Jobs

Click here for a list of jobs available in the oil patch. It is not a job post section, it only describes positions.

Biggest Cause of Death in the Oil Patch

Driving to and from work is the leading cause of death in the Oil Patch. Driving conditions like this are common in the winter. Combine speed and fatigue and you have a recipe for disaster.

Morning Drive

Sunrise at KM 23 on the 185rd off the Buckinghorse

One of the benefits of working outdoors is the scenery. This sunset picture was taken at kilometer 23 on the 185 Rd off the Buckinghorse. At this time of year the sun never rises very high so sunsets and sunrises keep the sky colored longer than in lower latitudes.

Perforating

To perforate a well is to create access to the reservoir by puncturing the well  casing. It is done by inserting a perforating gun into the well using wireline, coil, or slickline then detonating a charge to perforate the casing wall. The oil or gas can then flow from the formation to the casing and into the production tubing.

Fishing Downhole into a Well

What happens when something falls or breaks into a well hole (wellbore)? You go fishing!

Fishing in the oil and Gas industry is the application of tools, equipment and techniques for the removal of

Fishing Tool Schematic

junk, debris or ‘fish’ from a wellbore. The key elements of a fishing operation include an understanding of the dimensions and nature of the fish to be removed, the wellbore conditions, the tools and techniques employed and the process by which the recovered fish will be handled at surface.

A fish in this case is a term used for anything left in a wellbore which doesn’t belong there. It doesn’t matter whether the fish consists of junk metal, a hand tool, a length of drill pipe, drill collars, or an expensive Measurements While Drilling (MWD) tool (no relation to WMD), and directional drilling package. Once the component is lost, it is properly referred to as simply “the fish.” Typically, anything put into the hole is accurately measured and sketched so that appropriate fishing tools can be selected if the item must be fished out of the hole.

Junk is anything in the wellbore that is not supposed to be there. The term is usually reserved for small pieces of steel such as hand tools, small parts, bit nozzles, pieces of bits or other downhole tools. In short, junk is anything that doesn’t have much value but still needs to be fished out.

Fishing can take a day, a few days and even weeks. Losing things down a wellbore is very common. I’m currently on a location where a coil tubing unit lost a drill bit in the hole. Now the bit needs to be fished out. The longest fishing job I’ve been on lasted two weeks with no success in removing the object. The hole was abandoned and another drilled ten meters away. I’ve heard of fishing jobs that take months.

Fishing is done by a specialist called a fisherman. A fisherman can use various tools at his disposal and can even feel by touch whether the fish is caught or not. As the tool at the bottom of the pipe hits the fish, the soundwave can be felt at the top of the pipe and the fisherman makes slight adjustments to ensure the fish is secure before the pipe is brought back to surface. You never know whether the fish is caught until the pipe is pulled up. If unsecessful, the process repeats itself until the object is removed from the hole.

Horizontal or Directional Drilling

Picture drilling a hole 4000 meters vertically and then turning that hole 90 degrees to drill another 1000 meters horizontally. That is horizontal drilling.

Drilling horizontally allows access to gas that might not be accessible by drilling straight down. Gas under lakes, parks, railroad crossings, environmentally sensitive areas, etc are either too difficult or cause too much damage if the drilling is done directly above the formation. Another reason to drill a horizontal section is so the pipe occupies a larger area of the formation to recover more gas.

This is a rough idea of the concept. At the 1:30 minute mark, the grey substance being injected is cement. The cement covers the outside of the case tubing and prevents the hole from caving. It also keeps the oil from contaminating anything above the zone in which it is trapped as well as preventing ground water from entering the production zone. The only escape for the oil or gas becomes the pipe that is inserted inside the tubing (seen towards the end of the video).

I took this video on October 18, 2008. It shows a drilling crew dropping pipe back into the hole after changing a drill bit. The pipe you see is the pipe that will bend to the horizontal position. The bending takes place at 8 degree increments for every 30 meter drop taking about 330 meters of vertically depth to complete the turn.

Night Shift on a Gas Well.

A night shift while flow testing a Gas well.

Flowing a new well measures the potential quantity of Gas based on different criteria such as well pressure, flow rates, water content etc. After the test is done, the oil company decides whether it is commercially viable or if stimulation of that well is necessary. Well testing is done throughout the life of a well to gather enough information to describe the condition and behavior of the well.

Gas Well in the Pink Mountain area of BC

A Tight Hole and a Pink Mountain

This post was republished to Paulpereira’s Weblog at 2:36:55 AM 9/3/2008

The term tight hole is used when a company drills a well about which all information – depth, formations encountered, drilling rate, logs – is kept secret by the operator. Anyone working on the well cannot talk about any aspect of what they see, everything is kept secret. These wells are usually exploration wells, of which it is uncertain what amount of oil or gas, if any, exists. There are spies who camp out beyond the lease with high tech listening devices, trying to gather information for competing companies. In some areas, companies employ helicopters to fly over the lease to photograph the activity below. The hope is that if an exploration well turns out to be good, competing companies will buy the rights to drill in the surrounding area and tap into the same reservoir without spending any of the money on exploration

Can’t take any pictures to post so I’ll talk about where I’m staying. The location is called Pink Mountain, a very small community on the Eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Pink Mountain glows a vibrant pink colour at a certain time during sunrise. The Mountain has been recognized as a major archaeological site for northern B.C. — remains of an historic marine mammal have been discovered in the area. The surrounding mountain lowlands are the only place in the province where wild plains bison still roam. Also, the vibrant pink wildflowers which bloom here in the summer attract a very rare species of Arctic butterfly. I wouldn’t know which butterfly to look for so I can’t say whether I’ve seen it.

Northern butterflies are smaller than others in more southern latitudes because smallness is an advantage when it comes to absorbing heat from the surroundings. One species is found mostly on south-facing rock slides where the rocks collect the sun’s heat. The butterflies collect the heat sometimes by laying their wings down against the hot rocks.

Certain butterfly species are particularly clever about gathering up the sun’s heat directly. When cold, they stand with wings folded and lean away from the direction of the sun so that they present the biggest area to the sun. When too warm, they lean into the sun to create minimum area. When disturbed, they also lean into the sun to minimize their shadows making themselves less visible to predators. One kind also soaks up heat by holding its wings at just the right angle to reflect the sun’s rays directly onto its central body.

Another interesting behavioural pattern of butterflies is that certain species tend to cluster on hilltops, males being the vast majority found on top. The mystery of why this occurs was solved when the collectors looked at the sex of butterflies flying up- and down-slope below the hilltops. These butterflies were mostly females. It was found that the butterflies heading uphill were all virgins and those going down were impregnated.

(Italic text has been condensed from article at http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF10/1033.html)

Rain and Mud

Rain can turn a pleasant experience into misery. A few drops are enough to turn the top layer of earth into a mud that sticks to everything. Heavier rain turns the ground into a mud skating rink. Driving with a 4×4 is not so much about skill but about keeping the truck from getting stuck in the middle of nowhere. Most of the driving will be done sideways and too often entirely off the road. In B.C. the added element of mountainous terrain with hills to climb/descend and vertical drops into rivers or creeks makes it all the more exciting. Driving down a steep slippery hill with vertical drops on the sides isn’t something I ever get too comfortable with. Each time I reach the bottom of a slippery hill I know that my heart is still in good shape because it withstood the increase in blood pressure, adrenaline, stress, and all the other ‘fight or flight’ responses. No doubt the response would be flight if it were possible to get out of the truck and somehow have it drive itself down the hill. Statistically, staying in the truck is always safest. I have no plans to test that theory but if I ever go over some embankment, I will go down with the “ship” and wait for the airbags to inflate.

After the Rain

Thunder Valley, British Columbia

The name is appropriate. We were working in the valley and during thunder storms, the sound would echo off the surrounding mountains.

This well is on the side of a mountain and the job was to take readings at the well formation. When the Service Rig started dropping the necessary equipment down the hole, it wouldn’t go more than 40 meters. The decision was made to pull out the pipe to see what the problem was. While pulling, a section of pipe snapped off. Apparently the mountain had shifted and bent a section of pipe 40 meters below the surface. A simple two day job is now into day ten with no progress being made in getting the bent sections out. I go home tonight but it’s looking more likely that they will have to close this hole off and drill another beside it.

This area is populated by Grizzly and Black bears. Along the edge of the lease is a bear cave. The original drilling was done in the winter and the bear was in hibernation with no worries as to what was happening outside his home. The cave is still intact so it can be used again. There was no sign of the bear; it is probably getting itself fat to survive another winter. There have been some bears coming around the camp I was staying at but none appeared during my stay. As much as I love to see bears in the wild, it is never a good thing when they start coming near areas where there are people. Problem bears are transported to areas away from camps but it they show up a second time, they are killed.

Bear Cave