Greybeard, oil drilling.

[jedstivers]

The post where this came from is locked so I had to start a new one.if you ever feel like posting about drilling I'd like to read about it.
Galloway2 wrote:
backhoeboogie wrote:
Natural gas has gotten so cheap they have quit making swiss cheese out of Texas. It doesn't pay much to drill. Ethanol makes no sense at all. There are lot of lands sitting on rich deposits of gas that will remain untapped until we get our heads out of our rears.


Up here in ND they are flaring ( burning off the natural gas) just about every oil well. They can't get the pipelines passed through to move it to where it needs to go. Our state is going to built it's own refineries with our own money. The fed regulators are trying to stop it anyway they can.

I can remember them doing the same think here in Texas, Oklahoma, and in La back in the 50-60s--it was pretty much considered a waste by-product. The 70s came along with the OPEC embargo and not long afterwards they're drilling FOR gas all over the Anadarko and Tuscaloosa Trend. The Tuscaloosa had a lot of high pressure--better be on your toes there. We drilled a relief well for an operator a little North of Baton Rouge that had just lost a rig to an underground bowout--the whole rig and location went down with the derrick standing up, along with 23 trailer houses, 3-4 Halliburton trucks and all their equipment. It finally bridged off and we got the relief well finished and permantly plugged it. No fire and no one got hurt except one hand that jumped off a mud tank into the reserve pit and broke a leg.
I thought I had seen some good rigs in La and East Texas till I went up to the Anadarko around Elk City Okla--Ya don't want to venture into that country without some BIG iron. That was some serious drilling up there and one of the coldest places I ever worked.

 

[greybeard]

I'll try later to post a bit of nostalgia--maybe tell ya about the time me and a crew of Cajuns coulda drowned out on a Chevron job in one of the driest places in Texas--McElroy Ranch out by Crane/McCamey. (after work and beer was involved)

btw, that post above shoulda read 2-3 trailer houses--not 23. Pusher's, crew house and company man's house.

 

[jedstivers]

Sounds good. Thanks.

 

[Angus Cowman]

would love to hear them Greybeard. My dad,brothers and a couple cousins worked all over Texas and Oklahoma on rigs or for rigging companies
grew up hearing stories like yours

 

[melking]

I also would like to hear some of the stories.

 

[greybeard]

A little history......and a bit of explanation of how things worked in the oilfield of the 70-90s for those reading this that aren't familiar with it and some of the terms. This will also set the stage for how I ended up out on the McElroy ranch in the early 90s.

I left home right after my 17th birthday and went into the Marines, did 4 years, then immediately went into the Navy for 5 more years. I acquired a wife and 4 kids in that time period and I had a couple months left on my enlistment when my last sea duty was done, so the sent me to a little Naval Reserve center in Lafayette La for my last duty station. I started looking for a real job. My brother was already working for a little 7 rig drilling company up near Opelousus as a mechanic and I had lots of diesel experience from the Navy, so I hired on with that company as a shop mechanic. Land rigs only--no offshore rigs. What my brother didn't tell me, was that with that company, there was no such thing as a shop hand--if you were male and able, if they needed a roughneck on one of the rigs, they came in the shop and said "you-you-you--get your clothes and go to rig 3 etc--they're shorthanded." Some weeks I spent an equal amt of time as a roughneck as a mechanic with that company till they went out of business in the mid 80s. The price of oil had been droppiong some and the operators (the companies that actually had the leases) weren't spending much money--they wanted to hold on to their cash. When I first broke out into the oilfield, the operators were paying by the day--the drilling contractor got paid a set amt of $ for every 24 hours on the hole. That was a good deal for the contractor because if you got the pipe stuck in the hole, you still got paid--it all pays the same--as they used to say. Shallow, quick fast wells might be contracted on a footage basis--the contractor billed the operator by the foot of hole drilled each 24 hrs--not as good a deal as day rate, but better than what began to happen when the price of oil dropped. Operators, began offering a % of the well proceeds as partial or full payment to the contractor. I don't know exactly how it worked, but I know my company had to bring in some engineers to look at the prospective well before we took a job, but this meant the drilling company was on it's own for paying some or all of the drilling costs until the well was completed and began producing revenue. Get stuck, you're eating up tons of your own $. This was common practice in the mid 80s--you either accepted it or stacked your rigs idle and laid your hands off. Like a lot of companies, mine was operating on borrowed money from banks, and the banks were using both the rigs and futurte revenue from the oil as collatoral. When the price of oil dropped to near $10 a bbl, the wells would take forever to pay off, so banks called the notes and the company I worked for went belly up. I knocked around for a couple 3 years, worked as a mech for a Kamatsu dealer in Memphis (where my wife was from)--then went back into the oilfield again as a hand and mechanic for a little 1 rig outfit back down in Cajun Country. Afterwards, I went to work as a machinist for a little machine shop that made stuff for rice elevators and driers, but the owner also had an oilfield service company that provided downhole chemicals--fluids that kept ya from getting stuck and drilling mud additives. He was the kind of guy that would do anything for a buck tho, and developed a process to grind up cuttings from downhole, slurry it, and pump it back down the backside of the casing of a well--basically putting it back where it came from. The market for this had emerged for 2 reasons.
1. On a big well up in Oklahoma, the reserve pit (a leveed pond) where the excess liquids and wellbore cuttings went had busted and it flooded a farmer's wheat or corn field. It was oil based mud, The farmer sued in state court, then the State got involved and they passed a law in Oklahoma that all cuttings had to be put into steel tanks on site--no more reserve pits. We would travel from La up to Elk City Ok set up on either a completed well or sometimes right by one that was still drilling and grind their cuttings, another little local to Elk City contractor would do the actual downhole pumping as we slurried the cuttings.

2. Sometime in the 80s or late 70s, a pipe yard worker came down with Leukemia. He worked cleaning scale from pipe that had come out of producing wells. They did some background investigation, found there was no history of any kind of cancer in his family and started looking for a cause. When a well flows, it produces oil, gas, and salt water and many minerals percipitate out of the liquid column, froming scale over a perid of years inside the pipe. Among those percipitants is Radium and Bismuth--both slightly radioactive and this is known as Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material--or NORM. Not dangerous except if one has a very long exposure to it, but this was deemed the cause of this man's leukemia and suddenly EPA and States' environmental agencies said something had to be done with the percipitants that came from oilfield pipe. It was also agreed, that NORM was non-transferable--if a company owned a well and pipe that it came from, it was their responsibilty for the 1/2 life of the material, which in the case of Radium is over 1000 years. Companies began placing it in steel drums and storing it in fenced in compounds, but after awhile, the drums began leaking, so some other plan had to be developed. The company I worked for joined others in trying to make a few $, and we began going to sites where companies like Chevron, Texaco etc stored the material, we suited up in protective gear, ground the material up, slurried it, placed it into 50 bbl thick wall steel tanks, and it too was pumped down the backside of wells--bacxk where it came from.

 

[jedstivers]

What's a underground blowout like you talked about in the first story?
Tell your wife I live about 50 miles from Memphis.

 

[greybeard]

An underground blowout is usually where oil/gas/water from a high pressure zone flows thru the wellbore into a lower pressure zone, usually located further up hole. This is almost always outside the casing (assuming casing has been set), but can happen with casing set and a bad cement job. It's a pressure differential, with pressure flowing from high pressure zones to lower pressure zones underground. It can make it to surface and the velocity carries all the sub strata with it--sand, rocks--the earth, and a crater forms underground. In the case I spoke of earlier, the underground crater collapsed upon itself, carrying the whole drilling location down.
They are the hardest blowouts to control, and other than watching your mud flow and returns, you may not even know it is happening at first, since very little is happening above ground for the first minutes.


Jed--that was wife #1--she and I parted company a long time ago--but I got a new now.

 

[Caustic Burno]

GB the American public has no clue what it take's to punch a hole process and transport a barrel of oil.
We are sending the majority of that money overseas to people that hate our gut's. The EPA is putting American's out of work and robbing our pocket book's.
The company I went to work for Amoco had ten refineries after the EPA got active it went to five due to unrealistic upgrade regulation's.They wanted the company to spend near a billion dollar's on an older refinery that made 20 to 25 million profit a year. That doesn't fit with any business model in the real world. We shut that refinery down along with four other's and all of those good paying American job's went away. Before it was over the company was swallowed up as many others as their pocket's were not deep enough to operate in the USA. The government demonize's the industry to your face and laugh's when we turn our back. They are laughing all the way to the bank for taxing and regulating us to death. I could tell your stories that would blow your mind.
You wouldn't believe some of the thing's we had to do over an alligator or bird in the refinery.
I don't know the stat's for the oil rig's on death rate's I know in the refineries you were more likely to be killed than a Houston Police officer. I know I rode out of the refinery twice in an ambulance in 35 year's.

 

[ohiosteve]

GB the American public has no clue what it take's to punch a hole process and transport a barrel of oil.

Yep. The average American wants to be able to drive around in their SUV and complain about gas prices, but try to drill a well close to their house and they want no part of it. I was dropping a machine off at a rig a few weeks ago near a subdivision and a lady pulled in behind me got out and told me we should be ashamed of ourselves for "Raping the earth" and got back in her big SUV and peeled out of there. Kind of hypocritical I thought.

 

[jedstivers]

GB the American public has no clue what it take's to punch a hole process and transport a barrel of oil.

Yep. The average American wants to be able to drive around in their SUV and complain about gas prices, but try to drill a well close to their house and they want no part of it. I was dropping a machine off at a rig a few weeks ago near a subdivision and a lady pulled in behind me got out and told me we should be ashamed of ourselves for "Raping the earth" and got back in her big SUV and peeled out of there. Kind of hypocritical I thought.

It's ok for Dem's. Just ask Nancy.

 

[greybeard]

I have a friend from Kerrville that is still in the oil patch as an old roughneck, and he tells me it has changed tremendously since my days in it--a lot of the things we did everyday aren't allowed nowdays.

For instance, we were on a little well south of I-10 but going toward Erath La that was known for poison gas. H2s. Sensor technology wasn't what it is today--had one sensor at the flow line above the preventers, and another at the shale shaker--that's it, and the only indicator was a red rotating light on the mud tanks. Just a red glass covered globe over a 100 watt light bulb with one of those little quarter sized gizmos under it you used to put under light bulbs at Christmas. Other than that, a bunch of streamers like you used to see strung up in front of gas stations or car dealerships, just to let everyone know which way the wind was blowing. Location was down in the woods a bit, so there wasn't any wind anyway. Today there would be electronics all over the rig. We drilled thru where the gas was known to be without much of a problem, got about another 1000' and the mud started coming back a little clabbered up and cut, and the pump pressure was eractic. The company man had gone into Lafayette but Roland, the old tool pusher (the guy who is in charge of the rig) was kind of a smart alek know it all (ain't they all?) and he walks up on the floor. The driller has the kelly picked up, and we're all looking down, stretching our necks so as not to get right over the hole. The pump is still running and the hose is jerking back and forth a bit.
Push sez in typical Cajun accent:
"Dat act like "aiah" (air) to me neg-(he called eveyrone 'neg')-you got sumpthin wrong with dat pump, ya probaly done cut a liner or valve"--you sure that shaker screen ain't got a hole in it--dat de-sander runnin?"
"Yeah Roland, everything's good, that's gas cut mud and you know it".
Old Roland walks right up to the rotary bends down over the hole and takes a whiff, turns to say something to us and keels over right on the rotary. We grab him, drag his heavy butt down the stairs and out to fresh air and he comes to after a couple of minutes. He looks up at us, and the driller says:
"Hey Roland, that still act like "aiah' to you?"
Man ol Roland came up fightin and just a cussin. He was dang lucky--as were all of us. Turns out, the light bulb in the red flashing light had vibrated out of it's base. As soon as we put a new bulb in it started flashing. Anyway, they put a big explosion proof bug blower fan on the floor, we circulated out and went back to drilling and finished the well. That was about 1979.

About the same time, we had one of bigger rigs down at Pecan Island, on the edge of the marsh drilling for Amerada Hess on a 15,000 hole. The toolpusher on that rig was a hunter from out around Eunice La named Bill T. and did lots of reloading, and he brought his guns and reloading stuff with him while he sat on the well. They would stand up on the rig floor and shoot deer out in the marsh. There were some huge deer out in that marsh, hard to get to on land, and hard to see in the marsh grass, but you could see 'em easy from up on the rig floor. The company man was a real likable fella named Buddy, had worked with Bill lots of times, he had a really long barreled revolver and asked Bill to reload some of his brass. Had already set the intermediate string, It was slow drilling, everything going good so Bill and Buddy had lots of free time. I went out there as a relief hand, and the first morning they had a big old buck hanging off the hand rail of one of the mud tanks and were skinning it right there. Later that evening, Bill brought Buddy his ammo and they went up on the floor to try it out. Buddy shot about 10 rounds thru it and was pleased as punch, but the last one made a heck of noise, flame belched and split that revolver wide open. Bill just looked, grinned and him and said "Made that one a mite hot didn't I?"

Bill was in his pusher house one night and called me in there to look at the washing machine. There was water all over the hall floor, and I saw the problem pretty quick. Bill had accidently shot a hole in the tub with 30-06 he was messing with. I'm pretty sure he had been into one of those blue bags of Crown the salesmen always brought around to the rigs back in those days.

 

[Ouachita]

greybeard,
Every morning when I'm drinking my coffee, and fire up the cattle forum, I start looking for a story from you. I like 'em. You have an open invitation to sit on my front porch anytime you're up this way. Bring CB with you. In the mean time, keep those stories coming :tiphat:

 

[Caustic Burno]

We had a 30,000 BPD gasoline unit blow up one night on a start up, bull plug got missed and left out of a vapor Benzene,Toluene, Xylene, product line. Two barrel's leaked before it exploded and they heard the explosion in Houston.
We all looked like we had been shot with bird shot as the safety glass blew out of the control room. One on my outside opeator's had busted ear drum's another had a chunk of steel in his shoulder and he was hollereing incoming( Veitnam Vet). I got hit with a large steel frame that held what used to be the control room window's. When our fire dept rolled up the Fire Chief ask what was on fire I told him and pick a spot as the whole dam thing was. Every sight glass, pressure gauge and pump seal was blown and on fire. The unit rain sewer's were covered in steel decking the explosion had lifted all them off the sewer's as we would be going down a pumpalley you would just disappear in gasoline water and oil, crawl out and keep fighting the fire. The unit blew up 3:45 AM Nov 5 1981 by 8:30 we had the fire's under control and they loade us up in ambulance's and started hauling us out. The operator that had been hit by the piece of steel left on an ambulance shortly after the explosion. The rest stayed and fought the fire that is just the way is was done back then you didn't leave your post no matter what. When I got to the hospital they had to cut my boot off to repair a shattered ankle and stitched up in a few other place's. The entire crew needed some kind of medical attention. We all reported for duty that night be it on crutches, cane's and bandaged up.
There is another unit that blew up that registered on the Ricter Scale in Denver another story for another time.
It is a dangerous job not for the faint hearted when you have hydrocarbon, heat sooner or later it will get loose.

 

[Workinonit Farm]

Good stories. I, for one, have learned a few things.

Thanks for sharing them. I look forward to more.

Katherine

 

[greybeard]

We had a 30,000 BPD gasoline unit blow up one night on a start up, bull plug got missed and left out of a vapor Benzene,Toluene, Xylene, product line. Two barrel's leaked before it exploded and they heard the explosion in Houston.
We all looked like we had been shot with bird shot as the safety glass blew out of the control room. One on my outside opeator's had busted ear drum's another had a chunk of steel in his shoulder and he was hollereing incoming( Veitnam Vet). I got hit with a large steel frame that held what used to be the control room window's. When our fire dept rolled up the Fire Chief ask what was on fire I told him and pick a spot as the whole dam thing was. Every sight glass, pressure gauge and pump seal was blown and on fire. The unit rain sewer's were covered in steel decking the explosion had lifted all them off the sewer's as we would be going down a pumpalley you would just disappear in gasoline water and oil, crawl out and keep fighting the fire. The unit blew up 3:45 AM Nov 5 1981 by 8:30 we had the fire's under control and they loade us up in ambulance's and started hauling us out. The operator that had been hit by the piece of steel left on an ambulance shortly after the explosion. The rest stayed and fought the fire that is just the way is was done back then you didn't leave your post no matter what. When I got to the hospital they had to cut my boot off to repair a shattered ankle and stitched up in a few other place's. The entire crew needed some kind of medical attention. We all reported for duty that night be it on crutches, cane's and bandaged up.
There is another unit that blew up that registered on the Ricter Scale in Denver another story for another time.
It is a dangerous job not for the faint hearted when you have hydrocarbon, heat sooner or later it will get loose.

Yep, it is a dangerous place to work. Texas City was before my time, but anyone who grew up or lived in the 40s knows about it and it's never far from anyone's minds tho that really wasn't a refinery problem.
Way back when, most folks didn't realize the dangers with benzene. My father went to work at Humble Oil and Refining at Baytown in the late 40s and retired from there after it had changed names to Exxon. He had a mechanic shop in Highlands, and he would bring 1 gallon cans of benzene home to clean parts in, and all us kids cleaned parts for him--with bare hands. He finally switched to Varsol, which probably wasn't much better, but we're all in our 60s-70s now with no ill effects. (Dad passed in '07 at 89 yrs old).
Our family had toured that plant many times over the decades, and my very first real summer job was with a contractor in that plant. I had a good friend working for another contractor over on the next unit, and I walked over to see him during lunch one day. On the way back, I cut thru the unit and walked under a stream of something leaking from overhead--never saw it, as it was evaporating before it hit the concrete floor. Benzene. I was instantly blinded from pain, wandering around with my eyes burning so bad I couldn't open them. One of the Humble hands saw me, grabbed me and led me over to a big eyewash station/shower and I was ok almost immediately, but of course, they all knew my dad and went and got him. Got my butt chewed out when I got home for being in the middle of an operating unit instead of staying in the contractor's area. I have 2 nephews working there now, and my b-i-l retired from Lubrizol. One of my nephews is a big wheel in safety, and goes all over the world on Exxon's units. I know lots of folks hate Exxon, but it and Humble hold a special place in my family.

 

[Caustic Burno]

Dad went to work for Pan American Refining after the war. He was working on a Cat Cracker about two miles from the dock's when the Grand Camp blew up. The High Flyer blew up shortly after and the ship's anchor landed in the parking lot.
For our younger folk's that may never heard this part of our history.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Disaster

 

[jedstivers]

Dad went to work for Pan American Refining after the war. He was working on a Cat Cracker about two miles from the dock's when the Grand Camp blew up. The High Flyer blew up shortly after and the ship's anchor landed in the parking lot.
For our younger folk's that may never heard this part of our history.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Disaster

Bet he saw some really bad stuff after that in the area.

 

[greybeard]

Dad went to work for Pan American Refining after the war. He was working on a Cat Cracker about two miles from the dock's when the Grand Camp blew up. The High Flyer blew up shortly after and the ship's anchor landed in the parking lot.
For our younger folk's that may never heard this part of our history.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Disaster

Must have been scary CB. My father was home at the time in Channelview, having worked the graveyard shift night before, and I 'think' my mother was still working at the old San Jacinto Ordinance Depot (closed, sold and now called Jacinto Port)on the ship channel in Channelview at the time. Dad was afraid it was the depot that had gone up, and mom was afraid it was Humble that exploded. I don't know how much total explosive potential there is on the ship channel today, but if it were to all go up at the same time, you and I would both know it for sure..
My parents were living not far from Tyler when the New London school exploded in the 30s and they felt that one too.

When airplane sonic booms became fairly common in the 60s, my mother got a worried look on her face.

 

[ohiosteve]

I've enjoyed reading these posts. Those who have never been around oil well drilling rigs might not appreciate it, but the roughnecks and worms who work around it every day are some of the most interesting and hardest working guys I've ever met.