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Mostly good company men, but a few real Pricks.

My grandpa worked on rigs for about 50 years starting in the late 40s. Said the old
Man he started off working for was a wildcatter that would
Witch a well like you would a water well. Claimed he worked for him about 10 years and never drilled a dry hole

Another story he had is sometime in the late 40s he went to Wyoming on a rig and they got snowed in for several weeks. Said they were all eyeing this one fat guy when one of them managed to shoot a couple cow elk

What?

Those hotshot drivers have no regards for the rules. They were my favorite. Booze? You got it. Had a Mexican fella driving a Dodge dually that’d deliver anything you wanted. Period. You name it and he’d show up with it. Had a running joke that if you paid him enough, he could deliver a pusher worth a shït and some paid days off.

Bout sums it up for me. Only did a couple years in Aus and NZ. Offshore and onshore.. Offshore way better!

One time on the Maersk Valiant, Aus NW Shelf in 1990 just pulled out of hole when I topped the v-door. Pulled out the bit and sub and didn’t put hole cover on right away! Plank of wood with crescent wrench about five foot from hole, just as I got to the top bit-sub falls over, hits wrench which flies up and straight down the hole👀

I turned round and walked straight back down. Couldn’t fish it so milled it. When we circulated bottoms up I went to the shakers and picked up the bits of the wrench I could find, winder and a couple fragments, gathered them up and presented them to the driller “ want your Crescent back”🤣. Lucky he had a sense of humor.

Was on the Harriet field.

Worked for a company that had radios on every rig and you could hear the morning report from most of the rigs. When waiting for cement to dry, it was abbreviated WOC in the log book, but when calling in the report, it was 'fu_king the dog'. The company hired an office woman that learned to take the reports, so instead of 'fu_king the dog' it was changed to 'chasing the dog'. One day one of the drillers forgot while giving the report and said x number of hrs 'fu_king the dog'. Woman never said a thing.

Our rig report was next and when our driller asked the lady how things were going, she replied, "Well, I found out what happens when yall catch the dog".

Geronimo line was tied to a tree on a land rig. Saw a derrickman ride it down one day, but he forgot or either didn't know how to slow it down..... hit that tree and had to be going 40 mph. He lay there a while, but was all right.

Had 2 fellows bickering all the time. One day one of them went to the porta-potty. Now the potty had no bottom. We just dug a hole and filled it in at the end of the job. The other fellow tied the door shut with a rope, hooked his truck to the rope and pulled the porta-potty down the rig road a couple hundred yds, porta-potty bouncing like a rubber ball. Cut the rope loose from the truck and drove off.... never saw him again. We cut the rope and let the fellow out of the potty, he left, gonna kill the other guy. Never saw him again, either. Didn't hear about any killings, so not sure what happened.

Had a shallow nitrogen blowout in western Ok., just before daylight one morning. Hard north wind blowing and the emergency slide was on the south side of the floor. Emptied hole over the crown, made a hell of a mess, about 2 1/2' of mud on the drill floor. Counting hands and 1 was missing, so we were wading thru the mud, trying to find him. After a while, somebody said here he comes and sure enough, he was walking back across a field, headed to the rig. When asked what happened, he said when it started to blow, he slid down the slide and ran. As long as it was raining mud, he kept running. Trouble was, he was running south and the wind was blowing south. He ran to the highway and a truck almost hit him as he crossed the road. The highway was 3/4 mile away.

One afternoon while on the rig in Ok, saw 6 tornadoes at one time, from the drill floor.

On a bad muddy location in N. La. one time and a new Thunderbird drove up. Fellow driving would push mud until it would go no further, back up and go around the pile and start pushing again. Finally got to the rig, older fellow got out and was wearing a suit. Waded thru mud, walked up steps to drill floor, washed off pants and shoes with water hose, hosed off floor and recoiled hose. Came up to top dog house and introduced himself. We talked a while and he left, wading thru the mud to the car and pushing up piles of mud as he drove away. A few weeks later, things had dried out and they had put white rock on the location. Up drove a new Lincoln. the same fellow got out, and came up to talk. When asked about cleaning up the Thunderbird, he just said, "It was too dirty to clean up, so I traded it for the Lincoln".

Was working offshore, doing a cement job. Cementing surface pipe, had finished pumping cement, and was pumping down the plug with the rig pumps. Shaker hand was suppose to open dump on shaker when the cement got back to the surface, and dump the excess cement overboard. He wanted a cup of coffee, so he left the shaker and went to the galley. Dont know how long he was there, but when the mud tanks filled with cement and it started back into the pumps, they found it. Had to dump the tanks and empty the pumps on the deck of the platform. Needless to say, he was fired.

For the Facebook crowd, I guess there is a Bakken Fail page. Supposedly there is /was good stuff on it.

Lots of crosses along the roadsides….

After 36 years on rigs of every type, there are few things I did NOT see.

Never saw cement back to mud pits.

Did see Sand traps completely filled. Had to bust up green cement.

Saw a centrifuge cemented up. Cured.

Rental company sent a tech out to look at it.

Colored guy. He pulls cover off and says “what the fug am i gonna do with that?”

Left the rig on next crew boat.

Rig crane was used to pluck a helicopter out the water.

Or what was left of it.

Small field chopper. Wind gust caught it was pilot took off. Flipped him backwards. Landed in water.
Pilot made it ok.

drained the stack so we could set the tie back.

"hey dirt, set the bolts and close the valve"

that call went unheard.

pumped a bottoms up.. driller obviously wasn't watching returns. i came down the back steps about 20 minutes later and it looked like a lake of oil.

whoopsie daisy.

Same offshore rig.... had a crane operator unloading drill collars. Wind was blowing pretty good and seas were pretty rough. Had roustabouts on the work boat, tying onto 3 collars at a time. First lift, pick the collars off the deck and then let the captain pull the boat out from under them. Instead of lowering the collars into the water to kill the swing, the crane operator headed up with them. Managed to hit a 'p' tank with the first lift, luckily it just dented it and didn't bust it open. 2nd lift, same procedure, only this time he managed to stick the collars through the cab of the other crane. They let him ride the work boat back to shore.

Had a company man come in the pipe shop I was welding for raising Hell and flapping his arms. Needed this done right fuggin stat now! Didn’t give a flying shiet what the rate was.

I cut some pipe and made a frame. Welded a sheet of 3/16 inside and hauled it out to the location where I dug two post holes and sack creted it in. About the time I was done the guy from the vinyl shop showed up to roll on the 4x8 decal that said “Absolutely no taco or burrito trucks allowed on location”.

When I got my ticket signed the pusher said a roach coach had stopped by and every swinging dick on the location was puking and shieting himself inside out for 24 hours and the whole rig was shut down.

Drilled a hole over in the Jefferson, Tx. area. RR tracks ran along side the road, but there was a curve in the road and tracks. Now trains cant turn like a car, so you could see 1/4 mile in either direction where the location road crossed the tracks. RR threw a fit and took the oil co. to court, because the location road crossed the tracks in the curve. They settled, giving the oil co. 90 days to drill, test, and plug if it was a dry hole. If they made a well, the rig had to be out by 90 days and the oil co. had to build another road into the location. The oil co. had to hire laid off RR workers to man the crossing 24/7. 3 trains a day came down that track, but every time we crossed the tracks, we had to stop and wait for the RR workers to roll down their window and wave a green flag. They also put up a 8x16 bill board that had instructions on how to stop, wait, and only cross if directed.

Drilled into the caprock at the top of a salt dome. While at shallow depth but supposedly adequate mud weight it came back north on us. Had to take out through the diverters straight to the Gulf and the atmosphere. Bubbles coming up around the drive pipe.

Sour gas.

Shutdown the Gulf from Main Pass to West of the Mississippi River included all shipping and boat traffic in and out of the river.

Twas a bad one. Got Boots and Coots on it and finally got it killed.

There were some unhappy folks to be found and didn’t have to look far to find them.

Sour gas is bad ju ju.

I worked for the company that laid the pipelines from the first 7 wells to the plant in the sour gas field south of Jackson, Ms. Down at Piney Woods, Ms. That's the place where they found a whole crew dead one morning. They didn't know the sour gas was down there and drilled into it during the night. That hole is on a hill and the well bore is contained in a small cinder block building. You could walk out into the woods around the site and see small animal skeletons all over the place.

When we were doing tie-ins at the wells or plant, there was a man with a monitor on site. If he said to go, we had to go upwind at least 200 yds and wait until he said we could come back to work. Sometimes it was a few minutes and sometimes we'd set there all day.

Not a good one.

A Bo Truc brought us out a called for coil tubing unit to do a well zone seal off and we were gonna reperforate further up hole of the well bore.

As the Bo Truc backed up to the platform he had to get in really close to the platform boat landing due to the weight of the coil tubing unit and the hydraulic pack, control cab, etc. and for the boom angle required for the production crane to safely lift it up to the drill deck.

The weather was pretty bad and the seas were rough working against the needed position of the boat

The deck hand threw one 6” rope over the platform cleat, took up slack on the boat cleat and the captain was then maneuvering to set the second rope .

While pulling against the first set rope to get squared around for setting the second, the first rope parted like a rifle shot crack and the recoil rope back to the boat hit the young deck hand and took most of his head off.

I was at the hand rail with a radio, looking down and talking to the boat captain when it happened.

We lowered the man basket and loaded the young man on it and brought him up on the platform, called the shore base to fly us out a body bag and then called for the medical chopper to come and pick him up where they delivered him to West Jefferson Hospital.

It was a sad and dour day all around and for everyone involved.

But as is typical, the job continued, restaged the boat and went on to completion,

LOl one time I was working a fishing job on a workover they had 800ft of pipe down the hole, all I had to do was send one jell swipe during my 12hr shift. They brought up a 3ft piece of pipe, the tool was stuck in it. the toolpusher tied the pipe off to the open-top skid with a chain then hook a piece of chain from the tool to the extended boom forklift to try and pull it apart but the chain kept slipping off the pipe. I watched this for about 30 minutes then walked over, there were already all the rig hands and everyone gathered around watching. I told the toolpusher, why don't you hook that pipe under the skid on the open-top instead of trying to chain it to it, so it would be braced against the tank. lol, it pulled right apart. He was damn why didn't I think of that, I went back to my truck and finished watching a movie on my laptop.

To change the tune a bit.

First week on a drilling platform in the gulf. Just learning everyone and they told me there was a guy that was pulling an extra shift. Working 7 n 7, so he was going to work 21 straight days. We worked our shift, he stayed for his shift, and when we got back, he was going to work our shift again. Found out that week that the law was looking for him and he was afraid to go to shore. Well he worked our shift and his shift again. At this time he had been out 35 days. Same thing happen again, so he had been out 49 days. He was suppose to go in on 1st chopper, but was going to pull another 14 days, when his wife called on ship-to-shore.

We had a pusher from Zwolle, La..... need I say more. If you got a ship-to-shore call, that wasn't an emergency, he would put it on the loud speaker and everyone on the rig could hear the conversation. So this is what we heard.....

Wife asked this fellow was he coming home and he told her he wasn't. She didn't hesitate a bit and said, "Just want to let you know that there's gonna be a fuqking at our house tonight and if you want to be in on it, you better get here". And, she hung up the phone.

In just a few minutes, the fellow was sitting on the heliport steps, bag in hand, waiting on the 2nd chopper.

He never came back, so we dont know if he got another job or the law got him.