Nearly 1000 workers have died in hydraulic fracturing accidents this decade

Roger Cunningham. Charles "C.J." Bevins. Kyle Winter. These are just some of the nearly 1,000 workers who have lost their lives in the shale patch in the 10 years since hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technologies opened up new oil and gas resources across the country.In its annual Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tracks the number of workers who have died on the job.At the height of the boom, federal officials noticed a startling trend in the industry's fatality rate, which compares the number of worker deaths against the total number of workers in an industry.The occurrence of worker deaths in oil and gas was seven times higher than the fatality rate across all industries.In 2016, the most recent year for which CFOI data are available, the energy industry's fatality rate was four times higher than the all-industry rate. Industry and safety experts have pointed to the data as an indicator that oil field safety measures are having their intended effect, but they still say even one death is too many.