Jobs women don't want.

[SteveSS]

I don't know about the offshore rigs but the rest I do.

That first guy covered in drilling mud is setting the tongs. Usually, it's a two-man job but it is that dirty and you have to move that fast and know how to throw your whole weight into it.

Next, that guy is what we call throwing the chain. If you mess it up it will take off your hand.

That guy pulling the pipe toward him is the Derrick hand. He's standing on a 3-foot platform 35-65 feet in the air off the drilling platform. Sometimes they do fall.

When you see the tongs lifting the pipe up they're taking the pipe out of the hole called a bit trip. If we're 5000 feet in the hole they have to the lifting unthreading and lifting the pipe every 30 feet. That's 167 times out and 167 times back in. Nonstop. That's when I, the geologist, would get some sleep.

That guy pushing the pipe is putting it in the rat hole. He's pushing 30-60 feet of pipe hanging over his head. There are tons of steel hanging above their heads. I once saw a cable break and it all came crashing down. No one got hurt.

The oily one is they're breaking a connection full of oil. That means money!

Guys don't have to climb the chain to the top of the derrick. Usually, they put one foot in the chain hook and are lifted up.

One grueling job they have is if the hole starts to leak they have to carry 35-pound sacks of cotton seed hulls up 30 feet up a vertical ladder to the platform sometimes for 8 hours straight. I felt bad for them so I would help.

I think a new roughneck made $16/hour. Drilling is nonstop. We once quit when it dropped to more than 25 below zero and we couldn't keep the drilling mud from freezing.

If you want to be a roughneck and you have questions I can probably answer them.

Steve the oilfield geologist.

 

[SteveSS]

The roughnecks are pretty much the bottom rung of society. Some can't read but they're basically good guys. Some are meth addicts. Sometimes I wrote letters to judges keeping them out of jail, for drinking and fighting, explaining how hard and valuable their work was. It usually worked.

It's dangerous work. There are a million ways to die in the oilfield. I lost guys driving hours to the location when they were too tired.

 

[davek]

Seems the harder you work the less value you are. If it was not for people like this that do the real labor the world would come to an end. JMO

 

[ckessel]

My BIL started his career doing that. He's a mud engineer now. Burly, kind southern man.

 

[SteveSS]

The mud man is very important. For non-oilfield people there is mix of fluids that are pumped down the center of the drill pipe and out the bit. Then that mud carries the rock debris up the outside of the pipe and into a pit. The mud also seals the walls of the open hole. The chemistry has to be just right so the mud engineer has to visit the location every day. Then a roughneck with experience has to mix the mud to those specifications. Viscosity, weight, etc. If a leak occurs in the hole the drilling pipe could get stuck and that's going be very costly. Part of that mix is cottonseed hulls because they are good at plugging leaks. After a few days, those hulls get rotten and really stink.

If one of those mud hoses breaks the pressure the mud under can cut you in half.

The newest roughneck has to catch the rock bits being pumped out every 5-10 feet and bring a sample to the geologist. The geo has to know where we are in the stratigraphic column and if there's oil and gas in those samples. 24/7.

 

[SteveSS]

The whole fracking objection is a bunch of crap. The walls of the hole are encased in iron pipe and then cemented. Can mistakes be made, yes, but the government is very involved in the process so it's followed correctly. On the Deepwater Horizon, a whole bunch of things went wrong at once and they hurried and skipped a step.

Maybe 110 years ago wells were not sealed correctly but not anymore. The state says how deep the water table is. Then you send an iron pipe to below that depth and concrete is pumped around the outside of the pipe to seal it. Then an electric log is run to make sure it's sealed. They skipped the log on the DWH. In the olden days they just drilled and then set off a bomb to fracture the rock. Now it's done by water pressure.

The fishing company ZEBCO out of Tulsa made the bombs. It was the Zero Hour Bomb Company.