Author: Becky

Some days this job is the pits where everything sucks but then there are days like today where this job is the absolute best! I have been on this rig for all most a week and I have seen all of about 500 ft. of drilling. That is incredibly slow even for the slowest of rigs. After a week of little to no drilling I woke this morning to yet another day of down time do to tripping. I decided that it was time to go explore Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

I got a rather late start and paid for it latter in sweat. By the time I got to the park and on to the trail the sun was high in the sky and burning bright without a cloud in the sky. The vistas looked amazing anyway!

The story of the park is that Theodore came here as a young man after the death of his mother and wife. He fell in love with the wildness of the place and decided to stay for a while. He tried his hand and ranching and hand several different herds and brands.  But turns out he wasn’t a very good rancher and eventually moved back New York to continue his political career.

Teddy did add this area to the areas he protected and it has been a park ever sense.  The more you look at the landscape the more you see the rugged beauty of the place.

A verity of grasses cover the abandoned river terraces on top of the hills and the river bottoms. North facing slopes are covered in scrawny Juniper trees and cottonwoods flourish in the river bottoms.   The animal count for the day includes buffalo, birds, one snake, and prairie dogs. Including one overly photogenic prairie dog that I named Alan.

Sadly I couldn’t play all day and after pizza and a live band concert in town it was back to work. Happy Saturday y’all!

Happy 5^th of July!!!

Now that all the fireworks are over its time to get back to work. It took me a week to get from rig to rig. I left Oklahoma bright and early last Monday and stopped at many fun things along the way. I spent a few days in Billings getting some training and getting to know the town.  I spent a very enjoyable afternoon at a Billings Mustangs game and meet some very entertaining people.

Monday I got the call that I was waiting for and I headed out for the rig! After a 5 hour drive I can add a new state to the list and I can say that I have seen all of Montana west to east.  Just inside North Dakota is the Theodore Roosevelt National park.  The park is part of the North Dakota Bad Lands.  For those of you haven’t seen the Bad Lands they look like randomly scattered pieces of a layered cake that has been cut up.  In a way they are.  Different colored layers of clay sediment capped by a hard sandstone have been artistically eroded away by the Little Missouri River.  The park is host to a great many prairie dogs and buffalo. The tourists come from all over to see them! Other wild life sightings include bunnies, deer and antelope.

The rig I am on is just outside the park and it is by far the prettiest rig road I have ever driven down. So far the work has not been that different from what I am use too. Learning new systems and their way of doing things always takes a little bit of time but I suspect we will be getting in to the exciting stuff soon!

Last night was 4^th of July in a small town. Reminded me of other 4ths I have spent away. One year was Anthony KS. This year was Medora, ND. People came from all over the place to see the fireworks and the musical. May other town had canceled their shows do to fire and Medora had a low altitude show. It was very entertaining to wonder around the little town and people watch.

 

The solstice has come and gone and with the new season comes a new job!  That’s right after I TDed MY well I started the trip north today. I have been given the opportunity to work in North Dakota for a Geo Steering company. I’m so excited!!!

I truly hate to leave my old company they have been more then awesome more than once! I am so glad that I have gotten to work here not once but twice. Great coworkers make all the difference and great bosses help too. All though this chapter was much shorter then I planned it is with a very large bag of mixed emotions that I start the next chapter of my career.

This is what it looks like when you have to clean out your “desk” at my job. J

What is Geo Steering I’m sure you ask? Well! Not only does a Geo Steerer look at the rocks and the other information but they also drive the well in a sense. If the formations are dipping up or down it is the Geo Steerer’s job to direct the rig and the drillers to turn the bit the right way to stay in formation.  It will be a great new challenge! I can’t wait! It will be lots more stress, new formations to learn, and it’s in North Dakota, BUT its real geology, I get to use my degree AND it comes with a schedule!

So with a heavy but excited heart I began the drive. Next post about the awesome road trip! Last Oklahoma sunrise!!!! At least for now. I said I would never come back to Oklahoma before so I won’t say it now.

 

I promised a post about the wheat cutters. Here it is. I don’t know much about it, this is all hear say so if it’s wrong, my apologies.

In the spring the winter wheat is ready to be cut. The cutting crews start down by the Mexican border and work their way north and the weather gets nicer. By June they are in Oklahoma and I have seen them in southern Kansas by the fourth of July.

I have meet the cutting crews in town a few times and from what I gather they are Germans hired to come over and drive the big tractors. Something about being more precise drivers was the reason I was given. They drive the tractors over the fields and down the roads this time of year you’re more likely to hit a backup from them, than a rig move.

The tractors cut and then suck up everything they cut and dump it into a semi-truck that drives it to the nearest small town and empties it into the grain elevator. From there it is shipped out on truck or train depending on the area.

By the end of the summer the crews will have made their way up to and sometimes into Canada.  Where the tractors that where new in March are sold.  And then next year they start all over again with new tractors.

They came a cut the field behind the rig a few days ago but a different crew came and cut the field right next to the rig yesterday.  The fields went from thigh high amber waves of grain to ankle high stocks of straw.  Today there is some weed in the field that is green and seems to be growing well. The fields of corn are about knee to waist high and growing strong expected to be eye high by the fourth of July! This is America’s heartland! Yea-hahwww!

Workers in the oil industry are very superstitious people. I will probably get in trouble just telling you about our superstitions, but the truth is I can’t talk about this well without talking about the superstitions.  The most common and powerful superstitions involve food as you very well may imagine.  If anyone roughneck or company man or visitor comes on location with cherry pie they are almost always instantly escorted off. Cherry pie is the biggest no-no out there. The second best is fried chicken.

I first learned about the power of fried chicken from a company man named Spiderman. (To this day I don’t remember his real name) Spiderman had a very personal grudge against fried chicken. I never really learned why but the legend goes that anytime fried chicken is brought to the rig bad things happen. Whatever can brake will brake.  The hole will wash out, pipe will get stuck, the pumps will go down, or something worst.  I have seen it happen on other rigs where someone will want a few more days on the pay check and bring fried chicken and something will go wrong. Usually it is just one thing that fails. And then things go on just fine.  Sometimes it backfires and makes their equipment brake.

THIS well, everything has broken! We have had a broken top drive, electrical failure, a fried pump, a ground fault fail and a broken top drive chain! Not all of it broke at once luckily. In the last week we had a few hours here and there where we drilled and nothing broke.  It has taken a week to do what we did on the last hole in 2 days.  I know someone has fried chicken out here!  Fried chicken did all this. Just imagine what cheery pie can do…

The worst of it appears to have past. We have made almost good hole for the last two days and look to be back on track(very slowly). Of course we will see if that holds true. (Knock on wood) the best part is that after the first day all of my equipment has been working. Maybe its good luck to have the same name as the well.

The last superstition is that a clean hard hat brings bad luck. This one is very logical seeing as clean hard hats are normally warn by new guys who don’t know what to do…

Because I have no pictures of fried chicken or of the things that broke (I stay out of the way when it’s not my stuff that’s broken) here are some of this week’s sunset pictures!

 

 

 

After a very stressful end to the last well I finally got so hard eared days off. Or almost off, I served as tactical adviser to a different well for a few days making sure it all went well for them. Luckily it did and I was able to see a few things on my days off.

I started out with Alabaster caverns in the northwest corner of Oklahoma. It’s a very cute little state park. They are trying so hard. The cave is very cool. It’s all alabaster and you can see the different colors in the minerals. The guide had been there for about 5 years and had her talk down pat. I tried my hardest to get her off script but she wouldn’t go for it. The cave is very different from my Ape cave. In alabaster cave there are hand rails that glow and spot lights so you can see all the great animal shadows. I did see some cave crawdads. Turns out they are an endangered species because the raccoons come down into the cave and go fishing for them.  They have 5 types of bats but none that are in trouble because of white nose. All in all it was very cute little state park with camping and all kinds of fun things to on a hot summer day.

 

A few days later I stopped off at another road side attraction. The last original standing sod house built by a land claim.  That is totally worth the stop if you are ever out on highway 8 in Oklahoma. The gal behind the counter was wealth of information! She told me all about how they had to go a mile north to the creek bed to find the right kind of sod because the homestead was too sandy. The blocks are about a foot by a foot chunk of buffalo grass.

Took something like a quarter of an acre to make the house. The roof alone was over a foot thick. Apparently you need the weight to hold it all together.  This was quite the luxury house because it had two rooms and windows from Kansas City.

It came complete with a root cellar, a bugs in the walls, and snakes in the ceiling.

Like I said a very informative little museum and totally worth the stop. Anyone who has read Laura Ingles Wilder really needs to see it.

 

Today it is supper windy on the prairie. The cutting crews are working their way north and leaving nothing but dust in their wake.  More about them latter.

What a day!!!!

I woke up yesterday with all this energy, motivation, and plans to write this award winning blog post about my samples and my job.  Needless to say that didn’t happen.

Part of my new job is helping my night hand get a better handle on this job.  Little things here and there mostly. But shortly after we got rigged up here the bosses sent me a trainee to teach too.  So for the last few days I have been teaching and explaining stuff left and right. My voice has never gotten such a work out on a rig before! It’s great. I thoroughly enjoy passing on my knowledge to interested underlings.  The hardest bit for them to comprehend is a tossup between the learning the software and the right way to write a sample description.  Our samples happen to be a very beautiful white limestone. If it was any sandier I could bottle it and sell it as a beach in a bottle. It’s so beautiful! I have never seen a formation like this anywhere else I have worked.

Yesterday happened to be particularly crazy for a few reasons. The first being that the higher ups in town (a job I never what to have) where/are very involved with the operations on this rig and want constant updates. As a result we wind up going back and forth as to what’s right and what’s really happening.  Nothing wrong with a little collaboration but no one wants to get micro managed…

In the middle of all that my computer decided to not save any of my data for the last nine hours. This happens periodically but that doesn’t mean it is fun when it happens. Spent a good two hours rebuilding the last several hundred feet of data on my log.  Note to self when it doubt save it twice! But the high light of yesterday was by far when my gas trap decided to stop working because of this being stuck in it.

What is it you ask. After fishing it out and spending 20 minutes trying to get my trap up and working again. I went looking for that answer myself. The driller in the dog house didn’t know for sure. So I went to ask the company man. The answer as it turns out is part of the cement plug.  When we run casing to keep the whole from collapsing we have to cement it in place.  To do that right the cement is pumped down the whole and then a large piece of thick plastic down on top to keep the cement in place. Sometimes pieces of that get stuck on their way back up when we drill thru it. That’s what got stuck in my trap.  After all that was fixed and I got my reports sent yesterday calmed right down. Knock on wood today stays like that too.

 

Hello all!

I know it has been a while since I posted anything. After my last post things got busy, we wrapped up a hole in record time and I haven’t stopped moving since.  Few days of working in the office, shop, running supplies to rigs and then I was off for a well-deserved vacation!

From intense work to intense play and back again.  I spent the last three weeks playing in the sun in Italy. Swimming in a caldera and the Med, hiking along accent roman roads and checking out the basement of the coolest McDonald’s in the world! It was great to check in with my life in Italy. It was good to see friends even if it was only for a brief second.

But sadly I had to come back to the real world of work on Friday. After a crazy long flight with more layovers than anyone should have to have, (note to self: stop buying tickets on the cheap) I am back in Oklahoma.  The second best part about being on vacation (the first being vacation itself) is that I managed, without trying, to pull an Office Space. They promoted me while I was gone. I am now the lead day hand on rig XXXXX (you didn’t think I was really going to tell you where I am did you? That’s proprietary info) just south of the town of Alva.  Alva is a beacon of civilization compared to other places.

Besides my promotion little else has changed in the three weeks I was gone. The wheat and barley that was green before I left has blown right past yellow and gone straight to amber waves of grain.  The fields that aren’t cut already will be cut soon.

MY rig is nothing special but its mine. The guys who were here last did not take care of the palace so lots of cleaning before we can even get to the clean slate.  I showed up on Saturday and started rigging up. Now two days later I think I finally have everything where I want it.  This rig drills fast so we have been moving for the last few days. Today we finally caught a break with a trip out for a new bit.  Things are going to be moving fast again soon.  The biggest difference between nights and days is now everything is my responsibility. If the computer goes down I have to figure out why. When the gas machine decides to read -2 all day I’m the one kicking it and swearing at it.  In short doing this job gives my problem solving skills a real workout.  So far it’s only been small things and I hope it stays that way but if it doesn’t I’ll be sure to take pictures for you.

McDonald’s basement: a section of a offshoot road from the Ancient Apia.

Another slow night here. I was catching up on the mud logger equivalent of paperwork, bagging samples. The best way to get it done is to crank the music up.

Well an old friend decided to come by for a visit and he brought along his friends.

Making his Oklahoma debut ta-da Arty the Artic Fox!

And his friends Patty the polar bear, Buck the cub, Dea Moose Dea Moose (he’s from Canada), Dan the Beaver, and Walter the Walrus. Oddly enough they all have the same middle name…

Shortly after they showed up chaos fallowed.

Dea Moose: “oooooh what are these for???”

Dan: “helllllooooooooooo! This looks like it could be a nice lodge!”

Buck: “Help Ma! I’m stuck!”

Me: “Arty can you please get these trouble makers out of here?! Im trying to work. I promise I will take you all on a nice long walk tomorrow. Now get out here!”

😉

As I walk along the Red Dirt Road on my morning walk, the sky is painted in bright colors as the sun begins to rise, I can smell the fresh cut hey (achoo)

I am reminded that this is the very best part about working in Oklahoma. The fact that I can leave location without putting on pounds of Arctic gear and having to get an escort so as not to get eaten by polar bears. I can walk for miles out here in the beautiful morning sunrise listening to the birds chirping and not have to worry about getting eaten. I can drive to town! There is even a town to drive too.

But this just reminds me of the different places I’ve worked. When working on the ice in Alaska you get to do amazing things but the drawback is you don’t get to walk away from location whenever you want.

When you work in Alaska everything is done inside. You are always inside and you never get to go outside for very long. even the gym is inside just stuck on a treadmill for miles and some jobs you don’t even get a treadmill so it’s hard to find a way to exercise. I remember one job in particular.

Once a year they would send out three rigs to go work on the ice and they would build special ice roads across ponds and lakes. They would set up camp, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere. Nothing in sight and they would fly people in and land on a frozen lake on this tiny airplane and everything you had to do was by bus. Bused from the camp to the rig and bused from the rig to camp. Hot lunches where brought out to the rig assuming the weather was good in the bus could get through. We always had enough food to last for a couple days in case the bus couldn’t get through. I remember one winter we needed it.

We were stuck on the rig for 36 hours because of a blizzard! It was life or death situation for anyone caught outside, so we were not working but we were also stuck on location. We couldn’t get back to Camp because the bus driver couldn’t get through. We used ropes and the buddy system to cross the drill site (known as the pad). The storm blew in right about the time it got dark the rig is normally lit up with lots of lights but with the blowing snow it was almost impossible to see. That far North it has to warm up to snow so most of the snow is just blown from one side of the artic to the other.

So, with the temperature dropping and the snow blowing every one that was stuck huddled together in the one man camp that was on the pad. Where we watched the snow blow and eat all the food and tried to sleep. About 5 in the morning things started to clear up. There was still snow everywhere and it took all day for the plows to dig out the roads and everyone who got stuck on the road. Defiantly one of the night few nights that I thought we might die. One of the many adventures on the ice. I’ll try to add a few more latter. But now I have miles to walk!