Devastated

Devastated from so much sleep!

After a week and a half of being home, I have finally managed to switch my sleep schedule from days to nights. All it took was a full day of things to do, things that would keep me from rolling into bed and falling asleep at noon. So yesterday after a night of watching movies, I went running in the morning, went to church, then cleaned my house before spending all afternoon at a holiday barbecue. I went to bed at 9pm (which was a feat of endurance I barely managed) and slept 11 hours till I woke up feeling half dead.

I did this because I have to spend time in the office this week for training activities; otherwise I would have been content to just keep to the old schedule until they sent me back to the rig. I am not looking forward to this.

I should be careful what I wish for!

Every morning my inbox receives a complicated Excel spreadsheet tracking the schedule of rig operations over the course of the entirety of the job. This keeps track of how much time they expect a task to happen, how much time it actually takes, and how much "Non Productive Time" (NPT) accrues.

I have always kept close track of the schedule, for it will give me a pretty good indication of whether I'll be getting a good night's sleep, whether I'll have days of prep work for the next run cramped into a few short hours, and whether my day hand is going to be in a relaxed mood, or in an off-the-wall stressed-out mood.

I've been keeping a closer eye on it lately, and wishing with every other breath for any delay that might stretch it out further. Due to a complicated string of "ifs", I will likely be able to take vacation when my dad comes to visit me in June if we finish drilling this well AFTER this coming Monday. As it stands, we only have one section left to drill, and with tools already in the hole as of this morning things were not looking so optimistic on that front. Don't lose hope for me, though, for even if we finish drilling before Monday I'll still *probably* be able to take the vacation, it's just not so assured.

When I woke up this afternoon I was buoyed to learn at the evening meeting that a problem was found with some part or other. This required us to pull the entire drilling assembly out of the hole to inspect the part. That would take us at least another 24 hours to get back to where we were before the problem was discovered, so that put me closer to my goal of Done Drilling Monday.

We were about 1000 feet from being out of the whole and I was mentally calculating and reviewing possible timelines when my entire unit started shaking violently. This lasted about 7 seconds, and I quickly went back to surfing the internet and generally killing time.

We later learned that the driller had accidentally "Crowned Out". This means that he let the TopDrive hit the Crown Block. The TopDrive is a huge piece of machinery that holds the hundreds of thousands of pounds of drillpipe, lifts it up and down, rotates the entire drilling assembly up to 200 RPM, and basically is the motor that controls the whole drilling operation. The Crown block is the fixed block and tackle at the top of the derrick over which the drill line is run. "Crowning Out" in my unofficial explanation, is like driving a truck into a load-bearing structure.

Luckily nobody was hurt when debris rained down on the drill floor from the 100ft high impact. The entire derrick was immediately cordoned off and two crew members were even stationed outside my unit for a few hours to make sure nobody was hit with any subsequent debris (of which there has been none). The drilling assembly is still 1000 feet below the rig floor level, and it will be staying there until a full inspection can be done. They are not moving a thing until it has been deemed safe to do so.

And then there's the repairs. They won't know how extensive those will be until they've performed the inspection. Current estimates have this entire process taking at least 4-5 days. I have already been informed by the Company Man that since I am an "extra" employee, I'll be going home on the next available helicopter.

I guess Wednesday the 13th turned out to be a lucky day for me, in a rather unlucky way. Perhaps I should start a new superstition!

Healing Powers

I spent a couple of hours on the rig floor where all the main drilling activity takes place today. It's a noisy, messy place filled with all sorts of things that can injure, maim and kill, so I don't usually spend a great deal of time up there. But today we were pulling my tools out of the hole and laying them down on the deck, so it was necessary I be there to ensure they were handled properly.

I was watching the rig hands doing their work, moving about with industry as they cleaned mud off pipe, raised up onerous pieces of steel with the air hoist, and performed all the various rig operations with energy and efficiency.

Little did I know that this was not the normal state of affairs.

At one point, one of the men in charge came to me and said I should market myself as part of a new healthcare plan. I looked at him perplexedly, and he explained that since I had arrived on the rig floor, I had magically healed all sorts of complaints. Two men complaining of sore backs, one with an injured hand, one with a bum knee and one with a staph infection were now all laboring away as if they hadn't a care in the world!

It's unlikely I can capitalize upon my newfound therapeutic aura, unfortunately, but it makes me wonder why oil companies haven't thought to bring more women to rigs as a way to increase productivity. Perhaps I can somehow market a new scheme that way!

Did I ever mention?

This rig recycles! Their recycling program is the most comprehensive one I have seen since I moved to the South over a year ago! This, however, still only consists of recycling cans and bottles. Although I have heard them stress the importance of recycling on the rig, which is far more than I can say for any other establishment I've been to lately.

Surprise, surprise I'm still digging out the plastics and aluminums from our trash bins regardless of the rig's campaigning. Naturally they do not compete with my own avid recycling at home, but it is nice for me to hope that the hundreds of bottles and cans consumed out here aren't going straight to a landfill.

It's practically got me singing "God Save the Queen!"

The Opposite of That

It is a flaw of mine to be overly concerned with how other people perceive me. This can sometimes be beneficial, for it makes me more diligent and conscientious in my work, but it can also lead me to overly stress out about my mistakes.

I have had the good fortune to be working on a deepwater rig running high-tier tools with two other women from my company, whom I truly respect and like.

Unfortunately I keep making mistakes. I cannot seem to go an entire 12-hr shift without doing something (or forgetting something) of dire consequence (or importance). This is surprisingly easy to do, because of the great deal of scrutiny paid to each detail of this job due to the expense of deepwater work.

Each time one of my mistakes or omissions is found out, I see my coworkers' eyes widen in what I assume to be horror.

- "You forgot to check the resistance between each tool and it's extender lead?!"
- "You let the rig crew take the sensor down without supervising them?!?!"
- "You wrote what in that email?!!!?!!!?!!!"

I try to avoid making too many excuses, but I can't help trying to defend myself in what seems to be an unreasonably catastrophic loss of my esteem in their eyes. This morning, for example, the aforementioned sensor had just been removed and replaced by the rig crew, and alas, not yours truly. The subsequent re-calibration of said sensor proved unsuccessful so I went up to the rig floor, shaken and cringing from the minor hysteria my day-hand experienced when I told her of my actions.

I spent the next two hours (past the time I was supposed to be in bed already) troubleshooting the 30 lb solid steel sensor. I dragged a replacement up the 3 flights of stairs and hooked it up. No luck. I tried a backup sensor cable which happened to be handy, and went back and forth from the phone to the plug about 6 times to see if I had plugged it into the right place. No dice. I tried the backup cable with the original sensor. No chance. I then got to spend about 45 minutes crawling through the grease, the grime, and the slightly caustic drilling fluid running a new cable. When I plugged it in guess what happened! No signal!

Sigh. Or scream. Yes, a great big ROAR of frustration might be appropriate at that moment.

My day hand came up to the rig floor to see what else we could check. Then we went to the series of plugs where all our sensors are plugged in and she asked:

"Where did you plug it in?"
I point where.
"That's the wrong plug. It's the one right below it."
"No it's not; I followed the mnemonic!"
"The Horse Died Placing 12th?"
"No! It's 'The Dead Horse Placed 12th'"
and so on and so forth.... until I realized I was wrong.
At least we were both able to laugh about it.

I think the moral of the story is that my day hand needs to come to the terms with the fact that I'm not perfect. I'm still learning, and I'm GOING to make mistakes.

Either that or come up with a better mnemonic that isn't so easy to flip around. I'm currently leaning towards: "Theo Huxtable Didn't Pass 12th [grade]". No way I can flip the H & the D around on that one!

Speed and Satisfaction

Wow! It's been a busy few days. They have been drilling so fast out here I've barely been able to keep up. They Rate of Penetration (ROP as we call it) has been upwards of 120 feet per hour, when I was previously (both in Wyoming and on the shelf) never faster than 20 feet per hour. Back in Arkansas they smoked through the holes at 300 feet per hour, but I didn't quite have the responsibilities I do here.

While we were drilling I was constantly alert and on edge for my shift. With each new piece of pipe in the hole, the rig would pump a "sweep" which consists of a few dozen gallons of mud that are heavier than the standard mud. This caused my tools signal problems, which in turn caused us to lose about 10 feet of data every 100 feet. These gaps, while tolerated by the client (they should tolerate them after all, they wanted the sweeps so it is THEIR fault!!!) are anathema to me and ALL I have been taught as an MWD Engineer. We have been indoctrinated in the belief that gaps in data are bad. VERY VERY BAD.

So I was ever monitoring the signal, changing parameters on our computers in vain hopes that I might not lose so much data each time a sweep came around. I also would monitor our sensor readings. I was constantly on the lookout that no one had knocked off a pump-stroke counter, that the hookload sensor measuring the weight of the drillstring was still within calibration, and that the depth of the hole was being tracked accurately. Then I would submit the survey data to the directional driller, the static density values to the mudloggers, enter the sonic tool's readings into their little spreadsheet, and keep a constant log of what was happening at all times. The total time spent drilling was actually only 20 hours, but even though it was spaced over the course of a few days I am glad it's over with.

So our tools are out of the hole. I have dumped their memory, processed their data and uploaded the logs to the client's servers. I unloaded two sets of batteries in the blazing sun, and now have what feels like a slight case of heat exhaustion. Luckily I am done. There is no more work to do until tomorrow afternoon, when the next set of tools arrives on the boat. I'm tired, and I'm going to eat some dinner, submit my morning report once the clock ticks past midnight, and go to bed early because I've earned it today. It's a job well done.

Until tomorrow when it starts all over again.

Ghost Stories

At one point on my first hitch on this rig, I overheard someone mention that it was haunted. I was instantly intrigued, and I also managed to hear what sounded to me like the rig was previously a hotel where a lot of people died of unnatural causes at one point.

Now this sounded rather far-fetched so I dismissed it as complete fiction, but I was still fascinated.

A couple of days ago I heard the full story. In 1988 there was a major disaster in the North Sea where the Piper Alpha production platform exploded, killing 167 oilfield workers. More info can be found here. According to the story, this rig (before they stuck a derrick on top) was the living quarters where much of the crew for the Piper Alpha lived, separately from the platform itself.

Of course this sounds almost as far-fetched as the hotel story, and it also incites me to dissect it. If the men were killed on the production platform, then why would they haunt the living quarters? And for that matter, how does one haunt an oil rig? The standard ghostly sounds would be completely drowned out by the constant background noise from the rig operations, and any cold chills one might get from a passing specter would be indistinguishable from the over-enthusiastic air conditioning.

I suppose the only effective haunting methods would be those of mischievous poltergeists. They could hide our tools or cause small failures to happen (or whip up the winds so that we cannot load the needed mud into the tanks?). Whatever it is, I'm still skeptical of the entire idea that this rig is haunted, regardless that the whimsical part of me wishes it were true.