hazardous chemicals. A natural gas compressor station that holds flammable substances at or above threshold quantities — which a working compressor station almost certainly does — falls under PSM. The standard requires EOG to maintain a fourteen-element safety program, including:
Process Hazard Analysis (PHA): A formal study of every way the process could fail, updated and revalidated at least every five years. The PHA should have identified the risk of pipe failure, gas leakage, and explosion. If the PHA never addressed the external piping, or if it was stale, or if it was never performed — that gap is the case.
Mechanical Integrity: A written program requiring inspection and testing of pressure vessels, piping systems, relief and vent systems, emergency shutdown systems, controls, and pumps. The failed external pipe falls squarely within this requirement. EOG was required to inspect it, test it, document the results, and correct any deficiency before further use. If the inspection records show wall thinning, corrosion, or other warnings that were ignored — or if the records do not exist at all — the absence is the proof.
Management of Change (MOC): Written procedures requiring EOG to study and document the safety impact of any change to equipment, technology, or procedures — unless the change was a replacement in kind. If the failed pipe was installed as a modification, a substitution, or a repair that was not identical to the original, EOG was required to document that the change was safe. If the MOC file for that pipe is missing, EOG skipped the one step that exists to catch exactly this kind of danger.
Incident Investigation: An investigation must be initiated within 48 hours of any incident that resulted in, or could reasonably have resulted, a catastrophic release. The investigation report must be retained for five years. The December 5 explosion triggered this requirement. The investigation report — if it exists — may contain admissions, root-cause findings, and recommendations that are devastating to EOG’s defense.
WY-OSHA and the State Investigation
Wyoming operates an OSHA-approved state plan — WY-OSHA — that enforces federal OSHA standards alongside state-specific oil and gas safety regulations. WY-OSHA would have investigated this incident, and its findings — including any citations, violations, or penalties assessed against EOG — are powerful evidence. A citation is not the same as a court finding of liability, and it may be contested or reduced on appeal. But a WY-OSHA citation for a PSM violation, a mechanical integrity failure, or a general duty clause violation is a regulator’s documented conclusion that the safety floor was broken. That carries weight with a jury.
API 618 and Industry Standards
The American Petroleum Institute’s API 618 standard for reciprocating compressors establishes industry benchmarks for compressor station design, installation, and maintenance. While API standards are not federal law, they are recognized industry standards that inform the duty of care. If EOG’s compressor station did not meet API 618 standards — and a process safety management expert can testify to this — the violation of an industry standard is evidence that EOG fell below the care that a reasonably prudent operator in the oil and gas industry would exercise.
Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission
The Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission regulates well-site operations in the state, including compressor station siting and safety requirements. Any WOGCC records related to this well site — inspection findings, permits, violations, or correspondence — may supplement the WY-OSHA record and establish a pattern of regulatory awareness or noncompliance.
What Your Burn Injuries Really Cost — and Why the First Offer Will Be a Fraction
Let us talk about the medicine, because the medicine drives the money, and the money is what funds the rest of your life.
How Burns Are Measured
Doctors measure burn severity two ways: how deep the burn goes and how much of the body it covers. The body-surface measurement uses the Rule of Nines — a mapping system where the front of each leg counts as 9% of total body surface area (TBSA), the front of the torso is 18%, the head is 9%, and so on. That single percentage — the TBSA — drives almost every clinical decision that follows, from how much IV fluid is needed in the first 24 hours to whether the patient belongs in a specialized burn center.
The fact that one of the three workers was transported directly to the Western States Burn Center in Greeley — bypassing Cheyenne Regional Medical Center — tells us the burns met the American Burn Association’s burn center referral criteria. Those criteria include any partial-thickness burn of 10% or more of TBSA, any full-thickness burn, burns involving the face, hands, feet, genitalia, or major joints, and any suspected inhalation injury. A burn severe enough to warrant a 100-mile ambulance transport to a regional burn center is a burn that will require weeks of hospitalization, multiple surgeries, and years of follow-up care.
Burn Depth and Why It Matters
Burns are classified by depth. First-degree burns affect only the outer layer of skin — a bad sunburn. Second-degree, or partial-thickness burns, penetrate into the dermis and cause blistering, severe pain, and scarring. Third-degree, or full-thickness burns, destroy the skin entirely — and here is the counterintuitive truth that juries need to hear: full-thickness burns are often painless at the site of the burn itself, because the nerves that transmit pain have been destroyed. A witness who says “he wasn’t even screaming” may have been looking at the worst burn of all, not a mild one. The silence is a sign of severity, not comfort.
Fourth-degree burns extend beyond the skin into subcutaneous tissue, muscle, tendon, ligament, cartilage, or bone. These are the burns that require amputation, that cause permanent disability, that reshape a person’s body for the rest of their life.
The First Night: Why Minutes Mattered
A severe burn causes the body to leak fluid until it goes into shock. The Parkland formula — 4 milliliters of IV fluid per kilogram of body weight per percent of TBSA burned — calculates the first 24 hours of fluid resuscitation. Half of that entire volume is supposed to be in the patient’s veins within eight hours of the burn — and the clock starts at the moment of injury, not when the ambulance arrives.
For a worker burned at a compressor station west of Carpenter, that clock started the instant the gas ignited. The transport to Cheyenne Regional Medical Center — 20 to 30 miles — consumed some of that window. The transport to the Western States Burn Center in Greeley — roughly 100 miles — consumed more. Every minute that burned worker spent in a rural ambulance was a minute measured against a fluid clock that started before the flames were out. The four hours it took firefighters to douse the blaze were four hours of delayed scene stabilization, delayed evidence preservation, and delayed evacuation of the injured.
Skin Grafting: Two Wounds, Not One
A full-thickness burn does not heal on its own — the skin is gone. Surgeons must harvest healthy skin from another part of the body (the donor site) and transplant it over the burn (the recipient site). The result is two wounds instead of one — the burn and the place the skin was taken from. Both must heal. Both will scar. And because scar tissue does not stretch like normal skin, the scars can tighten over joints, limiting movement — a condition called contracture. In a burn survivor, every joint covered by a graft is a joint that may need physical therapy for years, and in some cases, serial surgeries to release the tightening scar as the body tries to heal.
The Long Arc: What the Family Watches Happen
The acute hospitalization is only the beginning. After the burn center discharge comes the long arc: scar maturation, which takes 12 to 18 months; scar revision surgeries, which may be needed for years; physical therapy to maintain range of motion; occupational therapy to restore function; psychological treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and the disfigurement that the survivor now sees in every mirror; and the ongoing risk of infection in compromised skin. The medical literature on burn outcomes documents elevated rates of PTSD, depression, social withdrawal, and substance use in burn survivors — not because they are weak, but because they survived a blast, were burned alive, and then had to look at the evidence every day.
The Lifetime Cost
Burn care follows a brutal arithmetic: roughly one day in the hospital for every percent of TBSA burned. A burn covering 30% of the body can mean a month in a burn unit — before a single graft, a single therapy session, or a single day home. The hospital bill alone for a severe burn can reach into hundreds of thousands of dollars. The skin graft surgeries, the reconstructive procedures, the years of therapy, the psychological care, the medications, the compression garments, the assistive devices — the lifetime cost of a severe burn injury can run into the millions of dollars. And that is before counting a single dollar of lost wages or earning capacity.
This is why a life-care planner is essential. A certified life-care planner builds a formal, standards-based document that projects every treatment, device, medication, and caregiver hour the burn survivor will need for the rest of their life — priced at current market rates. A forensic economist then reduces that cost stream to present value, adds the lost earning capacity, and produces the economic foundation of the demand. The number that results is not a wish — it is arithmetic. And the adjuster’s first offer will be a fraction of it.
Case Value: What a Case Like This Is Worth
We will be honest with you about value, because honesty is what builds trust and trust is what builds a case.
For three plaintiffs with severe burns and permanent disabling injuries — one severe enough to require immediate transfer to a regional burn center — the compensatory value of this case ranges from approximately $8,000,000 to $35,000,000 in total, depending on the specific injuries. Per plaintiff, the range runs from approximately $2,000,000 to $8,000,000, driven by the following variables:
- Total body surface area burned: The higher the TBSA, the longer the hospitalization, the more grafts required, the higher the cost.
- Burn depth: Full-thickness and fourth-degree burns carry the highest values because they require grafting, cause permanent scarring, and may result in amputation or permanent functional loss.
- Number of required grafts: Each graft is a surgery, a donor wound, a recovery period, and a scar. Multiple grafts multiply the medical cost and the human toll.
- Long-term disability rating: A worker who cannot return to their trade because of contracture, nerve damage, or psychological injury has lost earning capacity that must be quantified.
- Psychological impact: PTSD, depression, and disfigurement-related distress are real, diagnosable, and compensable. The defense will call them “subjective.” The medical literature and the treating clinicians call them the expected sequelae of a catastrophic burn.
On top of compensatory damages, the punitive damages exposure is substantial. EOG’s alleged actual knowledge of the compressor malfunction, combined with the affirmative misrepresentation of site safety, satisfies Wyoming’s reckless disregard standard for exemplary damages. The specific statutory limitations on punitive damages in Wyoming should be confirmed against the current statute, but the availability of punitive damages — and the factual basis for them — is clear.
Collectibility is exceptional. EOG Resources is a major publicly traded company with a market capitalization historically in the tens of billions of dollars. It maintains commercial general liability, excess umbrella, and potentially environmental liability insurance. There is no question about whether a verdict against EOG can be collected. The only question is whether the case is built strongly enough to command the full value.
Key deflators to be aware of: The defense will assert comparative fault — the workers were adjusting the compressor’s timing and fuel ratios when the pipe failed. We counter by proving that EOG directed the work, controlled the site, and represented safety. Additionally, a workers’ compensation lien from Archrock’s carrier may attach to any settlement or verdict and must be resolved — often through negotiation of a reduced lien — as part of the resolution.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The figures above are analytical ranges based on the known facts of this incident and the medical and economic variables that drive catastrophic burn injury valuations, not a prediction of what your specific case will produce.
How the Insurance Company Will Try to Minimize Your Claim
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like you. He sat across the table from the injured. He knows the plays because he ran them. Now he sits on your side of the table, and he uses that inside knowledge for the people the insurance machine was built to grind down. Here are the plays you should expect — and the counter to each one.
Play 1: The Friendly “Just Checking In” Call
Within days of the explosion, someone friendly will call to “check on you” and ask you to “just tell us what happened.” The call is recorded. Every word you say is being transcribed and catalogued for later use against you. If you say “I’m feeling okay” — that becomes the defense’s exhibit A for “the injuries weren’t that serious.” If you describe the explosion in your own words and get a detail wrong because you were on fire at the time — that becomes “the plaintiff’s own account is inconsistent.”
The counter: Do not give a recorded statement to anyone — not EOG’s insurer, not Archrock’s insurer, not any third-party adjuster — without your lawyer present. You are not required to provide one. The only thing a recorded statement does is give the defense ammunition. If they have a right to your account, they can get it through your lawyer, on your schedule, with your interests protected.
Play 2: The Quick Check With a Release Attached
A settlement check may arrive fast — sometimes within weeks of the explosion. It will come with a release document that, if you sign it, ends your case forever. The check is designed to arrive before your medical results are complete, before the full extent of your burns is known, before the life-care plan is built, and before you have talked to a lawyer. The amount will look like a lot of money to someone who is out of work and drowning in bills. It is a fraction of what your case is worth.
The counter: Never sign a release without having a lawyer review it. The release is the document that sells your right to full compensation for a fraction of its value. Once you sign it, the case is over — even if you later discover you need three more surgeries and can never work again. The quick check is not generosity. It is strategy.
Play 3: “Workers’ Comp Is Your Only Option”
This is the most damaging lie the company tells, and it is the one most injured workers believe. The employer’s workers’ compensation carrier and the site operator’s liability insurer both have an interest in you believing that workers’ comp is the ceiling on your recovery. It is not. Workers’ comp is the floor. The third-party claim against EOG Resources — the company that controlled the site, built the pipe, and sent you into a malfunctioning compressor — is where the full value of your injuries lives.
The counter: Talk to a lawyer who handles workplace accident cases and specifically understands the third-party claim structure. The consultation is free. The lawyer can tell you in one phone call whether you have a third-party claim — and in a case like this, the answer is almost certainly yes.
Play 4: Comparative Fault — “You Were Adjusting the Compressor When It Blew”
The defense will argue that the workers’ own actions — adjusting the compressor’s timing and fuel ratios — caused or contributed to the pipe failure. This is designed to push the workers’ fault percentage above 51%, which would bar recovery entirely under Wyoming’s comparative negligence rule.
The counter: The workers were performing directed work on equipment that EOG owned, controlled, and represented as safe. The pipe failed because EOG failed to correctly design, install, secure, and configure it — not because of the workers’ adjustments. The adjustment was the occasion for the failure, not the cause. A metallurgical expert proves the pipe was defective before the workers touched anything. EOG’s control and knowledge of the malfunction shift the fault back where it belongs.
Play 5: Social Media Surveillance
The insurance company will monitor your social media. If you post a photo of yourself smiling at a family event — even if you were in agonizing pain the entire time — that photo becomes “the plaintiff enjoying life, contrary to claims of severe suffering.” If you post about returning to light activity — even against medical advice or because you had no choice — that becomes “the plaintiff is capable of working.”
The counter: Do not discuss the incident, your injuries, or the litigation on social media. Not with coworkers. Not with friends. Not with anyone outside your legal team. Set your accounts to private. Assume everything you post will be printed and shown to a jury.
Play 6: The Independent Medical Examination (IME)
The insurer will send you to a doctor of their choosing for an “independent” medical examination. That doctor is not independent — the insurer picks doctors who routinely produce reports minimizing injuries. The IME doctor may examine you for 15 minutes and write a report saying your burns are healing well, your pain is exaggerated, and you can return to work.
The counter: Your treating physicians — the burn center specialists, the surgeons who performed your grafts, the therapists who have worked with you for months — carry far more weight than an insurance doctor who saw you once. We make sure the jury hears the difference between a doctor who treated you and a doctor who was hired to refute you.
How a Case Like This Is Actually Built
Here is the chronological walk of how a third-party oilfield explosion case is built — from the day you call to the day the number is put in front of a jury.
Week one: The preservation letter goes out. The day you call, we send a formal litigation-hold and evidence-preservation letter to EOG Resources, Archrock Services, and any other identifiable parties. That letter demands, in writing, that they preserve the failed pipe section, all SCADA and monitoring data, all internal communications about the compressor malfunction, all maintenance and inspection records, all incident reports, all photographs, and all physical evidence at the site. The letter is the legal document that converts routine evidence destruction into sanctionable spoliation. If they destroy evidence after receiving that letter, the jury can be told to assume the destroyed evidence was as bad as we say it was.
Early weeks: Records demands and FOIA requests. We demand Archrock’s work orders, dispatch records, and safety briefings — to establish what the workers were told before they entered the compressor building. We file FOIA requests for the WY-OSHA investigation report and any citations. We pull the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission records for the well site. We request the Laramie County Fire District 4 records — the fire investigation report, the scene photographs, the response timeline.
Early months: Expert retention. We retain a metallurgical forensic expert to examine the failed pipe section — if it has been preserved — and determine the failure mechanism: design defect, improper installation, material fatigue, corrosion, or configuration error. We retain a process safety management expert to review the SCADA data, the PHA, the mechanical integrity records, and the MOC file, and testify to whether EOG violated OSHA PSM requirements and API 618 standards. We retain a burn medicine specialist to document each plaintiff’s burn severity, treatment history, and long-term prognosis. We retain a life-care planner to project decades of burn-related medical needs. We retain a forensic economist to quantify total economic losses, including wage-loss present value and future medical cost inflation.
Discovery: The records come out. Through written discovery and subpoenas, we obtain EOG’s internal communications about the compressor malfunction — the emails, the operations reports, the maintenance requests that show what EOG knew and when. We obtain the SCADA data that shows the operating conditions at the time of the explosion. We obtain the maintenance and inspection records for the failed pipe. We obtain the PHA and the MOC file. Each document either proves EOG’s knowledge and breach or shows the absence of a safety program that was required by federal law.
Depositions: EOG’s people under oath. We depose EOG’s operations managers, safety directors, and site supervisors — the people who knew the compressor was malfunctioning and decided to represent the site as safe. We depose Archrock’s dispatchers and supervisors — to confirm the workers were following directions. We depose the WY-OSHA investigators — to establish the regulatory findings. We depose the fire investigators — to establish the origin and cause of the explosion. Under oath, the people who made the decisions that sent workers into a malfunctioning compressor building have to answer for those decisions.
Expert designation and the life-care plan. Before trial, we designate our experts and produce the life-care plan and the forensic economic analysis. These documents convert the human losses — the surgeries, the scars, the pain, the lost career, the changed life — into dollar figures that a jury can use to calculate full and fair compensation.
Mediation — after full expert designation and key depositions. Mediation should be approached only after the experts are designated and the key EOG depositions are complete. Walking into mediation without the full evidentiary package is walking in without leverage. With the package complete, the defense can see exactly what a jury will hear — and that is when serious settlement discussions begin. A thorough analysis of EOG’s commercial general liability and excess coverage layers is essential to evaluate settlement authority and excess-carrier exposure.
Trial — if the company will not pay full value. If mediation does not produce a fair resolution, the case goes to trial. In the District of Wyoming, the jury that decides what your burns are worth will be twelve people from Wyoming — your neighbors, people who know the oil and gas industry, people who understand what it means to be sent into a dangerous situation by a company that knew better. Voir dire should explore jurors’ attitudes toward oil and gas industry safety practices, corporate accountability for contractor safety, and perceptions of burn-injury severity.
Your First 72 Hours: What to Do and What to Refuse
Medical care first — and why symptoms lie. Your first priority is your health. Burns can worsen over the first 24 to 72 hours as the true depth declares itself — an initial “second-degree” assessment can convert to “third-degree, needs grafting” as the tissue dies. Follow your burn center’s instructions. Attend every follow-up appointment. Do not skip therapy because you feel better — the scarring and contracture process is invisible in the early weeks and devastating in the later months.
Do not give a recorded statement. Not to EOG’s insurer. Not to Archrock’s insurer. Not to any third-party adjuster. Not to any “investigator” who shows up at your hospital room or your home. You are not required to provide one. If they have a right to your account, they can get it through your lawyer.
Do not sign anything. Not a release. Not a settlement agreement. Not an authorization to obtain your medical records. Not an acknowledgment of facts. Nothing. If someone puts a document in front of you and asks you to sign it, call a lawyer first.
Do not post on social media. Not about the explosion. Not about your injuries. Not about your recovery. Not about your employer. Not about EOG. Nothing. Assume everything you post will be printed and shown to a jury.
Do not discuss the incident with coworkers. The defense will interview your coworkers. Anything you say to them can become evidence. Be polite, be professional, but do not discuss the facts of the explosion, your injuries, or your legal plans.
Call a lawyer immediately. The preservation letter goes out the day you call. The evidence is on a clock. The failed pipe section may already have been repaired, replaced, or discarded during post-incident remediation. The SCADA data may be overwriting itself. The internal communications may be cycling out under routine retention policies. Every day you wait is a day the company can legally destroy evidence that proves what it did wrong.
If your loved one did not survive, a court-appointed personal representative brings the wrongful death claim on behalf of the family. We handle that appointment. The official reports, the investigation findings, and the physical evidence must be preserved immediately — the same evidence clock applies, and the stakes are even higher.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue EOG Resources if my employer was Archrock Services?
Yes. Workers’ compensation is the exclusive remedy against your employer — Archrock — but it does not bar claims against third parties. EOG Resources is a third party — a separate company that controlled the well site and made the safety decisions. Under Wyoming law, you can bring a full tort claim against EOG for negligence, premises liability, and negligent misrepresentation, seeking damages that workers’ comp will never pay: pain and suffering, disfigurement, lost earning capacity, and punitive damages.
How long do I have to file a lawsuit?
Wyoming’s statute of limitations for personal injury claims is four years from the date of the injury. The explosion occurred on December 5, 2019, so the filing deadline is December 2023. However, the evidence that proves your case is on much shorter clocks — the failed pipe, the SCADA data, and the internal communications can all be legally destroyed within months. The deadline to file is not the same as the deadline to preserve your evidence. The preservation letter goes out the day you call a lawyer.
What if the insurance company says I was at fault for adjusting the compressor?
That is the defense’s expected argument — and it is why establishing EOG’s control, knowledge, and misrepresentation is so critical. You were performing directed work on equipment that EOG owned and controlled. EOG represented the site as safe. The pipe failed because EOG failed to correctly design, install, secure, and configure it — not because of your adjustments. Wyoming’s comparative negligence rule reduces your recovery by your percentage of fault, but only bars it if you are 51% or more at fault. The goal is to drive EOG’s fault percentage up — through proof of its knowledge, control, and breach — and yours down.
What are punitive damages and can I recover them?
Punitive damages — also called exemplary damages — are damages awarded above and beyond compensation, designed to punish the defendant for reckless or willful and wanton conduct and to deter similar conduct in the future. Wyoming allows punitive damages upon a showing of reckless disregard for the safety of others. The allegation that EOG knew the compressor was malfunctioning and told the workers the site was safe — if proven — satisfies that standard. Wyoming has statutory provisions that may limit the amount of punitive damages; the specific limitations should be confirmed against the current statute.
How much is my case worth?
For three plaintiffs with severe burns and permanent disabling injuries — one requiring immediate transfer to a regional burn center — the compensatory value ranges from approximately $8 million to $35 million total, or $2 million to $8 million per plaintiff, depending on total body surface area burned, burn depth, number of required grafts, long-term disability rating, and psychological impact. Punitive damages may be available on top of compensatory damages. The exact value of your case depends on your specific injuries, your earning history, your life-care plan, and the strength of the evidence. No lawyer can promise a specific result — past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes — but an honest evaluation starts with the medicine and the economics, not a guess.
Will I have to go to trial?
Most personal injury cases settle before trial. But the size of the settlement is driven by the strength of the trial preparation. If the defense knows your lawyer is prepared to take the case to a jury — with a metallurgical expert, a process safety management expert, a burn medicine specialist, a life-care planner, and a forensic economist — they will offer more to avoid that trial. If they think your lawyer will take whatever they offer to avoid the courtroom, they will lowball you. We prepare every case as if it is going to trial. That preparation is what produces fair settlements — and it is what wins trials when settlement is not fair.
What if I cannot afford a lawyer?
You can afford us. We work on contingency — 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. We advance the costs of the case — the expert fees, the filing fees, the deposition costs — and those costs are repaid from the recovery. You pay nothing out of pocket to start. You pay nothing unless we win.
What should I do right now?
Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. The call is free and confidential. We will listen to what happened, answer your questions, and tell you honestly whether you have a third-party claim. If you do, the preservation letter goes out that day — freezing the evidence before it disappears. If you do not, we will tell you that too — because honesty is what builds trust, and trust is what builds a case. Do not wait. The evidence is on a clock, and the clock is already running.
Does it matter that the explosion happened in Wyoming?
Yes — it matters in several ways. Wyoming law governs the tort claims, including the comparative negligence rule, the punitive damages standard, and the statute of limitations. The U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming — where this lawsuit was filed, likely under diversity jurisdiction — applies Wyoming substantive law under the Erie doctrine. The jury will be drawn from Wyoming residents — people who know the oil and gas industry, who understand the dangers of compressor stations, and who can appreciate what it means to be sent into a dangerous situation by a company that knew better. The local context matters, and the local court is where justice lives.
Can I still pursue a claim if the explosion happened months or years ago?
The statute of limitations is four years, so you may still be within the filing window. But the evidence has been on a clock the entire time. The longer the delay, the more evidence may have been destroyed, overwritten, or lost. WY-OSHA investigation reports, fire district records, and formal maintenance records may still be available. SCADA data and internal communications may have been purged. The failed pipe section may have been replaced. Call us as soon as possible — even if significant time has passed — so we can assess what evidence remains and move to preserve it.
Why Attorney911: The Trial Team That Takes Wyoming Cases
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes Wyoming cases, working with local counsel and pro hac vice admission where required. We do not claim an office in Wyoming, and we do not invent credentials we do not have. What we bring is 27 years of courtroom experience, a former insurance-defense insider who knows exactly how the other side operates, and a commitment to the people the system is designed to grind down.
Ralph P. Manginello is our Managing Partner — 27+ years licensed, admitted to practice in Texas and in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas. Ralph was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he knows how to find the story the evidence tells and how to tell it to a jury in language they understand. He has spent his career in courtrooms, including federal court, fighting for people who were injured by companies that put profits over safety. Ralph handles refinery and industrial accident cases and knows the oil and gas industry’s safety obligations — and how often they are ignored. You can read more about Ralph on his attorney bio page.
Lupe Peña is our Associate Attorney — 13+ years licensed, a former insurance-defense attorney who spent years inside a national defense firm, in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. Lupe knows how claim valuation works from the inside — how reserves are set in the first 48 hours, how recorded statements are engineered, how IME doctors are selected, how surveillance is deployed, and how the delay-and-devalue playbook runs. Now he uses that knowledge for injured clients. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. You can read more about Lupe on his attorney bio page.
We have recovered more than $50 million for our clients — a marketing aggregate that includes cases across our practice areas. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we guarantee is this: we will tell you the truth about your case, we will prepare it as if it is going to trial, and we will not settle for a fraction of its value because the insurance company made a low offer and hoped we would take it.
Contact Us — Free Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win
If you were burned in an oilfield explosion in Wyoming — at a compressor station, a well site, a refinery, or any oil and gas facility — call us. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. We work on contingency — 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case.
1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911) — 24/7 live staff, not an answering service. Someone will answer. Someone will listen. Someone will help.
The evidence is on a clock. The failed pipe section. The SCADA data. The internal communications where EOG discussed the malfunctioning compressor and decided to call the site safe. Every day that passes is a day the company can legally destroy the proof of what it did wrong. The preservation letter goes out the day you call — not the week after, not after the adjuster has called you three times, not after you have signed something you did not understand.
Hablamos Español. Lupe Peña conducts full consultations in Spanish. Si usted o un ser querido sufrió quemaduras en una explosión en un campo petrolero en Wyoming, llámenos. La consulta es gratis. No nos pagan a menos que ganemos su caso.
You were sent into a building with a malfunctioning compressor and a pipe that was built wrong. You were told it was safe. It was not. The company that controlled that site — that knew the danger and sent you in anyway — owes you more than a workers’ comp check. It owes you the full measure of what was taken from you: the surgeries, the scars, the pain, the career, the life you had before the explosion. That is what we go find. That is what we fight for.
Call us today. 1-888-ATTY-911.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Contacting the firm is free and confidential. The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC (Attorney911) is based in Houston, Texas and takes Wyoming cases with local counsel / pro hac vice where required. We do not claim to be counsel of record on the incident described on this page; the analysis presented is educational, based on publicly reported facts and the governing law, and is offered as a resource for injured workers and their families facing similar situations.