greybeard
Well-known member
Ohiosteve--that's one of the things my friend told me has changed. They aren't "allowed" to call anyone on the rig floor a 'worm' nowadays.
Greybeard, oil drilling.
- Thread starter jedstivers
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Calman
Well-known member
Greybeard,have you ever heard of or seen the Parker Rig that drilled around Elk City and Saer OK? It was around the mid 80's. The rig was painted all white and blue.Delivered some material to it one time at night. It looked like a small city from about 5 mile away.
Only oilfield experince I ever had was running a pump pumping the mud pit back down the hole.
However did pump one while they were still drilling. Was a wet and rainy season and the pit was filling up.
It was on a hill and the farmers pond was just below it. Everyday he set waiting for it to overfill and run down into his pond.
I lived just outside Cordell Ok for about 6 yrs.
Cal
Only oilfield experince I ever had was running a pump pumping the mud pit back down the hole.
However did pump one while they were still drilling. Was a wet and rainy season and the pit was filling up.
It was on a hill and the farmers pond was just below it. Everyday he set waiting for it to overfill and run down into his pond.
I lived just outside Cordell Ok for about 6 yrs.
Cal
greybeard
Well-known member
Cal, there were several Parker rigs still running around Elk City when I was up there, and they were all big--and all blue & white--Parker's colors.
Rig114 had already been donated and moved to the Anadarko Oil & gas museum by the time I was working up there, and it's pretty massive itself--about 170' derrick if I remember right. It was still a running rig when they donated it, but it just wasn't state of the art enough by that time. It worked all over the Anadarko, so it may have been the one you are familiar with. It's still there, right on Rt 66, almost downtown Elk City.
Parker has always meant big iron and they own the most powerful land rig in the world and hold the depth record with it--having drilled the Sakhalin-1 well on an island off Russia's coast. Right around 40,000' deep I think.
Rig114 had already been donated and moved to the Anadarko Oil & gas museum by the time I was working up there, and it's pretty massive itself--about 170' derrick if I remember right. It was still a running rig when they donated it, but it just wasn't state of the art enough by that time. It worked all over the Anadarko, so it may have been the one you are familiar with. It's still there, right on Rt 66, almost downtown Elk City.
Parker has always meant big iron and they own the most powerful land rig in the world and hold the depth record with it--having drilled the Sakhalin-1 well on an island off Russia's coast. Right around 40,000' deep I think.
Calman
Well-known member
Next time I go up to Cordell to see some family I'll have to run up to Elk City and see it.
Cal
Cal
jedstivers
Well-known member
It's unreal to think that a rig could punch 40,000 feet down. That 1,333.33 sticks of stem.
greybeard
Well-known member
I've been looking, but haven't seen what the casing weight was, but it had to be tremendous. I suspect it was a multi staged casing & liner and floated down, but how they kept it down and not trying to come back up, or even kept the drill pipe in the elevators is beyond my schooling. I would love to see what bottom hole pressures were with a column of drilling mud that tall. 7.6 miles.
greybeard
Well-known member
Around 1992-93, I found myself working for the La. outfit that ground, slurried, and pumped oilfield waste back down the backside of wells--operating well or abandoned wells. The work in Oklahoma's Elk City was just cuttings from the well bore, but all the other jobs was very low level radioactive material. NORM, which I explained earlier. The problem with NORM isn't it's strength of radioactivity but it can have long term bone seeking effects in the case of the Radium 226 alpha particles, which has a half life of around 1600 years. Alpha is emitted from the scale and dust from the scale, and if breathed in, it settles in the lungs, and the radionuclide seeks the calcium in bone, and this breaks one of the rules of radioactivity exposure. Heavy exposure can be safely endured for only a very short period of time. Light exposure cannot be safely endured for extended periods of time.
The same holds true for an alpha particle that is lodged in one's eye--most human skin will usually stop an alpha particle--the lining of the eye will not stop the radiation if even a minute particle remains close to the eyeball. I am talking microscopic in size. Mucus membranes are the same way--very very thin. IOW--Long term exposure to "light" radiation is just as dangerous as short term exposure to very heavy 'doses' of radiation. Gamma is present in some isotopes of Radium, but it was one of our lesser concerns. It's a penetrator, but it takes a LOT of Radium 226 gamma to cause any harm--a LOT. (this is one of the causes of skin cancer--a lifetime of exposure to the sun's very low level radiation) R228 is also present in NORM, but with a shorter half life of 5.7 years, the liklihood of damage from it is less than that from the sun. The other major concern was Radon gas.
All of these meant wearing proper protection. Rubber gloves, disposable protective Tyvex suits, 1/2 or full face respirators or forced air breathing aparautus if in a confined space, rubber boots, ear plugs, tight fitting goggles if in a 1/2 face respirator, hard hat with a drape thingie to keep the stuff out of your hair and off your neck. (I forget what it's called). It was miserable to work in, and the least little tear meant you had to come out of the taped of area and decon, then get a fresh suit. We worked 10-12-14-16 hr days. Once we started processing, none of us took a day off. The guys in the pic at the following link are dressed almost exactly as we were back then. The suit is taped to the gloves and to the boots. (the only pic I could quickly find)
http://www.wos.com.ly/en/
Our first real job was in the old Orchard oil field right out of Columbus/Rosenburg Texas one nice spring week. A Chevron job. It was an old well, that Chevron had tested and determined to be a good candidate for injection of a limited volume of material. I think we had 50 drums to dispose of. The location was right off a US 90 feeder road, on a Farm to market that had a residential area about 3 city blocks from our location, and 2-3 houses right nearby. The well is a really old one--maybe 25 ft from the blacktop--probably there before the road was built. We drive over from La, get there just in time after dawn to start taping off the area with the required gold and magenta tape, with the infamous radiation symbol about every 2 feet, put up our 2x2 ft "Danger-Radioactive Area" signs all over the place, and suit up and get out our geiger counters to do a background check of the work area before we start.
We did a background survey because every point on earth has some sort of radiation--even your front yards. When we left, the site had to be just as 'clean' as it was the day we arrived. None of the sites themselves were contaminated--just the material the client brought out to us to process and inject, and it was always in drums, tanks or encapsulated in welded shut steel pipes. They do all this differently nowadays, as the rules changed in mid 90s, but back then everyone thought NORM was dangerous as all get out.
Anyway we had our little safety meeting with Chevron's rep, he's happy and gets in his car and goes back to Houston, as the actual work won't begin till the next day. We get all suited up, doing our pre-job survey, have our signs up all over the place to keep someone from just driving into the area,and that's where the trouble starts.
We are attracting all kinds of attention from the locals--and none of it good. The guy across from us has some cows, and he reads the signs and quickly starts moving the cows back toward his house. The kids are all out waiting for the bus and the parents come out, see what's going on with all the men in the white suits, and hurriedly shoo all the little Tommy and Suzies indoors. The school bus driver comes along, stops, looks, and puts the bus in R and backs all the way back down the little lane and out onto the feeder road and heads right back from whence she came. Next thing I see, there's a wad of folks all balled up in the driveway of the nearest house and I'm thinking "If they start this way with torches and pitchforks, we're in deep poop", and I tell my boss the same thing.
About that time, a county mountie comes roaring up with his lights flashing and starts walking our way, getting slower and slower as he approaches the yellow and magenta radiation warning tape, and kinda nervously hollers he needs to "talk to someone". My boss sez to me "Hey old man, watch this". (even then, I was the oldest there, and the only non-cajun as well) Boss picks up his Geiger and grabs one of the metallic low level standards we test them with, turns the counter to it's most sensitive setting, and walks right up to the sheriff deputy, Just as he gets there, he switches that counter on with the same hand he has the standard in, sticks it out in front at arms length and it goes to chirpin like a thousand crickets. Deputy starts walking backwards, then goes to full retreat, with my boss still walking toward him. I don't know exactly what was said when they both finally reached the patrol car, but after a bit the deputy finally started smiling, left and went down and dispersed the crowd of Frankenstien haters.
By the time our equipment arrived, we get it all set up and we had finished the prelininary survey, it was time to quit for the day, so we drive into Rosenburg to our motel, only to find all our bags sitting outside the lobby and that the motel had decided they didn't really want us there aftewr all. We had to go on up to Columbus and stay in a rathole motel on old 90 that hadn't heard about the evil men in the white suits that had come bringing enough radioactivity to kill everyone big enough to die.
Other than all that, the job went like a breeze--all nice clean pipe scale that ground and pumped just like we had hoped it would.
Not so with the next Chevron job on the McElroy Ranch up in Crane Tx. That job was misery incarnate--lasted 61 days straight, with the pumping phase 24 hr days. July or August, hotter than hades itself and the material fought us every inch of the way. 800+ drums. Had a trailer house on location for that one, and that's the job I thought about 1/2 doz of us was gonna drown. That's next time.
The same holds true for an alpha particle that is lodged in one's eye--most human skin will usually stop an alpha particle--the lining of the eye will not stop the radiation if even a minute particle remains close to the eyeball. I am talking microscopic in size. Mucus membranes are the same way--very very thin. IOW--Long term exposure to "light" radiation is just as dangerous as short term exposure to very heavy 'doses' of radiation. Gamma is present in some isotopes of Radium, but it was one of our lesser concerns. It's a penetrator, but it takes a LOT of Radium 226 gamma to cause any harm--a LOT. (this is one of the causes of skin cancer--a lifetime of exposure to the sun's very low level radiation) R228 is also present in NORM, but with a shorter half life of 5.7 years, the liklihood of damage from it is less than that from the sun. The other major concern was Radon gas.
All of these meant wearing proper protection. Rubber gloves, disposable protective Tyvex suits, 1/2 or full face respirators or forced air breathing aparautus if in a confined space, rubber boots, ear plugs, tight fitting goggles if in a 1/2 face respirator, hard hat with a drape thingie to keep the stuff out of your hair and off your neck. (I forget what it's called). It was miserable to work in, and the least little tear meant you had to come out of the taped of area and decon, then get a fresh suit. We worked 10-12-14-16 hr days. Once we started processing, none of us took a day off. The guys in the pic at the following link are dressed almost exactly as we were back then. The suit is taped to the gloves and to the boots. (the only pic I could quickly find)
http://www.wos.com.ly/en/
Our first real job was in the old Orchard oil field right out of Columbus/Rosenburg Texas one nice spring week. A Chevron job. It was an old well, that Chevron had tested and determined to be a good candidate for injection of a limited volume of material. I think we had 50 drums to dispose of. The location was right off a US 90 feeder road, on a Farm to market that had a residential area about 3 city blocks from our location, and 2-3 houses right nearby. The well is a really old one--maybe 25 ft from the blacktop--probably there before the road was built. We drive over from La, get there just in time after dawn to start taping off the area with the required gold and magenta tape, with the infamous radiation symbol about every 2 feet, put up our 2x2 ft "Danger-Radioactive Area" signs all over the place, and suit up and get out our geiger counters to do a background check of the work area before we start.
We did a background survey because every point on earth has some sort of radiation--even your front yards. When we left, the site had to be just as 'clean' as it was the day we arrived. None of the sites themselves were contaminated--just the material the client brought out to us to process and inject, and it was always in drums, tanks or encapsulated in welded shut steel pipes. They do all this differently nowadays, as the rules changed in mid 90s, but back then everyone thought NORM was dangerous as all get out.
Anyway we had our little safety meeting with Chevron's rep, he's happy and gets in his car and goes back to Houston, as the actual work won't begin till the next day. We get all suited up, doing our pre-job survey, have our signs up all over the place to keep someone from just driving into the area,and that's where the trouble starts.
We are attracting all kinds of attention from the locals--and none of it good. The guy across from us has some cows, and he reads the signs and quickly starts moving the cows back toward his house. The kids are all out waiting for the bus and the parents come out, see what's going on with all the men in the white suits, and hurriedly shoo all the little Tommy and Suzies indoors. The school bus driver comes along, stops, looks, and puts the bus in R and backs all the way back down the little lane and out onto the feeder road and heads right back from whence she came. Next thing I see, there's a wad of folks all balled up in the driveway of the nearest house and I'm thinking "If they start this way with torches and pitchforks, we're in deep poop", and I tell my boss the same thing.
About that time, a county mountie comes roaring up with his lights flashing and starts walking our way, getting slower and slower as he approaches the yellow and magenta radiation warning tape, and kinda nervously hollers he needs to "talk to someone". My boss sez to me "Hey old man, watch this". (even then, I was the oldest there, and the only non-cajun as well) Boss picks up his Geiger and grabs one of the metallic low level standards we test them with, turns the counter to it's most sensitive setting, and walks right up to the sheriff deputy, Just as he gets there, he switches that counter on with the same hand he has the standard in, sticks it out in front at arms length and it goes to chirpin like a thousand crickets. Deputy starts walking backwards, then goes to full retreat, with my boss still walking toward him. I don't know exactly what was said when they both finally reached the patrol car, but after a bit the deputy finally started smiling, left and went down and dispersed the crowd of Frankenstien haters.
By the time our equipment arrived, we get it all set up and we had finished the prelininary survey, it was time to quit for the day, so we drive into Rosenburg to our motel, only to find all our bags sitting outside the lobby and that the motel had decided they didn't really want us there aftewr all. We had to go on up to Columbus and stay in a rathole motel on old 90 that hadn't heard about the evil men in the white suits that had come bringing enough radioactivity to kill everyone big enough to die.
Other than all that, the job went like a breeze--all nice clean pipe scale that ground and pumped just like we had hoped it would.
Not so with the next Chevron job on the McElroy Ranch up in Crane Tx. That job was misery incarnate--lasted 61 days straight, with the pumping phase 24 hr days. July or August, hotter than hades itself and the material fought us every inch of the way. 800+ drums. Had a trailer house on location for that one, and that's the job I thought about 1/2 doz of us was gonna drown. That's next time.
