EON AI Ventures details the human causes of fatal oil and gas accidents — and the comprehensive Work Intelligence solution that goes to the bottom of them.
Irvine, CA — August 24, 2026 — EON AI Ventures today published This Is Why People Die, a white paper on the human and organisational causes of fatal accidents in oil and gas, and the comprehensive Work Intelligence solution EON has built to address them at the root — not as a catalogue of training modules, but as one system that puts the plant in a crew’s hands before they touch it, puts the expert in their pocket, captures what they actually did, and makes the last job visible to the next crew.
The paper is built on a peer-reviewed analysis of 184 fatal accidents in the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP) database, 2013 to 2017. In 90% of those accidents, the contractor’s work environment was judged present: the people doing the work had often never seen that plant. Contractors were involved in 86% of the 184 cases (159 of 184). In 2024, IOGP members reported 32 fatalities in 21 incidents. 26 of those 32 who died were contractors.
Click on the image below to access the Work Intelligence: Accident Prevention presentation.
“In 184 fatal accidents, 90 percent of the time the people doing the work had never seen that plant. Last year 26 of 32 who died were contractors. That is not a course you send them on. That is a plant they have never walked. We built one system so they run this plant before they touch it — and so the last job is visible to the next crew. That is how you go to the bottom of why people die,” said Dan Lejerskar, Chairman, EON AI Ventures.
Why people die
Investigations do not find a mysterious new cause each time. They find the same problems, overlapping in the same deaths. The 184-fatals analysis coded each cause as present or absent. Several can be present in one death. They are not a pie. The ones that matter for a comprehensive solution:
| How often it was present | Why they die | What a comprehensive solution must do |
| 90% | The crew had never seen this plant. Most of the people who die are contractors. | Put this plant in their hands before they touch it. |
| 53% | The hand that slips. First time at the equipment. Nobody next to them who has done it. | Let them run the job on this geometry. Put the expert in their pocket. |
| 57% | The team. Who speaks. Who is heard. They have only practised it going right. | Rehearse the bad day, with the team in the room. |
| 50% | The step everyone skips, because that is how the job gets done. On the wrong asset. Nobody saw it. | Guide the work at the point of work, and record what they actually did. |
| 86% | How the work was planned and authorised. The permit did not cover the job. Nobody verified the isolation. | Make the permit a live, checkable contract. |
| Again | It happened before. Nothing changed. So it happened again. | Make the last job visible to the next crew. |
EON does not claim a product reduces fatalities by these percentages. The percentages are how often the cause was judged present. The solution is what you put in their hands so that cause does not walk onto the job unseen.
What EON does about it
EON’s answer is one comprehensive solution, not eleven products sold as a menu. Work Intelligence is the system of record for how work is actually done.
On this problem it means:
The plant first. EON Universal builds a living twin of the operator’s facility from photographs, a P&ID or a scan. Genesis turns the operator’s own procedure into something a person can run on that twin — correct sequence, correct asset, scored. That is the Foundation. The crew that has never seen this plant sees it here, before mobilisation.
The expert and the bad day. EON Tacit puts the experienced person’s judgment in the crew’s pocket. Situation Room and EON Live rehearse the day that does not go right, with the team in the room. Brainy carries the soft skill of who speaks and who is heard.
The job as it is actually done. Permit IQ makes the permit cover the work that is planned, with proof the isolation was verified. Field IQ / Edge puts guidance in his hand on the right asset, and a record of what he actually did — not a signature on a skipped step.
The loop. Compound IQ and Distillery make the last job visible to the next crew, including the next contractor crew. It happened before. Something changes.
How an operator uses that system is theirs. Some require every contractor crew to run the actual job on the twin, scored, before they mobilise. That is their rule, written in their contract. EON sells the plant. The comprehensive solution is what makes that rule possible.
“Enterprises do not lack safety programmes. They lack a way to put this plant, this procedure, and this last incident in front of the people who have never seen them. That is the bottom of the problem. Work Intelligence is built to live there,” said Mats W. Johansson, President, EON AI Ventures.
The findings, the sources, and the solution architecture are detailed in the accompanying white paper, “This Is Why People Die: Human Factors in Fatal Oil and Gas Accidents, and EON’s Comprehensive Solution.”
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About EON AI Ventures
EON AI Ventures is the company behind Work Intelligence — the captured, verified, and compounding knowledge of how expert work is actually done. Its Intelligence Flywheel platform (Genesis, Field IQ, Assess IQ) enables industrial enterprises to encode expert procedures into AI-guided simulations, deliver them to any worker on any device, and verify competency in the field. EON AI Ventures builds on a 25-year foundation of immersive learning technology deployed across more than 80 countries. For more information, visit www.eonaiventures.com