Working on an Oil Rig is Fun!

When it rains, the ground turns into soggy clay, which means you can’t move this rolling monster. Well, I’m on my second day of being rained out, after experiencing 35 degree weather for a while. Thirty five degree weather is fun, because those coveralls, hardhats, and gloves you see everyone wearing is mandatory. Hooray for heatstroke.

So I’m bored. Stuck here Grainde Prairie, about two weeks before I come home. Only me, this hotel room, and this laptop. Enjoy some rig photos. This is where your gasoline comes from! The whole rig folds up and drives away when we’re finished with the site. Our rig only stays on location to “service” the well–once it’s flowing, we drive off and go to the next hole. Long days, good pay, and lots of stupid, heavy, awkward things to pack around all day.

It’s probably hard to tell, and hard to visualize, but our rig only includeds the red platform. The big tall white unti with the two platforms on it, and the guys standign on top is a snubbing unit. It comes on the back of a truck, and gets hoisted up and we bolt it to the top of the well. It’s to remove, insert pipe into the oil well while it’s under pressure. With the pictured well, it produces naturual gas. So if one were to release the pressure, you’d have lots of fun explosive gasses shooting out! It happened to us a week before, with a mixture of gasses and some crude oil pooping out of the top of the well, which is bad.

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ahh that makes ol lunner a little nostalgic…so do you have to climb up the derek and  pull pipe?  i remember working on doubles in Slave Lake and Neuralta, and wishing a well head would blow up and put me out of my mysery. 

I’m not important enough to be up the derek, yet.

I get to spend the summer days on the floor, running the power tongs. Day dreaming about something other than pulling pipe. The time seems to go by fast, but just not quite fast enough.

Doesn’t look like fun but i bet it pays $$$ :smile:

Forgive me, but isn’t the correct spelling “derrick?”

Otherwise, it sounds like a story about a guy named Derek having weird things done to him. :astonished:

hee-yuck, we don’t appreciate grammar 'round these parts, sir

Well it does get quite lonely on the derricks, so one can assume that a Derek would be a rather popular fellow!!! :imp:

Its not exactly fun work, but its not terrible work either.  At least being a roughneck you get to do something all day long.  Its raining like hell up here in Fort Nelson, and the lease in smack dab in the middle of a swamp.  I sat in the shack most of the day playing solitare watching the roughnecks sling pipe trying to recover a tool.  Only another week of this shit hole… and its back to GP to work another week in the shop.  W00t!

There is nothign quite like pulling a 12 hour day on 4 hours of sleep. I should be in bed by now.

I sometimes work with service rigs like rangerwrecker’s, while Hydraulic Fracturing. Basically I pump high pressure fluid down the well tubing at extremely high pressure using one or more of the diesel train engine powered pumps in the photo. The pressure is great enough to start a fracture in the subsurface rock strata, maybe a Km or more beneath me. The more fluid that gets pumped, the longer and greater the fracture(s) grow. Frac sand is usually pumped in a jel suspension to prop the fractures open preventing them from closing up. The whole process can take up to a few hours, but in the end the permeability of the rock is increased, and the oil and gas flow from that well will be greatly improved. Havn’t done a job with rangerwrecker’s crew yet. Maybe when I’m at my new company?  :smiley:

In the photo, we did a high-rate frac that only used water. About 1600 cubic meters of water were pumped through the 3" pipe at a rate of around 10 cubic meters per minute. Pressure was probably sitting around 40Mpa, about 5800PSI throughout the job.

1 day on an oil rig works out to about 1 week at McDonalds. After taxes. 

How much does some one make in one week at mc-barf ?

300-350 maybe?

Here? To start I think it’s about $12.00 an hour, x 40 Hour week, ~480 less taxes… Yeah thats good days work after taxes. It might sound like a lot, but everything costs more here, especially living. Well, unless you live in a free hotel and have your meals paid for… must be nice.

Tangy, I didn’t live in a hotel for free!  I got paid 55$/day to live in a free hotel :wink: 

But of course you get your nothern living allowance which is pretty nice too! 

im getting $65 per day right now for living in a free hotel… the only thing though… is there is nothing to do in ft Nel… fuck i cant wait to get back to GP.  Aparently timmy’s there now… lets take bets on how many days it takes him to get a job… My bet is 8 days.

I bet Joel falls in love with a trucker named Bob while in Fort Nelson. 

HOLY FUCK DUDE!!! I just met the love of my life… His name is BOB!

The most amazing part is I never knew who Delirious was until right now.

well now you know… hey landon… have you met up with tim yet?.. when i get back next week, we should get all the rupertites together and have a couple beers.