Any oilfield men in the house? Something a little more specific in the industry thread under misc.

Use to be in the patch..... a long time ago

Wish I would of never started Oldman.

I spent 14 yrs offshore LA / TX.
Majority of the last 5 or 6 years was out of Fourchon.

The toll road is highway robbery.


Got out in 2016 when it slowed again.

Ppl ask if i miss it.

Sure. Worked with some good guys.
Miss the 2wks off a month, esp during deer season. 😢

I worked my way through LSU on the oil rigs & in the shipyards of south Louisiana. I made it all the way to the end of my junior year in Petroleum Engineering before I figured out that being an über nerd and sitting alone like a hermit with a bunch of severs hacking on code was more of my kind of thing. So eventually I graduated in computer science but the oil patch was a great way to pay for an education. Eventually I wound up writing custom software for family that still run oilfield businesses down there so my career switch worked out great for everyone.

Why?

I retired last October. 41 years working offshore on oil and gas Production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. It was a good career for me. I enjoyed the being off 1/2 the year so I could hunt and fish more. Pay and benefits were good. Enabled me to earn a pension and save enough money to retire.
The last place I worked was a floater in deep water. I stayed there 20 years, crew was like family.

42 years in Pennsylvania. I worked in production, pipelines, cutting row's,environmental stuff after I got my degree. Hauled deep water brine, crude oil and pipe. Yes, I miss it.

When I was 6 or 7 I met a man who had just retired from the oil field, he became my best friend for life shortly after that.

I learned a lot from that man. I look back and see him and I playing with Tonka trucks, sometimes for hours. The man had immense patience.

63 years old and still had the patience to play trucks with a 7 year old kid that wasn't his, he was a hell of a guy!

Nothing weird about him, just a man that helped a kid he new needed extra help to stay on the narrow path.

Between him and my dad I had an upbringing that would rival the best of them.

I have a lot of respect for you oil field boys.

God Bless Bland Parker!

Enough of this touchy Feely schit, GFY!!!!

I dont work in the Oilfield, never have, could of at anytime in my life, too late now, but.....as an example, my friends Son is 28yrs old, has $500,000 in the bank, any questions?

Keep away from drugs, booze, and fast wimmins is what that boy did.

Retired after 36 years. Last 26 years with Shell Oil.

My young grandson is a Rig Welder. (welder with a Rig) He does everything. It is slim pickings these days for pipeline welding thanks to the administration's lunacy. He has tested for a few jobs that never came to fruition and just got back from capping a well the other day. They have a few more to cap so he'll get called again for that but for the time being he's doing fab work. My cousin is simi-retired and was an inspector for years. The last several years he was into robotics which I suppose is the coming thing. My dad worked in the patch for several years after the war. He was a little guy and they kept wanting him to work derricks. He refused. I asked him why and he said some of those stupid drillers will kill you and it's a long way down. In the late forties and early fifties it was a dangerous place.

The O&G industry gave me a fascinating career. No regrets here.

Have done some contract work for the oilfield on my property.

Twenty years here. SW Wyoming the entire time.

Made a living in the Permian Basin for the last 30 years.

After 45 plus years my career is winding down. With the exception of a short stint in government contracting (which I hated) the entire time was spent in the oilfield fabrication business. Did my time offshore when I was young, worked in AK for a while, ended up owning my own specialty welding business in LA.

It has been a good life.

Worked a few years in the high-pressure cementing industry. Seemed I was always on the road. Cost me a marriage.

I spent just enough time in the oil patch to realize I didn't want to spend my life in the "Oil Patch".
Tripping pipe in a pouring rain.
Pulling a wet string that freezes the instant it hits an already slippery floor.
Twelve hour towers.
Night towers.
Rebuilding salt water injection pumps in rattlesnake infested pump sites.
Wrenching rods in 110° heat standing knee deep in "mud"*.
* - a mixture of drilling mud, sludge, salt water, paraffin and what ever else. Those clothes will NEVER be the same! LOL!

The "awl bidness" is chicken or feathers. You're either eating T-bones or Ramen noodles.
Back about 2017 or so, there were at least 5 Dodge 3500, Cummins diesel, 4WD, 4 door trucks with 200 Amp Lincoln welders and 84 quart Yeti coolers stopped at every red light in Midland, TX.
By 2021, EVERY Subaru, Mazda, VW, Toyota dealership in Midland had a lot full of those used trucks that could be bought for a song.

Midland/Odessa, Texas, known for the Permian Basin "awl bidness" fluctuations, never increased their housing. Apartment complexes were packed and at premium prices. RV camps were elbow to elbow!
Six months later, a $1250/mo apartment could be had for $500/mo with no move in fees!

I used to be a construction superintendent for a major oil company, and when we finished with the supporting infrastructure down here they said they needed me in ND. Umm... Thanks, but no.

Still do some oilfield consulting with overseeing projects for oil companies, or a liaison between oil company projects and land owners.

Most recent was overseeing the plugging of two wells on one ranch.

Gigs pay well... Like a grand a day, or I wouldn't even do it.

Plugging wells.

Yes, the Bakken.

Rental company.

38 years in Prudhoe bay oilfield. It was a great job. Been retired almost 12 years.

8 years on the north slope in security and emergency response. I’d go back tomorrow if my wife’s health was better.

On the Gulf of Mexico drilling rigs and in the marsh on inland barges in the 70s. 2R Drilling Company. All Cajun except me.

Who is a “company man”?

Are you asking what that means?

That rig looks like the ones we used to drill shallow wells with. They used a rig similar to that to drill the hole to get the miners out at the quecreek mine in somerset Pa. A few years back

They can indeed drill shallow wells with that rig. I don't think much over 5000 feet.

Company man is a contractor that is in charge of the rig. He carries liability insurance on himself. He takes instructions from the oil company office and sees to it that the drilling contractor or workover tools spread follows the company drilling or workover department's plan.
On a fixed leg platform he is usually the top man and ultimate authority on site.
The last place I worked was a floating platform. I was the OIM. The ultimate work authority. We had a rig on our top deck drilling. We had a company man in charge of the drilling rig.
It was a difficult situation, company men don't like being in second place and the 3 companies I worked for the drilling department gets their way over production. I had a good relationship with them and didn't have authority problems.

Not there myself, but an engineering uncle earned big bucks mostly out of country (Europe and South America). I think he was mostly responsible for handling gas as opposed to crude. He retired young and his kids were schooled by boarding institutions here in the US. Really screwed up kids as their only parenting came during extended vacations.

That Bidness about the RATTLESNAKES DID IT FOR ME !!!!!!!!!!!

Salt water injection pumps are all PD (positive displacement) pumps. When a plunger starts a "pump" stroke, something is going somewhere. Whether it's a valve cap, discharge line, fluid head. It never failed that injection companies worked with wells that were so pressurized, they wouldn't close just the discharge valve at the pump. The would close that valve, the well head valve and any valve on the line in-between. Anywhere from a few feet to a half mile or so.
You NEVER rebuilt a injection pump without checking that ALL the discharge valves were open.
As the "junior" man, it was always my "duty" to walkout the line toting an 18" pipe wrench, down through the mesquite thickets and head high Johnson grass!
I can still hear Chester, "Marty, watch out for them buzz bunnies!" 😖

Yes. Production and midstream for the last 27yrs.

Yes 42 years in central WV started with South Eastern Gas,22 years with Pennzoil and the rest with Triad,Range Resources , Enervest,retired 6 years ago, was a good ride.

Did 4 years pushing a roustabout crew in the permian basin in the early 90’s the work sucked and the scenery sucked so did the women

I agree with most of what you said, but the company man is not the ultimate authority on site..... the toolpusher is. I've run company men off the rig. When a company man says to do something that is more than the equipment is rated for or something that is unsafe for the personnel, off he goes! I went thru 6 company men on 1 job, back in the early 80's.

Ain't a damn thing "purty" about the Permian area, unless you own producing wells. Work, scenery OR women!

Yeah......it's called a desert, for a reason. You couldn't be more wrong about the women though. I've lived in 6 different states and there's not a better place to make a whole lot of money than the Permian Basin. A water/crude hauling truck driver will make $100k easily.

I work on the other (better) end of the pipe… turning that nasty stuff into gasoline, jet, diesel, etc. I started my career in chemicals, but moved to refining after about 10yrs - still here 20yrs later! Got a couple more years left and gonna call it a career!

I worked a little during the first Bakken boom around 1980, starting at "worm's corner" and then chain-hand. I was still in college and just getting a slippery hold on my eventual writing career, and it was a great way to make good money in a short time--and also kept me in shape for hunting season!

Didn't want to make it a career, but learned a lot. Still look back on those days pretty fondly, partly because I primarily worked during late summer and saw a lot of northern lights....

17 years in construction and equipment in Prudhoe and Russia.

What refinery down there?

Lyondell - the one shutting down within the next year.

Gotcha. The industry up and down the Gulf Coast and on the ship channel is nothing short of amazing.

I led the shutdown and set up demo of our (Shell) little refinery in Odessa. That grew into construction management years this one flying out to our man made island in the Caspian Sea. Helicopter shot.



My home on the retired Russian cruise ship Schotov. The 28/12's rotation wasn't bad.

Worked in the downhole tool business.

Still live in the oil patch.

It is a good place to make some good money but most when they get the money let it go to their head.

When the patch has a downturn a lot of them have not saved any money and their toys go up for sale.

A viscous cycle,some never learn.

Spent one year rack testing tubing in Western Ks. after high school. I was 18 years old and could see the 30 year old guys who's bodies were already shot. One guy slept on the floor because his back was so bad. That was enough to convince me there was no future in that and I better get my butt in college.

G23

28years, 24 with bp. All but the last 3 in Prudhoe. In the Permian now, overseeing production at the 3 bpx midstream plants.

Pad construction Single and multipull up to 15 holes, reworking single pad straight holes for horizontal redrill. some pipeline and support cat or excavator on plant setup or teardown.

Norm

Wife is one of the managers for a company that builds subsea trees. They send her all over the world.

Old school Texas panhandle roughneck here. Did 30+ years straight in the Anadarko basin, from the bottom up. The last 5 as an independent consultant. Hung up my hardhat in 2016 and opened a BBQ/Catering business, sold that and retired last spring.

Good times offshore and on.

The 3 companys I worked for the company men were God on the rig and could run off tool pushers or the whole crew.
I guess it depends on who you work for. An exception would be if some one called for Stop Work Authority for a Safety or Environmental issue. And that was just the last few years.

No, they can run off third party employees or companies, but they don't have the authority to run off any righands. Only the drilling company can do that, I've had them try when I was pushing tools but my boss always had my back.

I have seen the whole drill crew put on the boat and replaced. Maybe not with the companies you worked for. The companies I worked for offshore they could and did. If the company man wanted someone off the rig they were gone. I am not making any of this up.

Local kid wanted to be a special forces airborne sniper green beret type.

He decided to be an underwater welder in the gulf.


Nobody had the heart to tell his mother that he chose the much more dangerous profession.

My secretary's son does that and she told me it was super dangerous, but I didn't realize how much.

Pretty much.

But it goes through the ladder, too. The Co. Man gets ahold of the Superintendent for the oil company and explains the problem and why he wants them gone, and the super can make a decision then, or kick the question upstairs to his bosses at the corporate level.

Sometimes drilling and production dictate what can and can't be done. If running off a guy, crew or company would mean suspending drilling and production for an unknown time, the company man may not get his wish right away.

I knew a guy who was an underwater welder, he made a lot of money and then quit when he was around 35, he said he was stopping before he became a statistic.

I've seen it happen too, but the drilling company did the firing, not the consultant. Either because they knew their people were at fault and deserved it or because the Drilling Supt. was just plain chickenshit and wouldn't stand up for his people. Which is usually the case.

The area manager for Citation would come up here occasionally.

His son was an underwater welder for a very short time.


Aside from all the death falling off the rig when he was under it...the worst part he said was you would be welding away and look over your shoulder and see a fish the size of a Buick staring at you and the pretty lights.

Mouth agape...mouth full of teeth type of thing.


He didn't like that.

It creeps me out when he tells me some of the stories. He has been working in the canals around the Houston area a lot on several of the structures. He said it is so dark and murky that you can hardly see anything a lot of the time.

Back in the 80's up until the price gas dropped, and shale gas started, there were thousands of shallow wells drilled with those rigs

I guess it depended on who owned the rig? I worked on land rigs and the company man represented the company we drill for. As long as the company mans request was within the limits of the machinery and was safe, you did it. But, when the request was outside the limits of the machinery or not safe, you didn't do it, and there wasn't anything the company man could do. If you and the co. man disagreed, you wrote it up on the daily log.

The hole where I worked with 6 different co men was where they made bad decisions and I refused to do their bidding or suggested they do something different. By them refusing to do something different, it caused hole problems, not safety or exceeding the limits of the machinery, and they were run off, not by me, but the company they worked for. Never was my job or the crews in any doubt.

When I said I ran them off the rig, I dont mean I fired them, I meant I told them to leave the rig floor, tanks, etc. and dont come back until I said they could. They had a choice, leave the rig or I would stop operations. I only had to stop operations 3 times that I can remember, while I worked in the patch.

Never saw a co man run anyone of the drilling crew off.... I did see mud loggers, core drilling companies, cementing companies, welders, lay down crews, etc. get run off.