From Boom to Bloodbath
FOR THE PAST THREE YEARS, Josh Thomas labored away on a sweltering shop floor as a valve technician. He would build, inspect, and test frac stacks—lookingfor the smallest imperfections, flagging parts in need of repair or replacement, testing components, and then assembling the stacks before they were sent out to drilling rigs in the Permian Basin.
Hydraulic fracturing requires almost unfathomable amounts of pressure, as truckloads of water, sand, and chemicals are pumped into the ground to open tiny fractures and release previously inaccessible pockets of oil and gas. To control that pressure, workers mount hulking assemblages of steel valves and piping—the frac stacks—at the wellhead.
“A little scratch can turn into a major leak,” Thomas says. “When something fails at that kind of pressure, it’s like a bomb going off. It would cut you in half, probably before you even knew what happened.”
With the Permian Basin in the middle of a historic oil boom and companies feverishly drilling more wells, assembling these frac stacks has been critical, high-demand work. During especially busy times, Thomas sometimes worked shifts that went well over 24 hours straight, racing to turn around orders.
The pay was great and the jobs plentiful. Thousands flocked to the region to get a piece of the boom. “You could be someone with no college degree, no high school diploma … and get out here and make $50,000 to $60,000 a year, easy,” says Thomas, who was born and raised in Odessa.
And with more than 400 drilling rigs operating throughout West Texas—accounting for nearly half the nation’s total rig count—a better job was bound to come up. After a few years with Quarter Turn Pressure Control, Thomas had gained enough experience to do quality-control work and was earning $20 an hour. Sure enough, another service contractor—Sentry Wellhead Systems—soon offered him a position at $22 an hour, and he jumped at it.
On Monday, March 9, Thomas started his new job. Two hours into his shift, his foreman—impressed by his experience—gave him an additional dollar in hourly pay. If he played his cards right, Thomas thought, perhaps he could reach his ultimate career goal: “Be important enough to be the guy sitting in an air-conditioned office instead of the guy sweating out [on the shop floor].”
Four days later, Thomas was out of work, along with almost everyone else at the company. With the price of oil plummeting, it could no longer turn a profit in the
