Job 20 (2)
One of the short timers ended up being a source of jolly good entertainment for "old salts" like me and the two guys from somewhere in northern Ontario who had accumulated several weeks of experience.
This tall lanky, sort of clumsy character showed up one day and managed to secure himself the position of lease hound. He walked over to the rig to start work. One of the northern Ontario roughnecks noticed he was wearing only his normal street clothes. He approached the guy and initiated a short conversation.
He said to the guy, "The change shack is right over there if you want to put your work clothes on."
The new guy gave him a dozy look and asked, "Why would I want to do that?"
I remember the roughneck giving him a funny look and shrugging.
While the guy was walking around the rig with his spraygun he would occasionally pause to observe the work we were doing on the rig floor. I guess he was somewhat awed by the procedures which, to the uninitiated, tend to appear quite ... well, insane. Then he made the biggest mistake of his budding oil patch career. He told one of the Ontario roughnecks, "They'll never get me up there doing that!!"
The roughneck came straight up to the doghouse where several of us were gathered and promptly told the driller, "Do you know what that new guy just said to me?"
"Oh, yeah," said the driller, "We'll see about that. We'll get him up here for the next round."
It turned out that night we were charged with performing one of the more unpleasant operations on the rig floor. The "jets", three holes in the drillbit which allow high pressure drilling mud to be sprayed into the hole had become plugged. We had to pull all of the pipe out of the hole to replace the bit or clear the jets.
Ordinarilly, when the pipe is pulled out of the hole, gravity keeps the mud out of the pipes we unscrew. When the jets are plugged though, the mud remains in the pipe. If you unscrew the pipe while the mud is still in the pipe, about eighteen meters worth, it comes splashing out like Niagara Falls.
To avoid this splashing mud a "mudcan" is employed. The mudcan is wrapped around the pipe above and below the tool joint (where the pipe is screwed together,) and the pipes are separated. A five or six inch hose connected to the mud can directs the mud off to the sump.
This tall lanky, sort of clumsy character showed up one day and managed to secure himself the position of lease hound. He walked over to the rig to start work. One of the northern Ontario roughnecks noticed he was wearing only his normal street clothes. He approached the guy and initiated a short conversation.
He said to the guy, "The change shack is right over there if you want to put your work clothes on."
The new guy gave him a dozy look and asked, "Why would I want to do that?"
I remember the roughneck giving him a funny look and shrugging.
While the guy was walking around the rig with his spraygun he would occasionally pause to observe the work we were doing on the rig floor. I guess he was somewhat awed by the procedures which, to the uninitiated, tend to appear quite ... well, insane. Then he made the biggest mistake of his budding oil patch career. He told one of the Ontario roughnecks, "They'll never get me up there doing that!!"
The roughneck came straight up to the doghouse where several of us were gathered and promptly told the driller, "Do you know what that new guy just said to me?"
"Oh, yeah," said the driller, "We'll see about that. We'll get him up here for the next round."
It turned out that night we were charged with performing one of the more unpleasant operations on the rig floor. The "jets", three holes in the drillbit which allow high pressure drilling mud to be sprayed into the hole had become plugged. We had to pull all of the pipe out of the hole to replace the bit or clear the jets.
Ordinarilly, when the pipe is pulled out of the hole, gravity keeps the mud out of the pipes we unscrew. When the jets are plugged though, the mud remains in the pipe. If you unscrew the pipe while the mud is still in the pipe, about eighteen meters worth, it comes splashing out like Niagara Falls.
To avoid this splashing mud a "mudcan" is employed. The mudcan is wrapped around the pipe above and below the tool joint (where the pipe is screwed together,) and the pipes are separated. A five or six inch hose connected to the mud can directs the mud off to the sump.
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Created: Aug 2007
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Gascombe Drilling (Later named New Discovery Drilling) - Roughneck, Motorman
Exactly one day after arriving back in Alberta the two of us were hired. I started out as a roughneck. After about a month with quittings and firings I was promoted to motorman. Motorman was still a dirty, dangerous, backbreaking job. But as motorman you could now scream obscenities at "your" roughnecks and order them around as if you were now a drill sargant.
I managed to get through the next three or so months without any major injuries. I did have a few close calls of the sort common on the rigs in those days. I came close to having both legs amputated while working in the pit at the top of the hole while installing the BOP's (BlowOut Preventers).
It is difficult to know what kind of injury may have resulted from another incident on the rig. As motorman it was my job to "spin chain". Without going into a lot of detail, spinning chain involved putting three loops of steel chain around the drill pipe and using it to spin the next piece of pipe to the drill stem.
A malfunctioning piece of equipment on the rig floor was spewing hydraulic oil everywhere including the chain I was using. The driller, who controlled the makeup cathead was a raving maniac with the strength of several ordinary men. He used all of this strength when activating the makeup cathead so let me tell you, that chain just burned around the pipe.
During one such maniacal operation and due to the hydraulic oil smothering the chain, I lost the chain completely... ten feet or so of this chain shot through my hands in a split second. I thought little of the event at that time but years later I asked myself what would have happened if the chain had looped around my arm or wrist... in the event, I suppose I would have been lucky if my body inertia was sufficient compared to strength of the bone and sinew of my arms, to have the chain simply rip my arm right off. It seems the only alternative to this picture is one in which I would have gone along with the chain, three times around that 3 and one-half inch pipe in the space of a few milliseconds. True, the second scenario would probably be least painless since it would certainly result in instant death.
Having your arm ripped off at the shoulder would be a lot more painful... and you would have to sit around the rig smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee with your good arm until an ambulance arrived from town... which could take a while.