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Thread: Just a story

  1. #21
    In Remembrance / Boolit Grand Master Boaz's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by rancher1913 View Post
    well I was going to try and post a photo of what night shift left us, but can not get anything to work. we do 14 on and 7 off and with travel we are doing 16 hour days, gets hard on an old man but ranching just don't make ends meet. I am part of a coil tubing crew, kind of like a real portable workover rig, we do drill outs after fracking, fish jobs, pyrotechnics, and clean outs. we carry 20,000 feet of 2 and 3/8 pipe on a big reel and use a special injector head to stuff it down the well, the head acts as a snubbing unit and hoist all in one. we use water to help pull the pipe through the well, kind of like a big jetter, and have a motor and mill that is run by the water for drilling. we run about 6 barrels a minute down the tube at pressures around 5000 psi, sometimes as high as 8000 psi.

    been off a week so today was our "monday" and night shift left us with a birdsnest of pipe on the reel with half of it hanging off, if you have ever seen the photos of when a snubbing unit slips and makes spaghetti, well its kind of like that but in a nice roll.

    just for comparison for the oldtimers, we did a fishing job one time and had a double crew for some reason so we decided to set a drill record. from the time we pulled onto location to the time we were headed in hole was 1 hour, we got the fish first try and were packed up and gone with a total time of 5 hours. I think the depth was about 15,000 feet, we were able to go 180 feet per minute in hole but had to slow down coming out hole, we were dragging loaded guns that wireline had lost.
    Dang ! Wish you could have got a picture up , hard in my old mind to visualize your 'rig' . You were fishing for a shot tree (perforating) ?
    No turning back , No turning back !

  2. #22
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    Yah wireline was shooting perfs for frac and they lost the guns downhill. One of the other crews fished a set of live guns and just as they broke surface they went off, few hands got so scared from having ball bearings being shot at them they quit right then, one frac tank took a hit but all the rest of the shots hit dirt

  3. #23
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    Have you ever done hydro shocking. We were doing that and I was told not to excede 9500 psi as or pumps were only rated for 10000 psi. Did several that went off at 6000 like they were supposed to but one went to 9500 and still did not go off, we were waiting for the engineer to figure something out when it finally poped, felt like an earthquake and scared a few unsuspecting vip's

  4. #24
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    Sounds like fun , lol .
    No turning back , No turning back !

  5. #25
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    No never 'hydroed' . Helped the shooters put trees together and run em . Usually an easy job , just in and out . Never heard of a tree getting lost .
    No turning back , No turning back !

  6. #26
    Boolit Grand Master bedbugbilly's Avatar
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    Sounds like a crappy experience to me . . . LOL

    Thanks for the story and a daily chuckle Boaz . . . and Happy New Year . . . let it be a good one!

  7. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by bedbugbilly View Post
    Sounds like a crappy experience to me . . . LOL

    Thanks for the story and a daily chuckle Boaz . . . and Happy New Year . . . let it be a good one!
    Thank you sir !
    No turning back , No turning back !

  8. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by starmac View Post
    Maybe you old time roughnecks can answer this for me.
    As I said my short roughneck carreer was iirc in 83, naturally I was the floorhand, they had cut back on the crews, so a crew consisted of a floorhand, motorman, driller and derrick hand. The motorman was also the chainchunker.

    Since it was my first job on a rig, I was called a worm.
    Now the question I would like to ask is about a supposed custom in the oil patch back then.
    Supposedly it was some sort of initiation for all worms, for the crew to pull there pants down and give them a liberal dose of pipe dope.
    Now here is the deal, I am fairly about who gets my pants down and what gets done once we get that far, and roughnecks and pipe dope was never a fantasy of mine, so when they tried, I strongly objected. They didn't try again until we finished the hole and laid the rig down, at witch time there were 2 crews working. Now my strong objections were ignored until I got my old timer out and open.
    Was that actually a custom, and if so, how in the world did that ever get started? or was this just something those crazy coona$$es I worked with dreamed up?
    Yup, heard of it. I'm somewhat like you. I've had a few things tried on me that didn't work. It didn't take long that the oilfield bunch figured out that they didn't fool with this ole country redneck. I was rough, tough and full of snuff in my younger days.
    Anybody that would screw with an old sawmill millwright would be crazy anyway.
    If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.
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  9. #29
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    I threw chain and worked derricks,in the 70s boom in North Dakota. It seemed like all we did on the night shift was trip pipe in an out of the hole.

  10. #30
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    One of two things was happening for your crew to do all the tripping . Ya'll were running the old cheap mill tooth bits (probably Security Bits) good for 24 hours or the evening tire driller was pouring the weight to the bit to wear it out so he wouldn't have to trip it . Been there , lol . When Hughes came out with the carbide button bits (J-22's ,J-33's ) They would stay drilling 3-4 days minimum or up to 6 days in shale . A rough necks dream come true .
    No turning back , No turning back !

  11. #31
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    My old man worked workover rigs for Beckman Oil in Central/western michigan during the eighties. There was one winter that I only saw him one day a month. He worked 16 hour plus days and the days he had off, he slept. It was a rough life for a little feller who wanted his old man.

  12. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by birch View Post
    My old man worked workover rigs for Beckman Oil in Central/western michigan during the eighties. There was one winter that I only saw him one day a month. He worked 16 hour plus days and the days he had off, he slept. It was a rough life for a little feller who wanted his old man.
    Pretty sure it was rougher on the old man.

  13. #33
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    Yes sir . I was a driller , ran pulling units , drove rig up trucks , worked production . It was all every day 7 days a week . I would think you would be proud of your dad ?
    No turning back , No turning back !

  14. #34
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    Criminy, but I LOVE reading this stuff! Born & raised in Texas (Houston), and heard a lot about drilling etc., but never got involved. Been to Spindletop (Uncle Johnny was a petroleum engineer, after flying a B-17 in WWII), and no way anyone born & raised in Houston could NOT know SOMETHING about oil, but not to the level of you guys. And my BIL knows more about refineries than GOD, designed and built 'em, but other than that, can't bait a hook - but I digress...
    Echo
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    One of the most endearing sights in the world is the vision of a naked good-looking woman leaving the bedroom to make breakfast. Bolivar Shagnasty (I believe that Lazarus Long also said it, but I can't find any record of it.)

  15. #35
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    Was workin for Linmor Drilling Just west of Bartons Chapel Tx . We were changing bits and goin back in the hole , got about 2/3 of the long string in the hole headed for bottom . Already mudded up mixing bar , suppose to a gas several possible gas zones.
    We started smelling gas then drilling mud started flowing out the rotary table , In was a double pole job , no way to get out of the derrick except to ride the blocks down . The derrick man (his name was James , later killed when he ran into a concrete embankment drunk , his car ran on propane , had a 20 gallon tank in the trunk , blew him to pieces) was screaming ...Get me down , get me outta here ! The driller had tied the brake down and him and the other floor hand took off running and disappeared into the mesquites . The toolpusher was there for the bit changin , he ran up to the rig floor screaming Get that man down , get that man down ! I untied the brake handle and tryed to let the pipe in the hole , didn't like but about 10' to be able to set the slips and unlach the elevators . Drill string didn't want to move , it was trying to go up ! Hydrolic pressure from the gas . Set the blocks on the top of the pipe and it slowly went down , set the slips and Started up with the block to get James , he jumped on the elevators and got him down on the floor. And he ran off the location lol ! Toolpusher and me killed the draw works engine and light plant (It was night), mud and gas were blowing about 30' high out of the rotary . We got under the sub and started trying to close the antique blowout preventer , it was a piece of junk . It was the law that you had to have one but no body ever ran maintenance on em . We were struggling with cheater pipes try to turn the wheels to close it and John just stopped and stood there , the gas was so bad you couldn't draw a full breath . I said .. shut it turn that wheel! He said .. I don't remember if it's got rams in it ! My heart sank and I knew we were goin die . Dying in a gigantic fireball wasn't how I want to cash out .The rams are what grabs the pipe to keep it from blowing out of the hole and seals the mud off to stop the blowout . Long story short we got it shut in ......kinda . The rams were junk but they held till Haliburton got there with the bar wagon to get the weight up on the mud . And everyone lived happily ever after !
    No turning back , No turning back !

  16. #36
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    our BOP's set about 20 feet in the air, we have to cycle them each well and visually see the "guts" work. we have gone from the traditional 4 valve set up to the 2 valve combi unit.

    we were on a pad and the company man came running out of his shack yelling to shut everything down, guess he seen a big plume of gas from the flowback tanks headed to our motors, luckily a gust of wind turned it just before it got to us.

    the scariest job I have done so far was in the far southwest corner of wyoming, they had a bad H2S problem so we had monitors and supplied air masks all over. the safety trailer had a green light on top of it, if it turned red and a horn went off you were supposed to drop everything and get a mask on. I was operating the crane and my monitor started beeping and wailing like all get out, got hit with a small pocket of H2S, you will know why they call it stink gas if you ever smell any. held my breath as I was starting to bale when a gust of wind blew it away, nobody else got hit and they all were looking at me like I was crazy, showed them my monitor and the recorded event.

  17. #37
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    The last hole I worked on you could see bubbles in the hole while we were tripping pipe, Like I said earlier, I was a worm and didn't realize what that could mean. Everytime I lit a smoke the motorman/ chain chunker would tell me to put it out, as those bubbkles were gas and dangerous. I kept telling him, if it was too dangerous to smoke it was too dangerous to be there. This went on for quite a while until finally the driller ask what we kept argueing about. I told him and he walked over and looked in the hole, just as the mud was coming up, he jumped back and yelled at the derrick man to bail out and for and to run, and no them bops didn't work. lol
    Tony rode the suicide line down just as she blew out, it never ignited, but sure made a mess out of things. The casing crew had been getting ready and had the casing laid out and the thread protectors removed, we had to wash everything and clean all those threads, what a pita.

  18. #38
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    Quote Originally Posted by rancher1913 View Post
    I was operating the crane
    I never worked at but one location that had a minor H2S problem. I was the Senior Mechanic at the time. I had one gas compressor engine that I could not keep some bearings in without going bad over a short period of time. I finally looked at a current gas analysis and saw the trace of H2S in the fuel gas and figured out what the problem was.

    Anyway, I was also a crane operator, API Certified. Was a API certified Crane Inspector too back in those days. We normally had several crane operators on shift but when the seas were rough, 8-10ft it was me that had to offload and back load the boats. Man, the cargo would be packed in tight. I could get it off easy enough but getting the back load was tough with a boat bouncing around in 8 ft seas was tough to load sitting 80 feet below with a 100 ft of stick on the crane.
    It got worse, I went deep water on floaters. Not only was the boat moving around like a cork in the water, the platform was moving too and I was running a crane with 140 ft of stick.
    I remember one load out that I finished years ago when a squall was coming through, I was finishing up and lifting the riggers off the boat and lighting struck my crane boom.
    If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.
    Samuel Adams

    Sam

  19. #39
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    When I came back from VN, almost nobody was interested in hiring one of us drug-crazed babykillers... except the oilfield. Went to work for Baroid as a mud engineer in 1973 and trained under some of the graybeards that had started as rig builders or roughnecks on steam rigs. Interesting times. Worked mostly in South Texas between Laredo, Victoria, and Brownsville. Spent about 8 months in Farmington. A couple years in North Louisiana. The oilfield of the 70's was quite a bit different from the present day practices. The pipe dope story (called 'Jimmy Gray') rang true... the new guy was usually incapacitated by treachery and two large guys. Never happened to me, but I suspect that was because I was always armed and everyone knew it. (When you have to get out and open gates in the deep brush at 0200, you tend to be more than a little paranoid. There's an area over close to Zapata known as 'mil ojos' or 'thousand eyes' and it's for a reason.) As rough as the business was back then, it was at least fun. You could do anything you were big enough to do and nobody thought much about it. Been known to take a drink. The only rule back then was that there was no malingering from drink... it doesn't matter if you hurt as long as you do your job. I've watched derrickmen too drunk to walk merrily ride the elevators to an ice-covered board and never bat an eye. Saw a couple of them quit when they were told they couldn't ride anymore... had to climb the ladder. Watched some set fire to a guys boots to wake him up and get him back to work. OSHA would have a field day now. Retired in 2012... it just isn't fun anymore and I'm too beat-up to start over.

  20. #40
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rufus Krile View Post
    it just isn't fun anymore and I'm too beat-up to start over.
    I'm in the same situation. My body refuses to take it any longer. I was blessed to get a desk job so I might go another year or two.
    If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.
    Samuel Adams

    Sam

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