Directional Drilling Insurance in Wyoming

Wyoming is the state where the two axes point in opposite directions. Its anti-indemnity statute was written for oil wells and mine shafts, and by its own definition it does not reach a fiber bore — so on the contract side there is no statutory floor under your subcontract at all. Its damage prevention act then does something almost no other state’s does, and hands the contractor a statutory indemnitor.

What follows is both. The protection you cannot get from the contract statute here, you may be able to get from the dig law — provided the failure was the operator’s and you can show it. Title 30 stops at wells and §37-12-306 hands you an operator indemnity. The bore that triggers it is on the Directional Drilling Insurance pillar and the pollution liability page.

A statute written for wells, and what its own definition says

Wyoming has an anti-indemnity statute. W.S. 30-1-131 makes invalid all agreements, covenants or promises contained in, collateral to or affecting “any agreement pertaining to any well for oil, gas or water, or mine for any mineral” which purport to indemnify the indemnitee against loss or liability for death, bodily injury, property damage or other loss arising from its own sole or concurrent negligence.

The question a fiber contractor needs answered is whether that phrase reaches a bore in a road right-of-way, and the legislature answered it in the next section rather than leaving it to a court. W.S. 30-1-132 defines the phrase to mean any agreement concerning operations related to drilling, deepening, reworking, repairing, improving, testing, treating, perforating, acidizing, logging, conditioning, altering, plugging, or otherwise rendering services in or in connection with any well drilled for the purpose of producing or disposing of oil, gas or other minerals, or water — and designing, excavating, constructing, improving, or otherwise rendering services in or in connection with any mine shaft, drift, or other structure intended for use in the exploration for or production of any mineral.

Placing communication conduit under a street is not an operation on a well drilled to produce or dispose of oil, gas, minerals or water, and it is not work on a mine shaft or a structure for mineral exploration. That is a scope question answered by reading a definition, which is a different exercise from predicting how a court would apply an ambiguous list.

What this page is not saying. It is not saying that no Wyoming statute anywhere reaches construction indemnity. We have not located one, and “we have not located one” is a weaker and more honest statement than a claim that none exists — a negative of that kind cannot be established by retrieval, only assumed. What is established is what W.S. 30-1-131 covers, because W.S. 30-1-132 says so.

The practical consequence is that on this axis your subcontract stands on its own. There is no statutory ceiling cutting back a broad indemnity clause the way Montana’s or Louisiana’s does, so a clause shifting a prime’s negligence onto a boring subcontractor is not void by operation of an anti-indemnity statute here. The drafting carries more weight in Wyoming than in a state where the legislature has already narrowed what a prime may ask for.

Two to fourteen days, and then again every fourteen

Under W.S. 37-12-302(c) no excavator may make or begin excavation without first notifying the notification center, by telephone, e-mail, fax or other approved electronic medium, at least two full business days but not more than fourteen business days before any excavation. Notice to the center is notice to each member in the area.

Then the provision that changes how a long route is planned: if an excavation on a single project lasts more than fourteen business days, the excavator shall give notice at least once each succeeding fourteen business day period.

Most states renew a ticket when it expires or when the work moves. Wyoming attaches the renewal to the project’s duration, so a continuous bore that stays in one place for a month still generates a second and third notice. On a build sequenced around weather or permits, the obligation recurs on a calendar the schedule does not control.

The plant is reached directly. Under W.S. 37-12-301(xi) an underground facility is any item of personal property buried or placed below ground for use in connection with the storage or conveyance of water, sewage, electronic, telephonic or other form of electronic communications, cable television, electric energy, oil, gas, hazardous liquids or other substances — including pipes, sewers, conduits, cables, valves, lines, wires, manholes and attachments. Wyoming reaches fiber through the broader category of electronic communications rather than by naming the product; Montana, Louisiana and South Dakota each write it into their own definitions in their own words.

The operator indemnifies and defends you

This is the provision that makes Wyoming worth understanding properly, and it runs toward the contractor.

W.S. 37-12-306(g)(iii) applies where an underground facility is damaged as a result of the operator’s failure to join or participate in the notification center, the operator’s failure to use reasonable care in the marking of the damaged facility, or the operator’s failure to mark within the time period specified — unless that failure was due to circumstances beyond the operator’s control. Where it applies, the operator is liable for:

(A) any cost or damage incurred by the excavator as a result of any delay in the excavation project while the facility is restored, repaired or replaced, together with reasonable costs and expenses of suit, including reasonable attorney fees; and

(B) any injury or damage to persons or property resulting from the damage to the facility — and the operator “shall also indemnify and defend the affected excavator against any and all claims or actions, if any, for personal injury, death, property damage or service interruption resulting from the damage to the underground facility.”

Read the second half slowly, because it is doing something a contractor usually has to negotiate for. Indemnity and a duty to defend, arising by statute rather than by contract, owed by the facility owner to the crew that hit its line — conditioned entirely on the operator having failed to mark, or having marked without reasonable care.

Everything therefore turns on evidencing the operator’s side rather than only your own. The time the ticket was placed, what came back and when, the photographs of what was marked and where the line was actually found, and the record of the delay the strike caused are the materials that convert §37-12-306(g)(iii) from a sentence into a defense someone else pays for. A crew that documents only its own care has built half the file. Under (g)(iv), an operator who simply fails to mark in time — without more — is liable for a civil penalty of up to $5,000.

Five, twenty-five, seventy-five — on both sides

The penalty structure in W.S. 37-12-306 is close to symmetrical, which is rare.

For excavators. Under (h)(i), failing to notify the center carries a civil penalty of $5,000. Under (h)(ii), failing to comply and damaging a facility carries up to $5,000 for a first offense, up to $25,000 for a second within twelve months, and up to $75,000 where there have been more than two separate occasions within twelve months — with an excavation safety training program available on a first offense.

For operators. Under (g)(i) every operator must join and participate in the notification center or face a fine of $5,000 each year out of compliance, and under (g)(ii) damage resulting from that failure runs on the same $5,000 / $25,000 / $75,000 ladder with the same training option.

And a penalty for the shortcut. Under (h)(iii), an excavator who requests a locate on an expedited basis — less than two full business days — for an emergency excavation, where the work was not an emergency and did not require expedited handling, is liable for up to $5,000 for each false emergency locate incident. The charge is per incident, not per project, so a habit of booking expedited locates to recover schedule is priced ticket by ticket.

Where the emergency is real, the statute protects it: under (d) no civil penalty is imposed against an excavator or operator whose violation occurred while responding to a service outage or other emergency, unless the violation was willful or malicious.

Who brings the action, and where it is heard

Under W.S. 37-12-306(a) an action to recover a civil penalty may be brought by an operator, an excavator, an aggrieved party, the notification center, a county attorney, a district attorney or the attorney general. Venue lies in the district court for the county where one of those parties resides or maintains a principal place of business in the state, or where the conduct occurred — and the action may be by jury trial if a jury is demanded by either party.

Two features of that are worth pricing. An aggrieved party can bring the action, so the claimant is not confined to a regulator or to the facility owner. And a dig-law penalty here is not an administrative determination reviewed on a record; it is a civil action that either side can put to a jury.

Under (b) the court weighs the nature, circumstances and gravity of the violation, the alleged violator’s degree of culpability, and the history of prior violations. Under (c) these penalties are in addition to any other remedy at law or in equity, so the penalty action sits beside the damage claim rather than absorbing it. Under (f) the money is deposited into the county public school fund of the county where the violation occurred.

Buried plant the act does not protect

W.S. 37-12-305(a) puts a category of oil and gas production facilities outside the act entirely: aboveground or underground storage tanks, sumps, impoundments and the piping connected to them located on the same tract; underground production facilities operated by the owner of a secured facility and located wholly within it; piping within a well bore; and underground facilities on a production lease or unit operated by a person who owns the mineral interest, in whole or in part.

In this state that is not a marginal exclusion. A route crossing a producing lease can run among buried plant that carries no locate obligation and no protection under the act — which means the one-call response for that ground may be complete and correct and still tell you nothing about what is actually under it. The same route across a municipal corridor is a different risk, and the difference is worth identifying at survey rather than at the drill.

Nothing statutory is holding the contract back

The contractors who reach us in Wyoming are usually mid-project, holding a certificate a prime has refused and an agent who cannot explain why re-issuing it will not help. This is the state where the contract deserves the most attention, because nothing statutory is holding it back. With no anti-indemnity ceiling over a fiber subcontract and §37-12-306(g)(iii) available only when the operator’s marking failed, the two documents that decide a Wyoming loss are the indemnity article you signed and the locate record you kept. Send the subcontract before it is signed, not after the strike.

Pollution liability sits outside the act. It governs damage to facilities and the penalties for causing it; drilling fluid surfacing into a creek, an irrigation ditch or a stock reservoir is an environmental loss the general liability form excludes, and no operator indemnity under §37-12-306 reaches it. Contractors equipment matters because the fourteen-business-day re-notice attaches to project duration, so slow ground generates renewals while the rig stands. General liability is specified against the contract — and in Wyoming that specification is doing more work than in any state with a statute over it.

The operator duty to indemnify and defend under §37-12-306 is triggered by a strike, not by a business. What a Wyoming account carries the rest of the time is on our Wyoming fiber contractor insurance page.

Why Fiber Optic Guard Insurance

What we actually do on a Wyoming file: read the indemnity article and insurance exhibit as the operative documents, because W.S. 30-1-132 puts a fiber bore outside the only anti-indemnity statute we have located here; diary the fourteen-business-day re-notice against project duration rather than against the ticket; build the locate file to evidence the operator’s conduct as well as the crew’s, since §37-12-306(g)(iii) turns on the operator’s failure and carries a duty to defend with it; keep expedited locate requests genuinely reserved for emergencies, because §37-12-306(h)(iii) charges per false incident; and identify producing leases on the route early, since §37-12-305 leaves that plant outside the act. If a prime is asking for a broad indemnity, send it before signature — here there is no statute to fall back on afterwards.

Frequently asked questions about Wyoming directional drilling insurance