by This Is Not a Drill- Just Another Glorious Day in the Oilfield (retail) (epub)
Praise for Don’t Tell Mum I Work on the Rigs, She
Thinks I’m a Piano Player in a Whorehouse
‘This is one of the most split-my-sides-laughing memoirs I think I have ever read . . . that blows along like the North Sea.’
Northern Star
‘This is one of those fantastic read-’em-in-a-day books that has you attached like Velcro from the first paragraph . . . It’s not literature, but it’s not boring . . . A boy’s own romp around the globe, Don’t Tell Mum is perfect for lovers of high adventure/mongrel humour and would attract even the most resistant male readers. It’s Auf Wiedersehen, Pet crossed with Barry Crump on speed and I loved it.’
Wanganui Chronicle
‘Not so much a thriller as a driller, Don’t Tell Mum is our tip for Bloke’s Book of the Year (BBOTY).’
Sunday Telegraph
‘. . . a Boy’s Own yarn from the front line of the oil industry.’
Men’s Style
‘. . . a humorous, politically incorrect boy’s own adventure . . . blokey bonding, brawls and bravado . . .’
The Daily Telegraph
‘. . . literary black gold . . . horrifying and hilarious.’
Sun Herald
‘This is a book for blokes . . . Carter is a kind of modern day Indiana Jones . . . a natural storyteller.’
Sunday Tasmanian
‘. . . a laconic larrikin, with a tale that is full of humour . . . A refreshing memoir, Paul Carter is a genuine Australian character.’
Manly Daily
‘What you have here . . . is that rare situation of somebody who not only has a story to tell but the ability to tell it. Carter’s anecdotes are told with great humour and perfect timing.’
The Age
‘This . . . is not for the fainthearted . . . For less sensitive readers, there is a lot of fun to be had from Carter’s Don’t Tell Mum I Work on the Rigs . . . With his earthy language and character sketches, Carter makes a basic autobiography into one wild ride, leaving you wondering how this guy isn’t dead.’
Entrophy
‘A torrent of tall tales from a life less ordinary.’
The Press and Journal, Aberdeen
‘A fascinating and funny life story well worth the read.’
Sportsladsmag.com
‘The mass appeal is obvious. Full of colourful stories and well-worn anecdotes accumulated over almost two decades working on the oil rigs.’
TNT Magazine
‘Carter’s tales are always entertaining and offer a few unblinking aperçus about Big Oil seen from the inside.’
Scotland on Sunday
‘Ever wondered what happens to the boys from the movie Jackass when they grow up? They become oil rig workers. Shit happens, so some of the stuff that Paul Carter and his friends get hit with probably isn’t their fault—although sitting at the top of an oil rig derrick during a thunderstorm is probably inviting God to hit you with something. Otherwise most of the madness and mayhem, interspersed with the occasional car or motorcycle accident and totally over the top practical jokes, are clearly all down to Paul. As for the chain-smoking monkeys, pool-playing ferrets and bartending orangutans . . . if the humans are crazy the animals should be too.’
Tony Wheeler, founder of Lonely Planet
THIS IS NOT
A DRILL
First published in 2007
Copyright © Paul Carter 2007
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone:
(61 2) 8425 0100
Fax:
(61 2) 9906 2218
Email:
[email protected]
Web:
www.allenandunwin.com
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Carter, Paul, 1969-.
This is not a drill: just another glorious day in the oilfield.
ISBN 978 1 74175 125 3 (pbk).
1. Carter, Paul, 1969-. 2. Petroleum workers - Australia -
Biography. 3. Oil well drilling rigs - Anecdotes. I.
Title.
622.3382092
Front cover photo: Ian Holland, Big Stock Photo
Author photo on back cover: Stephen Oxenbury Photography
Set in 12/15.5 pt Bembo by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
1 SILENT ALARM
2 GET BEHIND ME SATAN
3 JUST ADD WATER
4 ENDURING THE RIGGERS
5 THE OLD MAN
6 THE TENDER TRAP
7 KABUL ON THIRTY ROUNDS A DAY
8 LEARN OR BURN
9 TURNING MARGARITAS INTO SWEAT
10 HURRY UP AND WAIT
11 THIS LITTLE PIGGY
12 THE LAST STAND
13 THE WHOLE OIL THING
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A great many individuals have my thanks this second time around: Clare, my wife and my universe; Erwin Hergzeg, always in my corner, and his amazing family have my eternal friendship; the inspirational Sally and Simon Dominguez, and their single malt; Claire Atkins, a remarkable woman; Greg Waters, who underestimates the importance that his contributions make; Klaas van der Plas; Dave Sadler, a man who can really ride a motorcycle; Ross Luck; Steve Tunley; Vince and Sheman Moritti; Miranda Culley; Johnathan and Angela Catana; the De La Vega family; Geof Pacecca; Allan and Terri Cole; Steve, Pyneia and Anastasia Papal—legends all. My family Al, Liz, France, Elinor, Johannes, Callum, Rory, Alex, Mathew, James, Daniel, Carrie, Cathy, Phillip, Fingal and Tamsi (happy trails).
The lovely and completely brilliant team at Allen & Unwin: Jo Paul, your critiques turn what would otherwise be one long fart joke into a book; Lou Johnson; Catherine Milne; Alexandra Nahlous; Julia Lee—you all perform the literary equivalent of teaching a monkey how to perform brain surgery every time you take a manuscript off my hands, and you make it look easy. Thank you for going in to bat for me so many times.
All the Singapore crew, especially Drew, Les, Hiram, Myles, Adam, Ramat, JJ, Tahir, Fauzi, Joey, Bidin (who nearly cut his head off last year—glad you’re still with us, mate) and Razac, rest in peace brother.
Ambu (take that belt off), John, Don, Jake (back in the big house), Avas, Barry Reilly, Dave ‘The Seal Basher’ Nordli, Vodka Bob, Fat Tony, Robin, Eddie, Ronny, Smithy, Colin Henderson, Ann Smith, Sick Boy, Well Head Willy, Donald Millar, Damian Forte, Pilso, Sam Leon, Wongy, John Logan, Chris Glennon, Cameron Westholt, Tony Lacey, Capt Tom Naude, Sqd Ldr Chris Boucousis, the manager of the ‘Romper-Room’.
And Officer Young, sorry about the mess, and thanks for being gentle with me.
Special thanks to that Afghan guy near Gardez, by the side of the road somewhere between Camp 87 and Kabul on 21 April 2006, who decided not to shoot me—much appreciated.
All of you, lying in your bunks on a rig, we are multiplied and defuse
d throughout the world, be safe, godspeed.
And the sea will grant each man new hope,
As sleep brings dreams of home.
Christopher Colombus
1 SILENT ALARM
‘Just another glorious day in the oilfield,’ said Erwin.
I could only look at him. I had stopped feeling my feet ten minutes ago; my hands were so cold that I wasn’t sure they would stay whole if I tried to move them.
In front of me was an assortment of 120 men in various stages of undress, all moving in super-fast time, all with the same strained, panic-stricken expression on their face. The sort of face you pull when the hotel door slams shut just as you are putting the room service tray out in the hall and you realise you’re locked out and naked. Except this was no hotel corridor, this was a semi-submersible drilling rig . . . in imminent danger of becoming a submersible-we’re-all-fucked-and-half-of-us-can’t-swim rig.
It’s 2 a.m., minus thirty-six degrees celcius, we’re miles from land and the rig is capsizing. In the middle of the insanity and chaos stood Erwin, that familiar lazy grin seesawing across his face.
The abandon-rig alarm went off some ten minutes ago. ‘THIS IS NOT A DRILL’ is all I remember hearing. As soon as I got out of bed I knew it was serious. The rig was listing five degrees to port. We’ve got fifteen minutes to get to our lifeboat. The fluorescent lights blinked on ‘This is not a drill’. Again the recorded voice. The continous ringing of the alarm made a fist in my gut. As I scrambled to rip my survival suit out of its bag I could feel the rig slowly continue to tip. This is really happening, I thought, this is not a drill.
The abandon-rig alarm is the one sound you never ever want to hear on an offshore drilling rig, especially when the water temperature kills after just three minutes. Its sound bores right through you, getting through to your brain faster than anything you could imagine. It’s all the motive you need to get to a lifeboat no matter what gets in your way. It’s a licence to survive with an international adaptor on it, everyone instantly knows the score and it sorts out the men from the boys quicker than anything I’ve seen. Adrenaline burned in my joints. In fifteen years, this was my first abandon-rig alarm.
My survival immersion suit, I must have it ready, get out, get out now.
Dave, my room-mate, tore open his locker and started throwing stuff all over the place. I opened the door and shot a glance down the corridor; rubbish was scattered everywhere, in every room gear was flying out the door. What is it about abandoning a rig and the threat of dying through the most excruciating freezing process imaginable that brings out the litterbug in people? Men ran in all directions. Some, ripped from their sleep, stood dumbfounded in their jocks, unable to focus. No-one yelled or tried to communicate, everyone was concentrating on getting to their lifeboat in time with the right gear.
Slow down, get it right, I screamed silently and forced myself to check. Survival suit on, seals intact, life jacket on, passport, wallet. I went for the door.
‘Smokes!’ yelled Dave. ‘You’ll need them.’ He was shoving a whole carton of Camels down the front of his survival suit.
We exploded out of our room and sprinted down the corridor. Red lights flashed, the alarm had turned into a hum . . . I had blanked it out, wasn’t listening now. How much time have I wasted? Are we at eight or nine degrees now?
Both of us were only too aware that if the listing got to ten degrees then they couldn’t launch the lifeboats. We passed the galley, unwittingly smashing plates and glasses that littered the floor. A young kitchenhand stood in the middle of the debris, wearing only the bottom half of his thermal underwear, his bare feet bleeding onto the floor and a yellow streak running down his right leg. Dave went straight through him. If this guy couldn’t get himself to his lifeboat, we weren’t going to stop and give him directions.
We took the stairs three at a time. Lifeboat number 1 was on the starboard side, right under the heli-deck, but it may as well have been in Cleveland. Something inside the room we needed to cross had slid across the floor and blocked our escape; the door was stuck.
‘OUTER STAIRWELL, GO GO!’ I turned around and ran back the way we had come, precious minutes wasted. There was real fear in Dave’s voice, it made me move faster.
We went back through the galley, the kitchenhand had disappeared. At the far end of the corridor was a hatch to the outer stairwell; I hit it so hard I felt my shoulder crack as it flew open. We descended the stairs without really touching them. The freezing air bit into the sweat on my face, and everything lay at a bizarre angle as the rig slowly continued to tip. Dave lost his footing at the bottom of the stairs and went down hard into a container that lay across the walkway. We were fifty yards from our secondary lifeboat. I pulled him up and turned to run. The crew were mustering and preparing to launch what looked more like an orange submarine than a boat. Someone was there in the flashing light. It was Erwin, standing on the ramp in front of the open hatch. ‘COME ON, RUN AS FAST AS YOU FUCKING CAN!’ He was pulling us forward with his mind and giant hand gestures.
Dave passed me like an orange Carl Lewis and boarded in standard ‘I’m not going to die out here’ fashion, diving into the open hatch head first, having just ran a quarter mile of corridors in record time wearing a survival suit. I was happy he went through the hatch first as he cushioned my fall. My shoulder, his badly sprained ankle and our respective head injuries didn’t stop the wonderful sense of elation that swept over us as Erwin slammed the hatch door and locked it down.
Andy the skipper was, as he liked to put it, ‘well hard’, and took every opportunity to give me his opinion on my new work boots. My feet were sticking straight up in front of him as I had landed upside down between two seats. ‘They’re so gay,’ he said and grinned, pointing at my boots, on his way to the pilot’s seat.
His left hand started the deluge pump then opened the air system, pressurising the vessel, while his right primed and started the motor in well-rehearsed synchronicity. We all sat there strapped into four-point harnesses, collectively focused on Andy’s left hand hovering over the launch handle.
Dave pulled out the carton of Camels and passed it around. One by one each man nervously did that self pat-down thing you do when you need a light. Dave looked around at forty guys, each with a cigarette hanging from their bottom lip, looking blankly back. ‘Not one of you dickheads brought a lighter, did you?’
Andy had an emergency radio pressed to his ear, waiting for the word. ‘Stand by’ was all we heard. Another ten minutes, a lifetime. ‘Okay guys, it’s a ballast control fuck-up. We have to wait,’ he said. I strapped myself into a seat.
An hour went slowly by, my bum was going numb. Finally Andy put down the radio. ‘It’s under control. They lost a valve and the port-side pontoon started filling up with sea water, and then the emergency pump failed to start,’ he explained. ‘So now they have re-ballasted down on the starboard side to level out the rig while they try to fix the valve and pump. We have to wait in case they can’t do it and we sink.’
‘I’m glad I’m not the poor bastard trying to fix that pump,’ said Dave.
Another hour and the situation was under control.
It took just fifteen minutes to get 120 men into the right gear and in a lifeboat. Not bad. The door that Dave and I couldn’t open was blocked by a desk that slid across the room at just the right angle to stop us from getting it open. My shoulder was okay, but it was going to hurt for a couple of weeks. Dave got a nail gun from the warehouse and the desk was soon permanently fastened to the floor.
My first encounter with the oil world was early on in my life.
I was around ten when my mother started working at Tri-State Oil Tools; it was during the boom years in the early eighties when increasingly more offshore activity was turning Aberdeen, where we lived at the time, into the new centre of the oil industry in Europe. It had the largest heliport in Britain, ferrying men from all over the world offshore. The workshop next to my mother’s office pulled
at me like a giant magnet. There was a perpetual stream of oil men passing through and every last one of them had a story or a dirty joke to tell. I started skipping school to hang around and listen to them on crew change, swapping stories and talking shop. They gave me the odd glass of beer, shoved American money in my pockets, gave me knives, ball caps and dirty magazines. I loved them.
It didn’t take long really. As soon as I was old enough I started roughnecking on a land rig and that was it.
The oilfield is a strange beast. It can quite unexpectedly creep under your skin and become as compulsive as your favourite legal addictive stimulant. I was hooked, and I still am. Although now the characters I wanted to be as a boy are getting harder to find. You have to really look for them as our brave new oilfield embraces shiny new Health, Safety and Environmental policies, Preventative Maintenance is of course paramount, and don’t even think about stepping out on deck unless you can identify at least half a dozen hazards to correct. All this does help save lives and avoid accidents. Whole fleets of brand new sixth generation, fly by wire cyber rigs are getting spat out of shipyards all over the world at the moment, with new improved crews.
The guys at the top—the big players and the politicians they grease—will go on exploiting natural resources for generations. The rigs will still be drilling long after our current power brokers are gone and the next wave of bureaucrats have grown up ripping off a few Third World nations, backslapped their way into a massive retirement package and wobbled their massive bottoms up and down some Iberian beach playing crazy golf until they drop dead, unloved, in their mock Tudor retirement McMansions.
