METH FUELS OIL AND GAS BOOM

Drug Use Among Drill-Rig Roughnecks Worries Authorities

Sheriff Buddy Grinstead, a solidly built cop's cop who benches 300
pounds, is only beginning to wrap his ham-hock-sized arms around the
drug problem that he says is swallowing his county.

As he drives his unmarked white SUV down Craig's main drag, Grinstead
points out a low-slung motel, where Craig police recently busted
dealers with methamphetamine, the cheap, synthetically produced
stimulant known for its long-lasting high. Not a block farther, he
nods at a run-down apartment, a well-known crash pad for addicts. Up
the hill, behind the main street, he pauses at a well-kept
ranch-style home, where, a few years ago, a local developer was
busted for cooking and selling the highly addictive drug, which
traces its chemical lineage back to the stamina or "pep" pills given
to Allied and Axis soldiers during World War II.

Throughout the years, methamphetamine has claimed victims from across
the socio-economic spectrum, but Grinstead and energy industry
insiders say it has recently become epidemic on the oil and gas rigs
sprouting in the dusty expanses around Craig.

Grinstead busted his first meth lab in 1987, but said he didn't think
much about it; the "cook" was from California, and the whole
operation seemed out of place in his area. Then, around 2000 -- at
about the same time as the natural gas boom took off -- he noticed an
increase in meth use and related crimes. It was like a "light switch
went on," said one of Grinstead's deputies, a drug investigator who
asked to remain anonymous. "It was like a disease; everyone had it."

Grinstead said he's spoken with law enforcement officers from across
the West who say the drug has engulfed their small communities. Meth
recipes abound on the Internet, and most of the ingredients --
over-the-counter cold pills, propane, drain cleaner, iodine and
ammonia -- are easily procured in rural areas.

A survey from the National Association of Counties, released in July,
found that methamphetamine is the No. 1 drug problem for 57 percent
of suburban and rural counties. Half of the counties estimated that
one-fifth of their inmates were in jail for meth-related crimes.

Of the 82 inmates in Grin-stead's jail in early August, seven were
there for meth possession. But dig a little deeper, Grinstead said,
and most of the check forgeries, domestic violence cases and
burglaries trace back to crank.

Moffat County District At--torney Bonnie Roesink just hired another
attorney to help her work through a felony caseload that nearly
doubled from 2002 to 2004 with meth-related crimes.

Every year for the past three years, law enforcement officers have
discovered a meth lab somewhere in Moffat County's 4,700 square
miles, and Grinstead is certain that more lurk in the area. He said
the drug is already overwhelming his small staff of 11 deputies, and
he fears the problem only will grow as more energy workers move to
Craig, to nearby Vernal, Utah, and to the oil and gas fields of
southern Wyoming.

So early this year, Grinstead, a solid Republican with friends and
family in the energy business, made a radical suggestion. At a
February county commissioners' meeting, he called for random drug
testing of all oil and gas workers. With that request, he publicly
declared that the county's oil and gas industry -- one of its main
economic engines -- has a drug problem that it can't or won't control.

"I'm not saying everyone in oil and gas is a druggie," said
Grinstead, "but these traveling drill crews seem to have a problem."

Wired or Fired

To confirm that meth use is widespread in the oil and gas fields, go
no further than Grinstead's jail, and ask Tony Peck, a wiry,
shaggy-haired inmate currently doing six months for violating
probation for meth possession. In recent years, Peck has found steady
work as a roughneck. It's a tough job, and to get him through the
12-hour days of drilling, he has often turned to meth. Known as "poor
man's cocaine," the drug delivers a similar euphoric high. A hit of
meth can keep a user awake for hours, even days, at least at first.

"You work long hours, you thought the meth was keeping you awake, but
after a while, it didn't do much, you have to keep taking more," said
the 37-year-old Peck. At the height of his use, he said, he was
eating or smoking more than a gram of methamphetamine in a day, at a
cost of $200 to $300.

Peck has been in and out of jail for driving under the influence,
possession of marijuana and methamphetamine, and grand theft auto.
But once released, he said, he finds it easy to get work again.
Toward the end of one of his most recent prison stints, he sent a
note to the head jailer asking whether he could be let out first
thing on his release day, so he could get his work clothes ready. The
lieutenant agreed, and Peck was out at 12:01 a.m. Not six hours out
of the clink, Peck was back pushing pipe. And for him, going back to
work meant going back to meth.

Peck said he often took meth on the job with fellow rig-hands. Having
worked construction and various other jobs, Peck knows how prevalent
the drug's use is. However, he said it seems to be especially
widespread in the oil and gas fields, where the long, hard hours mean
a lot of money, and a little extra pick-me-up can get a working stiff
through his shift.

One former roughneck said the problem is so ingrained that there's a
saying around the rigs, "Either you're wired or you're fired." But a
wired worker is often a dangerous worker. Although he was often high
on the job, it scared Peck to work with other meth users, especially
the ones who were "spinning out" -- in the throes of the drug's
intense chemical high.

Rig work -- amid a spider's web of chains, cranes and thousands of
pounds of swinging steel pipe -- is dangerous and demanding, even for
a crew of sober workers. Although the U.S. Department of Labor
doesn't keep statistics on drug-related accidents, the everyday peril
of oil and gas work is well-documented. During a two-week period last
August, two workers on separate rigs in the Pinedale, Wyo., region
were killed on the job.

Peck, who has dreams of starting his own drilling business when he
gets out of jail next year, said he's tried to kick his habit. But
hooked on a drug that has one of the highest relapse rates of any
illegal drug, and lacking a real treatment plan, his future looks
grim. "I'd like to get off the meth," he said. "But I haven't been
offered any (treatment)."

Bosses in Denial

Sheriff Grinstead isn't the only public official to make the
connection between the meth problem and the oil and gas industry. At
a coalbed methane industry conference in May, Wyoming Gov. Dave
Freud-enthal called on industry leaders to consider the effects of
meth on their workforce, and to pressure the Legislature for
meth-treatment programs. But industry management has only recently
begun to wrestle with the problem.

"There's a lot of meth out there," said Dyan Piscopo, a human
resources employee with EnCana, a Canadian energy company that is
drilling in Colorado's Piceance Basin and Wyoming's Jonah Field. Two
years ago, she said, after finding hypodermic needles, crank pipes
and other drug paraphernalia at one of its worksites, EnCana began
working with Shell and Stone Energy to collect and share drug tests
from every employee seeking work with the hundreds of sub-contractors
that do the digging, drilling and maintenance.

The results are somewhat heartening, according to Colin Woods,
director of sales for Houston-based Data, Integrity, Security,
Administration, Inc. In 2003, Woods helped set up the test database
for Shell and EnCana. Back then, he said, drug positives among oil
and gas workers in the Rockies were hovering around 8 to 10 percent.
Today, positives have dropped to about 4 percent. In contrast, about
8 percent of the nation's full-time workers tested positive for
illegal drugs in 2004, according to the U. S. Department of Health
and Human Services.

But some local drug testers say the industry's drug problem is much
bigger than the numbers suggest. Many oil and gas workers refuse to
give urine samples for drug tests because they know they'll fail,
said Rick Schneider, treasurer of Sideline Collections, a company
based in Rock Springs, Wyo. Factor in the refusals, he said, and as
many as one in six of the more than 15,000 tests his company collects
each year are failures. Many more may be slipping through the cracks;
Peck claims to have cheated five or six random urine analysis tests
by chugging an herbal detox drink beforehand.

Schneider said he has found entire rig crews unable to pass a drug
test. Some energy companies, he said, have asked him to test only on
certain days, so workers have plenty of time to back off the drug,
which stays in the system for only one to three days. Firing a crew
can be costly to an operator facing stiff penalties for straying from
a drilling schedule, Schneider explains: "It is an incentive for a
company to look the other way."

Locals Left Holding Bag

The recent survey from the National Association of Counties shed
stark light on the meth problem. Shortly after it was released, U.S.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urged a national drug policy shift
from marijuana to methamphetamine. A number of bills aimed at
stemming the problem are floating around Congress, including the
"Combat Meth Act" sponsored by Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo. The bill
could provide as much as $16 million for law enforcement and
rehabilitation, especially in rural areas, but it is languishing on
the congressional calendar.

In the meantime, Moffat County residents have formed a grassroots
task force: Communities Overcoming Meth Addiction, or COMA. About a
year old, COMA offers classes and support groups. The all-volunteer
group is pushing for an inpatient rehabilitation center at Craig's
Memorial Hospital; patients currently travel 200 miles to Grand
Junction to reach the nearest facility. The group, with support from
District Attorney Roesink, Sheriff Grinstead and District Judge
Michael O'Hara, also wants to open a drug court. Used with some
success across the country since the mid-1990s, drug courts sentence
offenders to lengthy rehab and drug treatment, with the threat of a
return to jail or prison for drug-use relapses.

"I've seen our community and other communities deal with this in a
traditional way, and it's gotten us nowhere," said Grinstead. "We
want to put these people in jail, but we've got to deal with the
abuse, too." But with limited resources, it is hard to battle the
drug head-on. COMA's bank balance barely topped $3,000 in August.
Moffat County has a $45 million annual budget, and puts some money
into drug enforcement, including the jail and the sheriff's division.
But there is no rehab program, nor money to pay for it, despite the
steady increase in energy business in the area.

County Commissioner Darryl Steele said oil and gas money will start
to trickle in during the next two years, but the federal and state
governments will have to pay for any additional rehab programs.

As for Sheriff Grinstead's original request that oil and gas
companies be required to randomly test their workers, it's unlikely
to come to fruition. But companies such as Entraga and El Paso, which
are building pipelines through Craig this fall, are listening. Both
require drug tests before they will hand out applications for the 600
temporary positions they need to fill.

That's music to Grinstead's ears. He just wants "everybody to get
involved with testing so that there is no place for these guys (doing
meth) to work."