Don't Shoot, Troubleshoot!

Today was an interesting day at work. And by interesting, I mean that lots of stuff went wrong. My job can be very, very easy when nothing goes wrong, but this is the oilfield. Something ALWAYS goes wrong.

Today we installed a new sensor, found out it didn't work, lost signal about a dozen times to our tool, had two unsuccessful attempts to reprogram it while drilling before the third time worked, and got some really terrible looking data from downhole that we spent hours trying to tidy up. And we just unjammed a week's worth of clogged paper from our log printer. Yes, a week. The last page I pulled out had the date "October 21, 2009" printed on it.

So in case you couldn't tell, a lot of the work I do involves troubleshooting any one of a thousand different problems. Which (like my post about job ownership) reminds me of my interview for this job.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~Flashback to July 2007~*~*~*~*~*~

It was the second floor conference room at a Hilton on the outskirts of urban Houston, located in the middle of a thriving? Middle-Eastern and Indian neighborhood. It was two o'clock in the morning and I was full of the delicious Tex-Mex and Margaritas they had treated us to for dinner. But we were not about to go to bed, we were about to start our first real interviews of the "interview weekend" they had arranged for us.

It was an open forum, and they would ask us all a selection of questions as we took turns standing in front of the entire group. I, as usual when speaking/performing in public in turns, volunteered to go first (I hate waiting for that sort of thing. It always makes me much more nervous and skittish when I finally do take the spotlight). But there was one question that they asked me that I was almost completely unprepared for, and I will never forget it.

They asked, "Have you ever had a MacGyver Moment? Describe a time when you fixed something with whatever resources you had available."

I could not think of a single instance. Actually, the problem was, I could think of one. Unfortunately it wasn't my story, it was my friend Janet's, and for the life of me my brain could not un-fix itself from Janet's story long enough to remember one of my own.

You see Janet had gone through the job-interview stage of college recently, and she had described to me an instance when she was in a bit of a bind shortly before a particular interview. She had no clean dress pants to wear, and was therefore planning to wear a skirt. But Janet played rugby and bruised easily and often so pantyhose were a necessity. Unfortunately for Janet, she could find no normal pantyhose in her room that were not full of runs. She could however, find a pair of flesh-colored thigh-high pantyhose. And since the fates were not making it easy for her, she could not find a garter belt. Searching about her room for anything that would serve, she set eyes on a box of paperclips on her desk and was quickly inspired to string them together for such a purpose. She was successful, made it to the interview on time, and was only frustrated that it seemed too inappropriate to describe such an example of her problem-solving skills to the interviewer at the moment.

So standing in front of the interviewers and a room full of fellow interviewees, I naturally thought it would be a much more appropriate time to tell such a story. I related the story as if I had been Janet, employing my theatrical skills to do so. Then and now I have felt strong pangs of guilt for perjuring myself in my interview but I do solve problems similarly, if not that particular problem.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Return to present day~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Today was a PERFECT example of a "MacGyver Moment" for me. There are four huge pumps that push the mud into the hole. The mud acts as a coolant, a lubricant, a safeguard against the borehole collapsing, a medium to transmit our data through, and many other things necessary to our operation. On each pump I installed a stroke counter sensor to monitor how fast the pistons are moving at any given time. Our computers take the strokes-per-minute that these sensors measure and calculate the gallons-per-minute being pumped downhole, and these are two very important numbers that we track throughout drilling operations.

These sensors are very simple devices, but not quite perfect for their environment. They are similar to the sensors pictured here (a photo I found on Google):
Our sensors are small digital counters mounted to C-Clamps like these shown above. Do you see that pointy metal stick that juts out? That rod is pointed down into the frightening part of the pump that houses the huge, fast pistons shooting back and forth as they pump. You line it up so that something on the piston hits the rod with each stroke, causing the sensor to record a tick as the rod moves.

The rod can move forward or backward and record a count each time. One of the major problems with this sensor is that if the rod moves too far, it will count twice as many strokes as its supposed to.

At one point throughout the evening, one of our stroke counters was going a little haywire. It was showing twice or three times as many strokes as we expected, so I went down to check on it.

The issue was not that the rod was being over-extended. In this case, the piston was hitting the sensor rod so fast that it bounced back and forth a number of times each stroke. The rod was dancing beautifully in the air and causing horrific things to our logs.

What should have looked like this (note the green lines in particular):

Looked like this:

We readjusted the arrangement of the pump stroke counter numerous times to see if a different alignment might ameliorate the problem. This had worked on previous occasions but it failed today. We were out of luck.

I sat in the my unit thinking to myself and brainstormed possible solutions. What if I attached some sort of mass to the end to slow it down? But no, that would create more of a pendulum-effect and would probably exacerbate the situation.

But then I had my epiphany. What about the reverse? What if I attached a mass to slow it down at the joint? My mind immediately scanned the itemized list of supplies we have available to us, and a quick glance around my unit afforded me a very "MacGyver" (if not particularly elegant) solution.

And so here you have it. I solved the problem with a wadded up paper towel and some electrical tape. And that was only because I was too lazy to fetch the duct tape. It might not work forever, but it will probably work at least until this well is drilled which is more than long enough.

Take that MacGyver! I've got more of your moments than you would know what to do with.

Ahh, what a work of art.