I was a big admirer of the derrick man at the rig on which I worked those long years ago. He was a combination circus acrobat and strong man way up there as he grabbed those three-pipe sections and danced them into a neat vertical stack. He had what it took -- strength, balance and courage, lots of courage. So I was glad that they showed a little bit about that job on the second episode of Black Gold which aired on TNT the other day.
The show seems to be trying to cover many aspects of the job, and it's fun to see all they do. In the latest episode they got the pipe stuck in the hole. And that was a treat to watch as they dropped the hammer trying to jar it loose.
That never happened while I worked on the rig, but the previous shift did twist off a bit one time. They pulled out of the hole, and there was nothing but a twisted piece of metal where there should have been more pipe and a bit. About that time our crew arrived to start our day, so we got to fix the problem they caused, the bums. To a green floor hand hand like me fishing for a bit seemed like an interesting variation in the job, but what a nightmare it was for the company men as all they saw was money going down a hole. To retrieve it we had to screw on a device that would grab the remainder of the pipe and pull it up. It was slow going, but it worked, and the company men were ecstatic.
Other less exiting things happened, like lost circulation. That happens when the drill hits a porous zone that soaks up all of the drilling fluid. I was on the night shift that month, and all night long we carried sacks of stuff to dump into the drilling mud to try to regain circulation. There were sacks of cotton seed hulls which were supposed to stop up the holes, and they were light and easy to carry. But then there were sacks of the dry powder that when mixed with water makes drilling mud. I don't trust my memory on this, but I think those bags weighed 100 pounds each. Maybe they only weighed 50 pounds, but those suckers were heavy. At the end of the shift we were exhausted, but that didn't stop the smartypants I worked with. One said, "Get some sleep, you might have to WORK tomorrow!" Hardy har har.
Here's a story I heard about fishing for a bit. A rig was drilling a deep hole in another state, and they lost a bit. They fished for a long time and eventually pulled it out. The boss was a big bully, a former college football player, and when things got serious he was no fun to be around. So here they were, cleaning junk off the deck floor immediately after they had spent a day retrieving a lost bit, feeling a combination of joy and exhaustion. But someone left a chain on the rig floor, and the motors were causing the floor to vibrate. They had a video camera aimed at the hole, and my friend was in the dog house or the trailer or wherever they had the monitor. And he said he just happened to glance at the monitor just as that chain slithered like a snake down the hole. My friend had the job of telling the boss, and so started another nightmare day.
Anyway, I don't know if those of us on basic cable will get to see the rest of Black Gold, but I'm optimistic. If it gets enough eyeballs over there on TruTV then maybe we will get the reruns.
In the meantime, check out this comment left by Scotte at my post about the first episode. He had some interesting and insightful things to say about it, and he seems to know what he's talking about.
Previously: Good news for basic cable subscribers - "Black Gold" to be rebroadcast on TNT and
"Black Gold" - it was a want ad for West Texas roughnecks.
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