Chicago Workers' Compensation Attorney Blog

Peabody Energy said Tuesday that it welcomes a request by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration for an expedited hearing regarding the safety of its Illinois mine. But it said the formal announcement by regulators was publicity-seeking and inflammatory. While few think of Illinois when it comes to the oil, gas and mining industry, the state is one of the nation's largest players in the natural resources industry.

Employees who are injured on the job or believe they are being forced to work amid dangerous conditions should contact an Illinois work injury attorney to discuss their rights.

Safety in the natural gas, crude oil and mining industry has been in the news recently because of several high-profile incidents, including the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico, a rupturing natural gas pipeline in Houston and April's mining disaster in West Virginia, which claimed the lives of 29 miners.

Illinois has substantial mining and pipeline operations across the state. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports 19 coal mines are operating in Illinois.

In fact, the two largest mining disasters to occur in the United States since 1940, both happened in Illinois. In 1947, an explosion at the Centralia No. 5 mine in Centralia, Illinois killed 111 employees. Four days before Christmas 1951, an explosion at the Orient No. 2 mine in West Frankfort, Illinois killed 119 miners. The third largest mining disaster in U.S. history occurred in 1909 in Cherry, Illinois when 259 miners died in a fire.

The safety of the Willow Lakes mine, an underground facility in Saline County, Illinois, has been in dispute for several years. The mine employs about 400 people and shipped about 3.7 million tons of coal to utility customers in 2008. The government has fined the company $230,000 and cited it in both 2008 and 2009 for safety violations, including failure to do enough to protect against roof collapse and not preventing excessive combustible materials in the workplace.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies the entire oil and gas industry as mining and reports that 2,320 injury cases and 174 fatalities occurred in 2008. The three most frequent causes of serious mining accidents were transportation accidents (41 percent), struck by object or equipment (25 percent) and fires and explosions (15 percent).

Illinois also processes about 1 million barrels of oil per day and has one of the 10 largest oil refineries in the United States: The Wood River Refinery processes 306.000 barrels of oil per day. Other Illinois oil refineries include the Exxon Mobile refinery in Joliet, which processes 238,600 barrels of oil per day; the Robinson refinery handles 204,000 barrels per day; and a refinery in Lemont processes 167,000 barrels per day.