by This Is Not a Drill- Just Another Glorious Day in the Oilfield (retail) (epub)
2 GET BEHIND ME SATAN
We were more than two months into the job and the well was doing all kinds of shit. We were taking losses. That means all the drilling fluid inside the well was overcoming the formation pressure. With this type of exploration or ‘wildcat’ drilling, it’s always a gamble—over-pressurised formations become really dangerous in these situations.
We kept pumping mud to maintain hydrostatic pressure, but it’s sustainable only if crews can keep up the pace of mixing new mud at the same pace that losses occur. We can only produce mud so fast, and ‘The Cunt of Monte Christo’ could only mix new mud as fast as his spacesuit and bad vision would allow.
The well was taking thirty barrels an hour in losses and it was increasing. If it got above one hundred it was all over. So we drilled ahead, mixed and pumped mud, keeping a furry eyeball fixed on the digital mud fluid-level gauge like a degenerate gambling junky stares at a roulette wheel in a windowless casino. Just like us he’s overtired, jumpy from all the coffee and worried about the loan shark who’s going to take his thumbs if he loses.
Our loan shark was the oil company; they had a pretty new logo but would happily drill all the way, indeed into Satan’s special ‘Beelzebub Reserve’, looking for what we call ‘shows’—traces of hydrocarbons. The next time we tested the well we were going to knock on Satan’s door again; if we got a hit then the dealmakers would keep us in war and V8 supercars for another five years.
The only problem was, we had just hit compressed chert at 2470 metres, one of the hardest rocks to drill through. So the stakes had been raised. If the bit wore out before we were through the chert then we wouldn’t have enough chemicals to mix more mud and keep pumping above the losses. And the dealmakers would have to go home and trade in their V8s for public transport.
But after two months of relentless drilling we finally got what we came for. The money men found their hydrocarbons, the chert gave way to soft limestone, we drilled into this formation and started preparing to run casing. After that the well testing would start, and that involved ‘flaring’ the well.
It’s wild when a well flows. A live gas well is a remarkable thing and you’re playing a dangerous game with Mother Nature. The gas is very carefully flowed up to the rig, with the aid of enough German uber-engineering to relaunch the space program, and diverted through a long high-pressure armoured hose to a giant arm that hangs over the side of the rig. At the end of the arm lies a directional head with jets jutting out forming a circle around it. The liquid gas flies up the well expanding at an unbelievable rate, the rumble turning into a roar and sending nervous looks in all directions. By the time it has reached the drill floor it’s breaking the sound barrier.
In a second it slams into the head, the ports open, the burners ignite, and everyone snatches their whole body back like a collective hand caught over a Bunsen burner as millions of cubic feet of highly volatile liquid gas vaporise and explode, lighting up the night sky in a fireball that sends an invisible shockwave over the rig and makes every living thing in the sea for miles stop and look.
The sound alone is like ten jumbo jets taking off at the same time. The crew run about madly checking and rechecking the heat levels, as a flare boom will peel the paint off the walls and melt your boots to the deck. But all this power flying through the rig is a mere sneeze for Mother Nature—if she wanted to she could spit us into orbit.
‘We got a real barn burner here,’ said Gerry, the night tool pusher. Gerry knew the rig inside out, back to front and upside down. He’s got the power to pull the dragon from the ground, as he liked to put it. He looked down on the rig from the heli-deck, surveying the crew who scurried about trying not to let the rig turn into one giant floating charcoal brick. He smoked his well-chewed cigar through clenched yellow teeth, bending his head down to his hand to do so as forty years of lifting badly has left Gerry with the elbow dexterity of an arthritic ex-tennis pro.
Gerry’s old, but he intensely dislikes being told he’s an older man. I was in his office one day when the mail bag arrived. He was sitting there thumbing through his correspondence when suddenly he spat his cigar across the desk and started ripping up an envelope. In some insurance form he had been referred to as an ‘old age pensioner’. ‘I hate that shit, it’s like telling you the same Gawd-damn thing three times,’ he protested while retrieving his cigar from the small fire it had started in the corner.
‘Motherfuckers, I’m still a workin’ man,’ he mumbled while pouring his coffee over the fire.
The logistics coordinator, Blane, lives in the same state back in the United States as Gerry. I was telling him about Gerry’s cigar-spitting tantrum. He laughed and told me about the time he went over to Gerry’s cabin in the mountains. Gerry looks like Grizzly Adams would if he’d become really surly and indifferent about his personal hygiene.
It was the middle of winter in Washington State. As Blane walked up to the front door he saw that an entire felled tree was poking through the open doorway and extending some twenty feet into the snow. A tractor was parked with its front end flush up against the end of the tree. Apparently Gerry’s chainsaw had broken down so he just pushed the whole fucking tree into the house so the top was jammed into his fireplace, which was directly opposite the front door. As the night wore on Gerry would periodically put down his beer, jump in the tractor and push the tree in another foot as the fire burned down.
It was getting very close to three months since we arrived on the rig. My brain had turned into soup, I was now past it, part of the substructure, the rig had slowly eaten its way into my head like rust on a gangway. I was in the company man’s office—he’s the one in charge of everything—and he was halfway through the morning meeting. It felt like the millionth morning meeting, and I’d stopped paying attention weeks ago, opting instead to perfect my cow-like ability to sleep while standing up.
All the service company supervisors were packed in, the tool pusher, the petroleum engineer, the mud engineer, the deck pusher, the logistics guy, the directional driller, the sub-sea engineer, the well test supervisor, and the galley boy who had decided to attempt to empty the bin located under the company man’s desk was there too—all in a room the size of your average broom cupboard. Everyone else was crammed into the corridor, craning their heads into the office to hear what was going on. Half of the guys looked and smelled like they did most mornings, coming straight to the meeting directly from drool-filled sleep. The rest had coffee and smokes.
Erwin was up on the drill floor running the last well section with the Azerbaijani boys. I knew the end was in sight but after three months I was hopelessly institutionalised; I had to look at the ‘ten day operational forecast’ printout in my hand just to figure out what day of the week it was.
I wasn’t listening; I was having a perverse fantasy involving my girlfriend Clare and a giant beach ball. ‘Pauli, how long is it going to take to rig down all your tools, get your manifest sorted, and be ready to go?’ asked Colin the company man.
What the fuck? We’re still running pipe, I thought.
‘Pardon?’ I looked back blankly.
‘Wake up, mate. All the control lines are installed in the SSSV, tested, the hanger’s done and landed, we’re going to be laying down your gear soon, so you can hopefully get squared away and be on the chopper at midday. It’s the last flight so you either get on it or stay on the rig for the tow down to Korea. So how long to rig down?’
Shit. We had eighteen containers scattered all over the fucking rig, and there were tools, and spare parts, and all kinds of gear from the drill floor to the sack room. And it all had to go back in the right order, in the right container, with the right paperwork. I glanced at my watch. Fuck. It was 7 a.m., and every man and his buddy were going to want to use the crane all day, and there was some very bad weather inbound.
‘Three hours,’ I said. Fat chance.
I left the meeting, stepped out on deck, pulled up my collar as it was snowing heavily and made f
or the drill floor. I explained to Erwin that we had to get the square peg in the round hole and do it blindfolded with one hand tied behind our backs. But that didn’t matter, I could have said that John Howard was going to be eaten by aliens and Erwin was the only guy who could stop them, and he would have. Because Erwin saw the chopper in his mind, he imagined himself climbing into it, he could see a cooler full of chilled beer being fondled by a big-breasted slightly tacky female co-pilot. It was there within his grasp, the end of the oilfield rainbow, the elusive chopper, the Holy Grail, and the only way to preserve your sanity and get the fuck off the rig.
What happened next is still a mystery to me, but I can say that it was like being part of a massive, synchronised ballet. Every guy could see the end and performed at his best, anticipating his crew member’s next move so well it was simply fluid, harmonised, perfect.
Twelve noon rolled around. And we were ready. Somehow everything came together, the oilfield equivalent of a hole-in-one. We even had time to shower and eat something. Had Erwin not been there, though, I’m pretty sure I would have been sitting on that rig all the way down to Korea.
The chopper finally arrived and we all lifted off in rubber survival suits, exhausted and euphoric at the thought of going home. Watching the rig get smaller through the window until it was eventually swallowed by the sea, I felt fantastic. I could have swum back to Australia.
Our chartered fixed-wing flight was on time—another surprise—and by 7 p.m. that night we were all sitting in a bar in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Yuzhno is the biggest town in Sakhalin, an island peninsula running some three hundred kilometres up Russia’s northeastern seaboard, and it’s rough, with the highest crime rate in the entire Russian federation, not to mention frequent bear attacks.
Most of the men in the bar sat on stools, nursing beers and ignoring one another, but my Azerbaijani boys from the rig were already getting out of control. Kamran in civilian clothing looks like a giant silverback gorilla would if someone had snatched it from the zoo, shaved it, taught it basic sign language, dressed it in a bad Hawaiian shirt, stuck a Charlie Chaplin moustache on it and let it loose in a bar full of lumberjacks. Erwin was in the corner watching motorcycle speedway racing with a glass of wine, which tends to put him in a catatonic state. The others were ordering vodka, lots of vodka. Russians are generally traditionalists and with any social interaction old-school rules apply: men pull out chairs for the ladies, hold open doors to let others pass and maintain eye contact when they shake your hand. After the first bottle of vodka is consumed, however, all this degenerates into a kind of giant footy brawl with shooters and lots of incredibly loud, cacophonous singing.
The Russia that ran on fear and secrets ran on vodka too, mind you. Why do you think all the spies in those old ‘film noir’ movies were always leaning against lampposts in dank Moscow back streets trying to light endless cigarettes with damp book matches? That’s right . . . they were hammered on vodka, just like Boris Yeltsin.
Russia is still getting hammered on vodka to the tune of 15 litres a year per person. Except it’s a federation now, a federation of quarrelling nationalities forming a big black space in the world map that’s entirely full of places ending in ‘stan’. In fact, the only consistency left that transcends all former Soviet borders, other than oil, is vodka. Generations of hardened piss-heads survived Stalin, the Nazis, perestroika and, of course, communism on vodka.
The space race ran on vodka. In Star City circa 1965 gallons of the stuff were consumed daily. Launching rockets must be a bit like playing pool: you get better at it after the first drink. The humble potato has been fuelling a powerful toxin since the twelfth century.
From the time we started keeping track of things in Russia, it’s been slowly improving. Things are better now than they were only a decade ago. Things are better, actually, than they were at 7 a.m. that morning. As our Western influence—with its drugs, crime, Diet Coke and Levis—creeps from one end of Russia to the next so does the need for the Russian people to see it and live it first-hand. Russia is a place in flux. Go to any of its major cities and you will find all the same distractions you have at home, only they’re more expensive, ergo there is a never-ending stream of people waiting to get out. Any random Russian would gladly trade a two-bedroom flat in Moscow for a sleeping-bag in Sydney. And for a great many Russians, having just about anything you ever wanted at your doorstep but knowing you can never afford it is just a bit frustrating. I’m talking about Levis here, not Ferraris. Would the last person to leave please remember to turn off the lights and close the iron curtains?
No matter where you go in Russia you are guaranteed to see three things: the AK-47 assault rifle, too much prefabricated concrete, and a shitload of vodka. Much like the concrete, there is a massive array of different Russian vodkas to try—around sixty-nine brands in total, ranging from the nasty paint-stripper-peel-the-enamel-off-your-teeth vodka to the two-hundred-dollar-a-bottle premium vodka.
According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—which sets the rules for spirits sold in the United States—vodka is defined as a neutral spirit ‘without distinctive character, aroma, taste or colour’. Therefore you’d think all vodkas would just taste the same, leaving your ‘premium’ vodka as a bit of an oxymoron. To me they were all very similar, but hey, I was just happy to be there. You can mix vodka with just about anything or pour it in your lawnmower if you run out of two-stroke. Vodka suits any occasion, goes with any food, and is enjoyed by silverbacks. And is the only alcohol you can store in the freezer because it contains absolutely no water—perfect for rigs in minus-fifty-degree climates and any other frozen place on the planet.
In this particular bar, vodka came in bottles, pots, aluminium canisters—you name it. One was a glass rendition of an AK-47, complete with polished rosewood and red satin-lined presentation box, the muzzle being the pouring end. There were even porcelain nuclear submarines and babushka dolls with disturbing faces (you have to pull their heads off to drink out of them—just what you want to do with a babushka doll). And that night we sampled them all. The best one by far was the black glass missile with a bright red warhead lid appropriately named ‘Red Army Vodka’.
On that night, we were drinking vodka from a bottle that after each pour said ‘cheers’ in Russian by way of a tiny device in the base. As we drank our way down, the electronic voice kept saying cheers in ever-increasing degrees of drunken slur—Yura, Yura, Yura—so that by the time we were on the last drop it was just a monosyllabic grunt. This proved to be Kamran’s favourite. He danced about to an Elvis song and answered the bottle—all he needed was a banana in his free hand and the picture would have been complete. People didn’t know how to react to him; some looked nervously over his huge shoulder as if searching for his handler, others just ran.
Over the years spent on the rigs and in Russian pubs in between I’ve seen vodka drunk in all manner of interesting ways. There’s the ‘paper bag full swig from the bottle while urinating on a dumpster’ method, a popular one. There’s the ‘neck a shot immediately followed by a chunk of black bread smeared with caviar’ technique, or the ‘shot with a whole poached egg’. After a few of those your average hairy Russian man looks like a giant alcoholic hamster who forgot to hibernate. Some vodkas are followed with raw pickled herring on a stick, some are accompanied by chillies or gherkins or both. Some are combinations of all the above . . . and then they set it on fire. That’s my favourite. The gentle waft of burned hair mixed with those harsh Russian cigarettes evokes thoughts of the heady days of revolution and cheap rockets.
My crew had just got to the ‘setting it on fire and drinking it’ stage of the evening. Huge cheers erupted after each shot when the mini inferno was downed by a crew member feeling no pain and the subsequent fire was put out.
‘No more setting the drinks on fire,’ I eventually protested. It was getting late and at this point we would have been better off just up-ending our shots on our heads and chasing ea
ch other about with cigarette lighters. Everyone in the crew was hammered, they could all speak fluent Russian and they were dancing with the locals who, for some reason, were all dressed very similarly; indeed, practically every male was wearing the unofficial uniform of black leather coat, blue jeans and weird pointy black leather ‘brothel creeper’ shoes. The only colour in the room was worn by the women, who minced about giving everyone their best ‘in your dreams’ look. Ultra-bright genuine imitation rayon and sequins gave way to turquoise blue combined with scarlet red, the kind of combinations you see when hippy activists try to dress up. And the gear in Russia is badly made, with uneven stitching and heavy coarse materials, and everything bulges in all the wrong places. Think doll’s clothes blown up to life-size. Not that this made any difference to the guys after three months offshore.
Erwin appeared through the smoke, talking about motorcycles and drinking on an empty stomach and how he’s got me a ‘nose bag’. Then he dragged me into a back room, sat me down in front of a wonderful, piping-hot bowl of borsch and disappeared. It’s a traditional dish, basically beetroot soup and meatballs sealed with a lid of pastry on top. It’s definitely of the poor-man’s food variety, the kind found in every Russian household. Winter food, warming, filling and incredibly appropriate, as outside the temperature was sliding past minus thirty-six degrees. And after the crap we’d been getting on the rig, this was manna. I loved it. Slurped and chewed it with all the gusto my inebriated state allowed.
