Saturday in Western Australia

On the rig we have 160 people.  There is 20 different nationalities on the rig.  I am an ex-pat because I come from another country.  The camp boss has to cook to please all these different people.  I still have not tried the pork and beans over toast for breakfast.  I have been eating kangaroo -they serve it twice a week. Alot of lamb chops are served.  The pastry's have been ignored because of weight gain.  But, they are plentiful and look great.  Europeans put gravy on their meat, every meal.  I have learn to eat different kinds of cheeses -who knows what their names are.  I am a true lover of dates.  I snack on them all day long. I drink water with every meal cause the milk is warm and comes in a box and the juices are just heavy duty with calories.  Once in while-Thursdays when the barge comes in-we get soda drinks but they only last a couple of days.  The food is abundant here but weird.  Cereal is funny beacuse of the names instead of rice krispies they have rice bubbles!  I can't complain because the wieght problem continues to exist.  Well G'day.

Friday

So yesterday there was a black out drill.  They shut everything down and then re-start everything.  The drill is designed to test all the back up equipment.  Well, shutting down the A.C. in the middle of the day was not a good thing.  The heat from the air, all the equipment and being in a confined space was immediate.  Then the AC did not come back on after the 15 minute shut down. What did the pioneers ever do without AC.  This huge vessel has so many back up generators and the purpose of the drill is to make sure they come on. This whole rig is manufacturing plant on a boat.  It runs 24/7 and has a crew of 160 people to keep it running 24/7. 

Thursday in the Indian Ocean

The oil and gas industry has a dark cloud hanging over it for envirnmental damage.  Since the Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico 2 years ago, alot of new rules have be set in place.  One example, yesterday one of the cranes on the rig (we have 4 of them) had a hydraulic hose break.  Ok mechanical failures occur.  The workers were on top of the situation. When the engine was shut off , the containment of hydraulic fluid went to loss of containment.  It was determined that 8 ounces stayed in the catch tray below the engine but 4 oz of hydraulic fluid sprayed into the air which utltimately went into the ocean.  We had to notify, safety, envirnmental groups , onshore management and fill out reports for the Australian coast guard. All for 4 oz.
The other day we saw a hard hat floating in the water. Again, we had to call coast guard and put our emergencey response team on alert.  If there was a hat-where was the body.   After the monitoring the hat, it was determined it must of  flown off a worker.  More reports-why wasn't the worker wearing a chin strap to hold down the hat. Another envirnmental report for waste going into the ocean.  It is nice to have everyone on alert and being green with mother nature.  The reporting is what is timely and did I mention with every report their is a fine for loss of containment.  See in Utah we don't have to worry about things going into the ocean.  In the Great Salt Lake-everything would just float and stay on top.  Enjoy the mountains-we have none out here.

Wednesday

It is interesting that after working a 12 hour day that you sit down to write about what you did and nothing is exciting.  Who really wants to know about the reports I work on.  Who understands the importance of getting the sub sea department to do their matrix training so certification can go from 79% to 82%.  Why is it important to fill out the IADC codes every 15 minutes instead of once an hour (tracking of downtime). Yesterday, the chopper arrived with crew change. 19 of my leaders who I have been working with the last 3 weeks, were able to go home.  Good for them.  Now I get to start training with this new crew. I call it groundhog training.
Everyday for safety we talk about gloves. Wearing the proper gloves. Yesterday 2 workers cut their fingers by not wearing the proper gloves.  They are hurting from their wounds and I am hurting because days without a hurt went back to Zero.  It is like telling your kids not to do something and you turn around and they are doing what you just told them not to do. 
Today in Australia is Anzac day.  This is like Memorial Day for the United States.  At noon all the service veterans are meeting on the helideck for a recognition picture.  Well, lets get another day going!  One more whine factor-working 25 days straight with no day off and no where to go is getting old!.  Whew now that the pity party is over-I better get back to work.

Tuesday on the Frontier

Our drilling operations is different on this well site.  We have the rights to drill on an oil field called the Janz oil field.  We drill a hole using 36 inch pipe. We then fill it with cement. We then go a quarter of mile and drill another 36 inch hole.  Then fill it with cement. We go back to the first hole and drill through the cement.  This time the pipe is 22 inches wide.  Then fill it up with cement.  Basically, we are drilling two holes to find the oil. An interesting fact is that we don't drill straight down.  We do what they call directional drilling. You have more of chance of finding hydrocarbons (oil) going in to the reserve sideways than you do by going straight down. We continue drilling down until we hit the oil and at that time we will be using 9 inch pipe.  Each pipe is 90 feet long.  The plan is to hit oil at 5200 feet below the seafloor.  We first have to drop pipe into 1850 feet of ocean to get to the sea floor.  With wind on the ocean and waves the vessel is constantly moving, the currents in the ocean push the pipe and the hydrostatic pressure from the seafloor crushes the pipe.  It gets really complicated keeping the pipe from moving in the wrong direction.  We cement each section of the hole to keep the seafloor from crushing the pipe.   Drilling operations 101 has now come to an end.
I saw a whale yesterday.  They swim fast and are huge!

Monday

Last night after being asleep for a whopping 90 minutes.  The fire alarm goes off.  This is panic city until you hear the Captain saying this is only a drill.  You go from high anxiety of a real fire to being hateful that you have to wake up and do a drill.  Trust the system is not valid during sleep time!  We drill to have a 160 people go from what they were doing to the the muster station by their assigned life boat.  The perfect world is 8 minutes to muster.  Last night we did it in 11 minutes.  Now the threat is to do another drill sometime during the day to get closer to 8 minutes.  In all the accidents on an oil rig of having a fire then blowing up is 16 minutes. So, they like for us to be at our life boats in 8 minutes 3 minutes to load and drop off the side and then 5 minutes to get away from the rig before it explodes.  Did I mention that gas is a bad thing on the rig.
When you are drilling for hydrocarbons (oil) you first hit gas pockets. If this gas enters the drill pipe and starts its journey to the surface it expands rapidly.  If we are drilling at 5000 feet and the gas bubble is the size of a tennis ball-by the time it rises to the surface, it has grown from the oxygen difference.  Typically, the gas bubble is now a cloud of gas and sparks from the equipment moving will set off the fire with a huge explosion.  When gas does enter the pipe, the drillers pour chemicals into the pipe to dilute or counter the gas. Just like we take anti acid pills for heartburn. These chemicals are dumped in seconds of the sensors going off. The next line of defense is shutting the section where the gas is. This allows the gas to escape into the ocean away from our rig.  Alot happens really fast.  When gas is in the zone we are drilling, all the hot work -welders, tools and moving parts stop working until the gas problem goes away.  In the meantime, we are mustering at our life boats preparing for evacuation.  And you thought road rage was bad!

Sunday on a Rig

Today is Sunday.  On the oil rig there is no such thing as a Sunday or even holidays aren't celebreated.  We are being paid to produce every minute of every hour.  If the drillers aren't drilling-the revenue stops.  If the rig breaks down it works out to be about $27,000 per 30 minutes.  To avoid breakdowns we do preventative maintenance to avoid downtime.  It is like your refirigerator door will not open after 500 openings.  So, make a plan to replace the hinges at 490 openings.  Now take that simple logic and times it by the one million parts that are moving on the rig-it is complex.
Meal time is always interesting. It is 5:15 am and I go to get my lovely bowl of oatmeal.  The guy next to me is on his lunch break so he is having a sandwich and some soup. The guy sitting across from me is having his dinner break so he is eating lasagna or lamb chops.  Weird smells for breakfast time.  Can you imagine being the cook-we have 4 chefs and 8 assistant chefs to feed 160 people 24 hours a day.  Remember, no downtime - especially for meals.
Last night another earthquake in Indonesia which is like Salt Lake City to Montana in distance.  We were on standby for a tsunami.  No tsunami occurred.
Last night a roustabout was using a grinding saw when the blade sheared off and a piece of the blade cut open his knee.  He will need surgery but there are no helicopters until Monday.  Poor guy has to sit in the medic office until Monday's chopper.  Safety is no accident.  How do you plan for equipment failure??
Good thing my job is charts, reports and coaching for better leadership behavior-less things can go wrong that would result in blood.

Indian Ocean-Saturday

Today was special.  At 10:59 am the rig stopped work for 1 minute of silence.  A flag was raised and then the 11 members of the Horizon who lost their lives 2 years ago were read over the intercom.  We do not know these 11 souls but the point is the memory of lost lives.  Safety is the key out here, but, mechanical failures and human errors always will be part of the repetition of the work.  It is a dangerous enviornment out here on an oil rig.  In the past 2 weeks we have had 10 incidents.  Cut fingers, doors slamming shut and hitting legs, parts falling off the derick, tripping hazards on the slick pipe deck.  Our goal is no hurt every day.  We can only tackle one day at at time.  We are 2 days now without an incident.  We just want to go home the same way we arrived.

April, 21, 2012