COISoftware collects a certificate of insurance from every drilling contractor, well-servicing crew, oilfield hauler and service company that works under your master service agreement, reads each ACORD 25 with AI, checks the coverage and limits against what the MSA actually requires, and confirms your company is named as additional insured with the right endorsements. Built for US oil and gas operators, energy companies and the contractors who have to prove coverage before they mobilize. Upload a COI above to see it read in seconds.
Last updated June 2026
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Energy scopes carry very different risks, so most MSAs require different coverage by contractor type. These are common starting points, not legal or insurance advice.
| Contractor type | Coverage commonly required | Why the operator requires it |
|---|---|---|
| Drilling and well-servicing contractors | General liability, control of well or operators extra expense, employers liability, auto, high umbrella, additional insured, waiver of subrogation | A blowout or well-control event is catastrophic, so operators require dedicated well control coverage on top of general liability |
| Oilfield trucking and hauling | Commercial auto with high limits, general liability, often pollution and MCS-90 | Hauling crude, water, sand and equipment on public roads is a high-severity exposure if a crash or spill occurs |
| Environmental and remediation contractors | Contractors pollution liability, general liability, auto, often professional liability | Spill response, waste handling and site remediation carry pollution risk a standard liability policy excludes |
| Construction and facilities contractors | General liability, workers compensation, auto, umbrella, additional insured, waiver of subrogation | Building pads, tank batteries and facilities carries the same injury and property risk as any heavy construction |
| Equipment and tool suppliers | General liability with products and completed operations, often pollution | Defective rental tools or downhole equipment can cause a loss after delivery that products coverage addresses |
| Engineering and professional services | Professional liability (errors and omissions) plus general liability | Reservoir, drilling and facilities engineering errors create financial and design exposure standard liability does not cover |
Set requirements to your own MSA, operating agreements and state law, including any oilfield anti-indemnity statute that applies. Control of well, pollution and surety instruments are distinct from general liability. Limits and coverages shown are common starting points, not legal or insurance advice.
Operators run on contractors: drilling, completion, workover, hauling, construction, environmental and field services, often hundreds of them across many wells and pads. Each one signs a master service agreement that sets specific insurance, and the certificate has to be collected, read and verified against that MSA before the crew ever reaches the location. Doing that by hand against a generic checklist instead of the actual contract is where the exposure builds.
Every master service agreement spells out the coverages, limits and endorsements a contractor must carry, and they vary by work scope and operator. Checking a certificate against a single manually entered standard instead of the specific MSA is the failure mode that lets a short or missing coverage slip through before the contractor mobilizes.
Upstream MSAs require contractors pollution liability, and drilling and well-servicing contracts often require control of well or operators extra expense. These are distinct coverages, frequently on separate forms from the ACORD 25, and a process built for general liability alone never confirms they are there.
Energy contracts commonly require umbrella or excess limits well into the millions, layered over general liability, auto and employers liability. Confirming a contractor stacked the limits its MSA requires, across primary and excess, is detailed work that a spreadsheet of expiration dates does not do.
Oil and gas contracts run on a knock-for-knock structure backed by additional insured status, primary and noncontributory wording and a waiver of subrogation. In states with oilfield anti-indemnity statutes, that insurance is often the real protection, so a certificate that names you only as certificate holder leaves a gap the contract assumed was closed.
A policy that was good when the contractor signed on can be cancelled or non-renewed in the middle of a job. Checking coverage once at onboarding misses a contractor whose policy lapsed while its crew is still on your location, which is exactly when a loss is most expensive.
A tab of contractors with manual dates breaks once you account for every service company across every pad, district and project. Renewals slip, endorsements go unchecked, and proving you verified coverage before a crew worked means digging through email when a claim or audit lands.
The certificate a contractor hands over at onboarding is a snapshot from the day it was issued, not proof of coverage on the day a blowout, spill or injury happens. Confirming that every service company bought the limits its MSA requires, carried pollution and well control where the scope demands it, named you as additional insured with the right endorsements, and kept the policy current is repetitive, rules-based work across a large contractor base, which is exactly what software handles well. Certificate of insurance management software reads every certificate, checks it against the requirements in the matching MSA, and flags anything short, expired or missing, so a risk or contracts analyst is not verifying PDFs by hand for every crew.
COISoftware reads every contractor certificate, checks it against the requirements written into your MSA, confirms the oil-and-gas-specific coverages and the additional insured and waiver of subrogation endorsements your contracts rely on, and gives your contracts and risk teams one defensible view of who is actually covered across every well and service line.
Upload a certificate from a drilling contractor, well-servicing crew, oilfield hauler, construction or environmental firm and the AI pulls the insurer, policy numbers, coverage types, limits, effective and expiration dates, and additional insured wording, even from scans and phone photos.
Enter the coverages, limits and endorsements your master service agreement requires, and every certificate is checked against the right rule, so a contractor short on excess limits or missing a waiver of subrogation is flagged automatically before it mobilizes.
For scopes that require contractors pollution liability or control of well, COISoftware checks that the coverage and limits are present, including on the separate forms these often appear on, instead of assuming general liability covers an environmental or well-control loss.
Energy MSAs stack umbrella and excess over primary coverage, and COISoftware confirms the combined limit meets the contract, so a contractor carrying primary but missing the excess layer your job requires does not slip through.
See whether your company is named as additional insured, and whether primary and noncontributory and waiver of subrogation endorsements are present, so the knock-for-knock protection your contract assumes is verified rather than guessed from a checked box.
When a contractor certificate is cancelled, non-renewed or about to expire while the crew is still working, COISoftware flags it and chases for a current COI automatically, so a lapsed policy on an active location is caught fast.
COISoftware reads the ACORD 25 and the broader certificate of liability insurance, then ties every contractor certificate into full certificate of insurance management software and ongoing vendor insurance compliance tracking. When a certificate looks off, the same checks behind certificate of insurance verification flag it for review. Field and construction crews are tracked the same way as subcontractor COI tracking for contractors, and operators who also run plants and facilities manage on-site service contractors the same way as COI tracking for manufacturing. It is the insurance-verification layer that works alongside the contractor prequalification platforms many operators already use, not a replacement for them.
Tracking insurance across every contractor and well follows the same four steps as tracking a handful of vendors.
Enter the coverages, limits and endorsements your master service agreement requires, and vary them by work scope so a drilling contractor, a hauler and an office consultant each get the right rule. Include contractors pollution liability, control of well, additional insured, primary and noncontributory and waiver of subrogation where the scope demands them.
Tip: Mirror the insurance exhibit in your MSA and scale excess limits to the risk of the scope.
Request a COI from each contractor and service company before it reaches the location, or upload the certificates your field and contracts teams already receive. The AI reads every one automatically, so verifying coverage across hundreds of contractors does not turn into hours of manual data entry.
Each certificate is checked against the requirement for that contractor scope. Short limits, missing pollution or well control coverage, absent endorsements, expired policies and a missing additional insured are flagged before a crew ever sets foot on the pad.
Automated reminders chase any expiring certificate, and a cancelled or non-renewed policy is flagged mid-term, so coverage stays current for the life of the job across every contractor without an analyst tracking dates by hand.
Anyone responsible for proving that every contractor and service company on a well, pad or facility carries the coverage the master service agreement requires.
A contracts or risk group at an operator is accountable for insurance on every contractor its drilling, completion and production teams put to work. COISoftware turns each MSA requirement into a live status, so an analyst sees a clear pass or flag instead of chasing certificates from every service company and reconciling them against each contract by hand.
A service company, midstream operator or pipeline company hires its own subcontractors and haulers, and an MSA usually sets the required limits and endorsements. The same dashboard tracks every contractor and scope, and field and construction crews are verified the same way as subcontractor COI tracking for contractors.
A power producer, utility or energy asset owner still has to prove every contractor on its sites carries current coverage, and that the company is named as additional insured. To collect, verify and monitor every certificate in one place, pair this with vendor insurance compliance software, and if you are comparing platforms, our best COI tracking software roundup walks through the options honestly.
Operators require contractors to carry general liability, commercial auto, workers compensation and employers liability, plus umbrella or excess limits that often run into the millions. Scopes with environmental or well risk add contractors pollution liability and control of well coverage. Almost every master service agreement also requires the operator to be named as additional insured on a primary and noncontributory basis, with a waiver of subrogation, and the certificate has to show all of it.
An MSA, or master service agreement, is the standing contract between an operator and a contractor that governs all the work the contractor performs, so the parties do not renegotiate terms for every job. It sets the indemnity structure, the insurance requirements, and the allocation of risk between the parties. The insurance exhibit in the MSA is what each contractor certificate of insurance has to be checked against before work begins.
Control of well insurance, also called operators extra expense or OEE, covers the cost of regaining control of a well after a blowout, including well-control efforts, redrilling and cleanup of seepage or pollution. Standard general liability and property policies exclude these costs, so drilling and well-servicing contracts require dedicated control of well coverage. Operators often require proof of it before a contractor can begin drilling or workover operations.
Contractors pollution liability, or CPL, covers bodily injury, property damage and cleanup costs caused by a pollution event arising from the contractor work, which general liability policies typically exclude. In oil and gas it matters for spills, releases, waste handling and remediation. Many upstream MSAs require contractors whose scope touches environmental risk to carry CPL with specified limits, often on a form separate from the ACORD 25.
Knock-for-knock is the indemnity structure common in oil and gas contracts where each party agrees to cover injury to its own people and damage to its own property, regardless of fault. The structure is backed by each party naming the other as additional insured and waiving subrogation. Because some states limit how far indemnity can transfer through anti-indemnity statutes, the insurance behind knock-for-knock is often the protection that actually holds.
Limits vary by operator and scope, but oil and gas MSAs commonly require general liability of $1 million or more per occurrence, auto liability of $1 million, employers liability of $1 million, and umbrella or excess limits that frequently run from $5 million to $25 million or higher on drilling and high-hazard work. Control of well and pollution limits are set separately. The exact figures are written into each MSA and the certificate has to meet them.
Operators require additional insured status so they can be defended and covered under the contractor policy when a claim arises from the contractor work, and a waiver of subrogation so the contractor insurer cannot turn around and sue the operator to recover what it paid. Together they make the knock-for-knock risk allocation work. A certificate that lists the operator only as certificate holder does not provide either, which is why verifying the endorsements matters.
Collect, verify and track every contractor and service company COI in one place.
Verify field and construction crews the same way you verify service companies.
Manage on-site service contractors at plants and facilities the same way.
