Merry Thanks-Chistma-New Years!

Indeed I have spent all the holidays thus far floating out here at sea. Amazingly enough, they are fairly uneventful; the catering hands toss up a few decorations and cook up a "fancy" meal for lunch. Other than that the day goes on as every other day out here in the oilfield, a 24/7/365 operation.

Here are more pictures from around the rig, outside of the living quarters...



The large blue cylinders on the bottom of the derrick are heave compensators that aid in keeping the drillstring stable during rough weather:


View of the rig floor. You can see the drillstring down the center, and all of the drillpipe racked back in the derrick in the background. The white "cage" in the bottom left is the driller's shack.


Just below the rig floor, you can see the riser (green piping). The riser goes from the rig floor all the way down to the wellhead on the sea floor to protect the drillstring and mud returns.

One of two cranes on board.

Just after sunrise on the helipad.

Schlumberger Wireline getting their tools ready on deck.

This is just behind the mud pits, the white structure houses Halliburton's cementing units.

Another deck on the port side.

Decks below the rig floor:

I can only imagine that if you open this hatch, you'll find a rope ladder all the way down to the water...let's hope that's not the case.

Lifeboats! Can you imagine being stuck on these with 75 roughnecks floating at sea? Me either...

The ROV (remotely operated vehicle), or as we like to call it, the underwater robot. It's launched to go scope out and fix things generally at the sea floor. It has controllable arms and multiple cameras attached for the subsea guys to control.

My toolbox...holds our hand tools, sensors, backup equipment, lithium batteries, etc.

A few of our tools up on jackstands. These are what I mean when I refer to our tools downhole. These two tools measure things such as resistivity of the formations, gamma rays, inclination, pore pressure trends, lithology determination, and porosity estimations.

The box I generally sit in for 12 hours a day...also known as the Schlumberger unit :)

Inside the unit:

Other side of the unit. The main door is in the back left of this picture. There is a room behind all of the computer systems so we can easily access all of them; it also houses our power panals and internal pressure monitors.

Christmas Eve, I decided to get festive and make everyone a stocking out of logging paper!

The galley decorated for Thanksgiving.



On a sidenote, so glad Penn State won....and that I haven't been tossed overboard by the overwhelming amount of LSU fans on board. I've made sure to keep my mouth shut and lay low on board since the big win on Friday!