Ensco

Here are some pictures that a professional photographer took around the rig, wish I was cool enough to say I climbed the derrick or took these as I was flying overhead in the chopper...but regardless one of the drillers passed them along me. Being one of the few females out here has its perks at times, with getting the in to pictures like this, rock cuttings from 12,000ft below the sea, or obtaining other third party paraphenalia like hats/tally books/stickers/etc.

The first is from up in the derrick looking down onto the top drive (the device that turns the drillsting and is suspended from the hook):



Work boats loading/unloading supplies/tools/fuel/etc.:

The white section on the bow is the crew quarters; the four floors I talked about in a previous post. You can kind of make out the two forward lifeboats (orange) on the second floor, and up on the 4th (where the multiple windows line up) is the bridge.

Over head shot, towards the bottom-right is the bow again (you can see the 2 orange life boats). View of the helipad and two large cranes on board. My unit sits right next to the helipad (so port side, aft of the pad):

My Second Home

Let's face it, I should have just titled this blog "My Home" since I spend way more time out here then actually back at my place in Lafayette! Accommodations here are what you would most likely find on most deepwater rigs in the Gulf. My rig in particular has about 100-110 personnel on it at any given time. The actual "living quarters" are essentially composed of 4 levels. The first is the galley and locker/change room. Second and third are all the bedrooms; and fourth is the bridge, helicopter waiting room, fitness room, and offices.

All of the hallways look pretty much like this:



My bedroom is down on level two. I share it with another female engineer when we're both out here, else I'm alone for lack of other females on the rig. All bedrooms are two man, and then two rooms share one bathroom in between. Each room has a built-in bunk bed, small desk, TV, sink, and closet/storage space. Everyday the housekeeper comes around to tidy up, make our beds and leave fresh towels. Dirty laundry is put into mesh bags (like you see hanging outside of the doors in the above picture) and it magically gets cleans and reappears back outside your door before you wake up...if that only happened back on land! Here are pictures from both ends of the room, my bunk and the itsy bitsy bathroom....

Here is the galley (please forgive the blurry photo for lack of my flash and a lot of heave that night). Food is served cafeteria style four times a day (from 4:30-7 and 10:30-1 both swings) then they have "snack time" at 3am/pm where they just leave out things to make sandwiches. There is always a salad bar, desert area, snacks, etc. Food varies all depending on the cook; some weeks it's pretty good, others its hard to decipher what is what (PB&J is a good crutch on days like that). Best meals seem to fall at noon (unfortunately you don't get that when working the 6pm-6am night shift as I do). Tuesdays and Saturdays are Steak Day, so at noon meal they grill out ribeyes and t-bones cooked as you like. Fish Fridays happen year round, not just during Lenten season. Every time I'm in the galley I like to play the fun game called, "how they used yesterday's leftovers to make today's meals". But in all honestly I can't complain, for the most part food is good, the cooks are fun, and I don't have to worry about the grocery shopping. I'm going to spare you the picture of the "left-over bin" where you scrap the remains of your plate, which is then all tossed into the grinder and turned into fish food. Across from the galley is the locker room where there are tons of lockers, bathrooms, and tables where all the roughnecks often congregate to play dominoes (maybe one of these days I'll learn). Work boots are not allowed anywhere in the living quarters, so this is where everyone stores their crocs and slippers :)

This is the entertainment room, more often than not used for all of our pre-tour and safety meetings everyday. All the guys seems to congregate in the galley for all the football games instead of here anyways; speaking of, every weekend the betting sheets come out for the big football games for the weekend (of course always the Saints and LSU).

The top level houses the bridge, where they are able to steer the rig, and control the ballast tanks to control buoyancy and stability. There are also a variety of offices including the Company Men, dispatcher, third party room, OIM/TP (rig superintendents), drilling engineers, conference room, etc. Finally this is where the workout room is; contains your basic cardio equipment and weights; however, it's been closed quite often lately due to the high heave.

My typical day looks like this -- wake up around 4pm, eat breakfast and get ready, head out to my unit to do handover about 5:30pm. I'm out tour until 6am, come in and eat dinner, workout, shower, then watch some TV or read until I hit the hay about 9-9:30am. I'll get more into what happens between 6pm and 6am later. But basically those are my days out here. Typical days don't happen all the time, so the above schedule varies quite often. More than often I'm staying up later, or coming on tour a lot earlier, all depending on what rig operations are going down. The hardest part about working this shift is the time transition between coming back out here after my time on land, or getting back into a regular schedule back on land.

On that note, I'm off to hit the hay early today. Tomorrow we have our weekly fire drill at 1pm where all the obnoxious alarms go off, followed by the abandon ship alarms; we all congregate at our assigned lifeboat, don life jackets, then aimlessly stand around listening to the captain's instructions. Every once in a while, crew members have to climb into the lifeboats and send them into the water to ensure they are still working properly. Quite the excitement of Sunday afternoons out here if you ask me... :)

Happy Friday the Thirteenth!

This morning's sunrise:


Our next door neighbors on the Ocean Endeavor. The gulf is finally "flat as a pancake" (as my dad would say)!

Post sunset last night:

Button Down the Hatches

I’ve been lagging on this blog business, but my two feet have actually been on solid ground the past week getting my promotion (aka—finally kicking my trainee status to the curb). Conveniently I was off the rig while the storms started to roll through. It’s so odd for a hurricane to be ripping through the gulf close to mid-November. Needless to say, my rig was shut down the better portion of last week due to inclement weather. The plan to evacuate was up in the air, and finally happened on Sunday. After they realized the storm was staying far east, everyone was called back out to the rig on Monday.

All hurricane operations seem to vary from what I have gathered in my time out here. Obviously depends on the category of the storm, where your rig is located, the type of rig, the client, and how much money they currently have downhole.

If it’s a bad storm and you’re in the path of it, they will generally try to pull out of hole and temporarily shut off the well before making a getaway. Weather is obviously closely monitored out here, and when bad weather strikes they know fairly well in advance to perform the proper procedures, get personnel to safe locations, and hopefully be able to move the rig itself.

Proper procedures include getting the drill pipe, tools, and the bit out of hole; followed by the riser (outer pipe that runs from the drill floor on the rig to the well head at the sea floor); and finally shutting off the well head. If they have to make a quick getaway, they will hang off the drillstring (leaving a lot of $$$ downhole) until the storm passes and they can hopefully retrieve it.

Rigs are moved by tug boats else they are self-propelled. Jack-up rigs will jack the legs back up, allowing them to get tugged away, whereas semi-subs will let water out of the pontoons and drive themselves.

Once a storm passes, a rig will be able to come back to its location, re-run the riser back down to the sea floor, send in the Remote Operations Vehicle (ROV – a giant robot that enables us to perform a lot of maintenance and repair issues, equipped with multiple cameras to allow them to see everything underwater) to reconnect and open the wellhead, then the drillstring can be tripped back in and operations can continue.

In this case, they knew my rig’s location was in fairly safe territory as long as Ida didn’t take a sharp turn left. Instead of performing all of the above procedures, they pulled drill pipe out of hole until the Bottom Hole Assembly (our tools, stabilizers, reamers, the motor and bit) were at the well head. From there they “hung off” from the wellhead itself – so the toolstring stayed downhole below the sea floor (7500+ feet); then they tripped out the rest of the drill pipe but left in the riser.

Needless to say, bad weather adds a lot of time, energy and money to operations out here. This minor storm has set us back at least a week. At least it is comforting to know that being part of the service personnel out here – we’re always the first ones off the rig in evacuations!

Flying back out today was pretty neat. You could still see the backlash of some of the storm to the northeast, but the sun slowly starting to peek out from the masses of clouds we were flying into in the south. I wish I could take pictures/videos of it all to share, but unfortunately that’s not possible. We still have some large swells, creating a decent amount of heave; but that’s also just the nature of breaking into the winter months down here. I still have trouble using the word winter when it’s pushing mid-November and we’re still in the upper 60’s at night…haha. If it’s any consolation to all of you back north, it is A LOT chillier here offshore than back on land in Southern Louisiana now. The winds are pretty strong all of the time; constantly making me feel like those people they show on the weather channel trying to walk outside during hurricane level winds and looking absolutely ridiculous. Since I’m out here for the rest of the month into December I made sure to pack my thermals , and I have my trusty strap that attaches to my coveralls to make sure my hardhat doesn’t blow overboard! (I wonder how much money the guy makes that invented those…)

Adventures At Sea

There are a wide variety of offshore rigs, and getting to one can be an adventure within itself!

Barge rigs are found in 25 ft. or less or water, normally in marshes, shallow in-land bays and swamp areas. These are typically the rigs with the worst accommodations -- they are very cramped and usually fairly old. Many times they will have 6-12 man rooms (sometimes with four-man tall bunks) and all share one bathroom.

Jack-ups are found on the shelf in the Gulf, depths of about 200 ft. or less. These are mobile platforms that are able to stand still on the sea floor, resting on a number of supporting legs. Jack-up accommodations all vary, but are still fairly small. The jack-up I was on had 4-man rooms, and the "entertainment room" dubbed as multiple service parties offices, the meeting room, safety quarters, etc.

Semi-submersible rigs are floating vessels that have pontoons and columns that when flooded cause the unit to submerge in the water to a predetermined depth. The rig I'm currently on rotation on (the Ensco 8500) is a semi-sub. This particular rig is self-propelled; it has it's own bridge and captain and is able to navigate itself from one site to another out here. It can also be towed to a particular site, especially when hurricanes are on the horizon. Semi-subs are generally capable of drilling in approximately 8,000 ft. of water. I'll get more into the accommodations on these vessels later.



Lastly, there are drillships; maritime vessels modified to include a drilling rig. They are also capable of operating in deep water. The ship must stay relatively stationary on location in the water for extended periods of time; positioning may be accomplished with multiple anchors, dynamic propulsion, or a combination of these. From what I've heard, drillships are generally the best accommodations you can find out in the GOM -- single or double man rooms with their own bathrooms, full gyms/saunas, entertainment rooms with a wide selection of movies, game systems, etc.




Two ways of getting to the rigs are by air or by sea. Generally rigs on the shelf and inland are reached by boat, whereas deepwater rigs, by helicopter. The time it takes to reach a rig depends on it's location, where you leave from and the weather. Last summer, while working on a jack-up, I took a two hour boat ride out then had to take a personnel basket from the boat deck to rig floor. A personnel basket is pretty much just as it sounds, you toss your offshore bag in the middle of what looks like an inverted ice cream cone made of rope, you step onto the buoy on the bottom, and the crane operator lifts you up onto the rig. To get a better idea you can check out this video.


Alternatively you take a chopper. This is the case for the deepwater rigs since boats can take 12+ hours to reach the rig (in good weather). You generally show up at the helipad before dawn and are scheduled on a flight out at some point throughout the morning. When you leave, all depends on the number of people going to that rig, weather conditions, etc. On my way out for this hitch I sat in the heliport for over three hours before we finally took off. The flight to this particular location is just under two hours (flight times vary, but this is one of the longer ones). Being this far out, most times choppers have to stop off at production platforms along the way to refuel. In all honestly, I would prefer to take a boat out where you are able to get up and walk around, or take over a bench and nap. The helicopters get very cold, you are usually pretty crammed in, the seats are uncomfortable, and on top of it you are wearing a life jacket, full harness seat belt and monstrous earphones for the noise. However, they do give you a spectacular view of the ocean and platforms along the way! My last chopper was a bit smaller than this one:

Most of the boats and helicopters leave from ports and helipads in either Port Fourchon (about 3 hours from Lafayette) or Venice (about 4 hours away). You generally have to leave in the wee hours of the morning, meaning we have to get picked up Lafayette the evening before, then are lucky enough to stay in the creme de le creme of oilfield motels (let's just say that my last motel was equipped with its own fish cleaning station). Port Fourchon is an interesting place, I think it consists of more water than physical land. It is set in the southern depths of Louisiana (a.k.a. swamp territory). Here is a picture for you to get the basic idea:

On that note, I'm off to my luxurious bunk -- the seas are really rocking and rolling tonight, so hopefully I don't get blown off deck before I make it inside!

Schlummin It...

I decided to start this blog thanks to the coercion of my dear friend SST! I guess this is the best way to describe my current lifestyle and job to each of you without having to repeat the same stories multiple times, and here I can include pictures and let you ask questions. Please forgive me in advance for my sub par writing skills, let's remember that this isn't my forte with a technical degree!

I guess I should start out by briefly describing exactly just what it is I do for a living. My technical title is, MWD/LWD Field Engineer for Sclumberger Oilfield Services; within the D&M (Drilling & Measurements) segment. MWD meaning Measurements While Drilling and LWD is Logging While Drilling. MWD is the evaluation of physical properties of the formation, LWD is the measure of formation parameters. In layman's terms, I use real-time data from our LWD services to let the client make timely, informed decisions, reducing time and costs; as well as recorded-mode data to deliver logs, surveys, etc. All of this information allows the client to know what they are drilling into, ability to steer the well, and obviously find that Sweet Texas Tea.

Schlumberger employs just about 80,000 people, of about 140 different nationalities, throughout 80+ countries. It is the world's largest oilfield services provider, supplying the petroleum industry with services such as seismic acquisition/processing, formation evaluation, well testing, directional drilling, well cementing and stimulation, completions, software and information management, etc. The biggest thing to realize here is that SLB is solely a service provider. They do not own a single drop of oil, rigs, refineries, etc. We only provide the above services to clients such as Exxon, Chevron, BP, Anadarko, all the way down to the small mom and pop companies.

Thus far, my job has taken me across South Texas and currently the Gulf of Mexico. Right now I'm floating on a semi-submersible rig, the Ensco 8500, about 200 miles off the coast. This picture is a bit deceiving to the actual magnitude of the rig, but you get the idea...

In upcoming blogs I'll be sure to touch on what life is like on the rig, an average day out here (I'm not quite sure those exist), the food/people/accommodations, spending holidays at sea, weather, the work itself, and so on. Please feel free to post questions along the way! And I'll try my best to sneak pictures around the rig to post.

If at any point through the course of this blog I unintentionally use unfamiliar terms or you magically feel like learning more about industry specifics here is a great source to use.