Tank Battery Explosion

Near Lamesa, TX May 15, 2009

WARNING: Some cursing. If it'd been ME taking the video, you'd have heard a lot more.

Thank goodness there's no smell-a-vision.



Slow motion vid no sound

I remember my dad having to go put out fires on top of his tank batteries and heater treaters after lightning hit them.

World's Fastest Roughnecks

So says the caption. They do make a good connection, if I do say so myself.

Much better than any other connection vids on YouTube.

Livin' On the Beulah Edge

After the muffled sounds of my momma's beating heart (heard in close, internal proximity, the sort that binds a child to his mother in such wonderful ways) and perhaps the highway and car noises when my parents brought me home from the hospital for the first time, this pumping unit was probably one of the first things I ever heard in my life.

I grew up smack-dab in the middle of the oil patch, living in a company owned house for the first 18 years of my life, right on the dividing line between the "A" and "B" leases. This "pumpjack" wasn't but a few hundred feet from our front porch.

My dad was a "pumper"; he took care of this and a dozen plus or so other wells and the assorted primary processing equipment (heater treater for sediment and salt-water removal), storage facilities (the tank batteries and pumps) and initial transport (pipelines from the wells to the tanks) and was the oil company's first financial agent in that process from oil in the ground to gas in your tank, keeping track of production and responsible for those documents that initiated the crude oil and natural gas transfer to the buyer. (which was Phillips Petroleum Corp, now Conoco-Phillips)

When the field was first drilled in the early 50's, this particular piece of equipment was state-of-the-art, I suppose. It was powered by a Continental-Emsco motor fueled by wellhead gas. They were contrary things, at least they were after multiple dozens of overhauls and thousands of spark plug changes and countless hours of chugging away, bringing up the black gold from nearly a mile deep.

These days nearly every pumping unit is powered by electricity, with perhaps the most remote wells, those far away from the electric grid, which might still be powered by these powerful old motors. The ones my father took care of had enormous, heavy flywheels that were hand-cranked as so to start the engine running. It was almost as complicated as crankin' an old Model-T (not that I've ever done that, I've just heard stories from my dad ) what with having to adjust the magneto and the fuel mixture, all the while turning several hundred pounds of iron with the other hand.

(Pop always said he always wanted to have a tail, like a monkey, that way he could crank one of those old one-lung motors easier, at least have sumpthin' to hold on with)

It was not only a task that required some dexterity, it was - 'scuse my French - dangerous as hell. Just like crankin' that old Ford I was talking about as if I actually knew, a guy could easily get a darn good whap on the hand, even breaking it, or with my vivid imagination on MY first stab at crankin' an old Emsco, knock it clean off. Sheesh.

My first attempt wasn't so hot, I will admit. I finally got the thing to start bangin' off, but then let go of the heavy crank the very same time the motor decided it wanted to co-operate and operate as machinery should (well, perhaps not in Stephen King's world, but...). I'd like to claim the crank was possessed (ala S. King) but it was just a case of biting off a bit more than I could chew, I shoulda paid a bit more attention the times my old man was doing it when I rode with him instead of being in that perpetual state of boredom only teenaged boys can achieve.

My dad had been standing there, letting me make some minor mistakes, gently coaching and correcting me (he wasn't always the best at that, bad memories, sorry) but letting me have a go, most likely amused I wanted to prove I was his equal, and I'm hopin' he was secretly proud I wanted to at least try to be his equal.

I barely got my hand back in time and my dad quickly went to the other side and killed the engine, all the while hollerin' at me to back up, back up! At some slower but still frightening RPM the crank flew off a hundred or so feet out in the adjacent wheat field, plowing a deep long furrow fit for planting. Could've been a shallow grave for me if the thing had whacked me in the head, for sure.

I sucessfully started that motor a few months later, but that was the last time I ever tried. I think about my ol' man cranking on those cantankerous things in winter time, or what's worse, in the summer when the Texas sun and heat try their best to not only tear the hide right off ya, but make an attempt to pull every bit of moisture from your body, starting with a river channeling through one's eye sockets, the sweat stinging like hell, then detouring through the nether regions and finally puddling in the boots.

(I knew a guy who pickled his toes that way, sweating so profusely, but I'll save that story for some other time, I'm sure you won't mind)

Who was Beulah Edge? I will reveal that mystery at a future date.

My Sister's Feet

Not these; these are the feet of a statue at the Groom Cross, those of a kneeling woman in front of Jesus carrying the cross.

I was marvelling at the detail of some of the statues when I was over there this evening. There were as many people there as I'd ever seen (travelling down I-40 on a Sat. afternoon, I should've known) and the shots I wanted to get weren't available to me because of all the folks in the background, so I was giving a bit more scrutiny to some things I had paid little attention to in the past visits over there.

See the wrinkles in the pads of the sole of her foot? I've taken thousands of photos of all of the bronze's faces and love the detail on them, but never noticed this before tonight.

The patina, the green color, is a natural oxidation of the metal, but I really don't like it. Sometimes I want to volunteer to take a toothbrush and metal polish and get it out of the cracks and crevices. (I have taken my trusty bandanna and bottle of water and cleaned the bird poop off of some of the life-sized figures when no one else was out there)

After downloading the photos I took and viewing them, I started remembering my big sister's feet, all during the summers of her teen years. (I haven't paid any attention to my sis's feet in years) Until govt. regulations prohibited it, my dad always oiled the dirt roads to his wells and tank batteries and to our house; the road surface shed water very well. He also would "drag" the roads with a home-built metal skid made of large pipe/casing cut in half, inverted and welded together; on top that he'd add or take off as needed weights made of scrap metal. It kept the roads smooth.

Growing up in the country back then was, for a teenager, pretty darn boring. We lived far enough out in the country where we could barely get the translator signal from the nearest town and were on the very edge of the Amarillo TV station's broadcast area. The best Top 40 radio station was in Oklahoma City and the signal wouldn't come in at strength until after 9:00 p.m.

Since there wasn't a lot else to do other than the usual chores and homework, we ate a lot and read a lot. To this day, my sisters and I are all a bit overweight still, but we could all probably each make a showin' on Jeopardy.

I can remember the evenings when my sister, her head full of the things that most 16 yr. old girl's heads are, would want to get away from our small, cramped and crowded house and be to herself. She would set off down the oily road, barefooted, and walk to the mailbox and back, a distance of a couple miles and small change.

I didn't have to do the laundry, but I laugh thinking about how it might have been a problem. I'm sure Sisterbelle would wash her feet before going to bed, but I also know from much personal experience how oil gets into your pores and sometimes takes a few days and a few scrubbin's to get it all out. I'm smiling as I type this, thinking of the bottom of my sister's feet being darker than that statue's feet pictured above, like a Blackfoot Injun's or her own travellin' tootsies minstrel toe-show.

She probably had some green on her feet, too... from pickin' dandelions with her toes.

She could also reach under the table and pinch her little brother with 'em.

Not bustin' a grape

Making a really slow connection:

Triple-Triple

This is the third in a fairly pathetic series about Patterson Rig #415. You can read the first part and then read the second part (or read the second THEN read the first - whatever floats your boat!)

(The "triple" part refers to the third post, of course, but the rig is also a "triple" which means it stands back three sections of pipe screwed together. There are smaller rigs that can handle only two lengths and are called "doubles". If I ever take photos of one of those rigs, I'll be limited to only two posts. -wink-)

The guys working the floor finally got used to me and ignored me as I took photos, which was good because I couldn't help but laugh at 'em when they started worrying about where they "were" in running the pipe in the hole. When going in the hole, it's necessary to stop every so often to "circulate" and they were having a hard time trying to figure out just where to stop the first time.

(click any pic for larger view)

This guy, the motorman, was the most experienced of all the crew. Here he's unlatching the elevators but keeping an eye on one of the other hands as he worries with the power tongs.

Those elevators are probably one of the most dangerous things on a rig. I've seen a guy get a tooth knocked out by unlatching before all the weight was off it and have seen, multiple times, someone latch onto pipe, then see their face go ghostly white...they'd latched a finger in with the pipe.

When flesh and iron collide, iron ALWAYS wins.

When going in the hole, just as they're doing here, the derrickhand needs to be very forceful when latching each stand, and always check to make sure the elevators have latched all the way.

If not, the stand can be picked up, that 90 foot length of three screwed together 4 1/2 inch diameter pipes that weighs #16.60 lbs./ft (about 1500 lbs.) and then it can suddenly come loose and drop one, two or even three feet...right onto your foot. Sure, you got steel toed boots on; now your toes are in the steel part, just pull what's left of your foot out of the boot. Your two-steppin's never gonna be the same again.

As I said, I was forbidden to get out on the floor, but disregarding that (I've always had a problem with authority) , I did step out and take a quick shot of the derrick hand as he leaned out to latch the stand.

Since I couldn't wander around the rig taking photos and I was getting hungry and it was getting late in the afternoon, I decided to return my borrowed hard hat and thank the rig boss, the "tool pusher" for allowing me to take some photos. As I was leaving, he hollered at me and asked if I wanted him to take MY picture. "Sure." I told him and struck a pose.

I've got my pants heisted up as far as they will go to keep my pants bottoms out of the mud and crud and dope and grease and this photo makes me look fatter than I actually am. (I'm fairly rotund anyway, but the camera adds pounds, so does a big roll around the tummy)

I enjoyed my brief visit to a drilling rig; I have a good friend living down the street who is a tool pusher for a local drilling contractor and I am going to ask him if I can go out to his rig and take some photos.

This rig is much nicer than most that I worked on, but I have worked on huge, deep-hole rigs, diesel-electrics with all the "comforts of home", refrigerator, microwave, steam heat...things you definitely won't find on the smaller rigs.

Things have changed a lot since I last worked on a rig; there are many more safety precautions than when I was roughnecking and drilling, such as dust masks and chemical aprons for mixing mud, there's a supervisor on the rig at all times, the rig crews hold regular safety meetings and get bonuses for no lost time accidents. I also never had the pleasure of using power tongs while tripping pipe, instead using the "spinning chain", arguably the most dangerous thing on a rig. (well, there's a worm with a water hose, but....) In fact, I can remember times using a rope to make up casing joints and "crummies", huge pipe wrenches, to join together tubing.

Use those crummies for a while, and like me, you too can be your home town arm wrestling champ.

Yup, "old school" for us old-timers. -sigh- Still, rough work requires rough men and that's something that will never change as long as we drill for oil and gas in this manner...and that will be a long, long time.

Rig, Redux

This is Part II of a pretty bad photo series and commentary. If you want, you can read Part I

I got permission - and the very generous loan of a hard hat - to go up on the rig floor but I couldn't get past the doghouse door. (the "doghouse" is the rig floor level "office" and sometimes changing room for the drillers and sometimes, on smaller rigs, the entire crews)

Couldn't help but step just outside the door as soon as I got up there to take a quick shot of the derrick looking straight up. The line at the top right leading off to the edge and beyond the picture, is the "Geronimo" line, aptly named that because that's what the derrick hand would ride down in case of necessity, such as some sort of catastrophic derrick failure (as if you'd have time) or a blowout (think you can outrun a fireball?). I never saw one being used in case of emergency, but I have seen guys go down them on a lark or bet or dare. Not this fat boy, I wanted to save my virgin run for if/when I ever really needed to do that. I think the better name for it would be the "Ohhhhhhh shi..............." line.

The guys noticed me standing in the doghouse doorway and I politely waited for the driller, (the guy in the red to the left in the next photo below, he's the one "on the brake" and in charge of the basic operation of the rig and of his 4 man crew, three on the floor and one up in the derrick) so I could ask HIS permission to take some photos. He looked amused and some of the things I told him and his crew about the things that have changed really amused 'em. Whippersnappers.

"Wow, yer old school, aintchoo?" drawled the young driller. (a handsome Hispanic boy, as were the rest of the crew) With a shrug, I told them they were lucky, they had their power tongs, we had to use a spinning chain to make up the connection and two sets of tongs and the rotary table to break one apart. "Hey, this is the 21st century, didntjaknow?" wagged one of the hands. I wanted to tell him the 1950's technology I was working with in the late 70's and all through the 80's was state-of-the-art still in Russia and China and some other parts of the world.

I bet none of them ever had their gonads "doped".... covered in pipe lubricant, a particularly nasty compound that's hard to wash off of NOT sensitive areas. I have had it done to me, by being a smartass like that one kid, me being a bit too cocky, telling the guys that there wasn't ten of 'em all-total that could do that to me.

I was wrong; it only took four.

The next photo shows a floorhand unlatching the elevators to "run up and get another'n", another "stand"-- an approx. 90 ft. "triple", three thirty foot joints of drillpipe (in this case, it was 4 1/2 inch) and screwing it onto the "stump", the short end of the long, long, long length of drill stem they lower into the drilled hole. This was always a fun part of running a rig, trying to run as safely and smoothly as possible, but also with all due haste. Time is money, esp. on a drilling rig. Thousands of dollars are spent each and every hour, no matter what's going on and you need to "make hole", not goof around. "Get'er done, or get gone."

The derrick hand wasn't very experienced, but bless his heart, they were deep enough to where they had to stack pipe on the near or driller's side, the "worm's corner" of the derrick, and it's hard to latch those stands of pipe* from that side. I've done it myself and it just doesn't "feel right", but maybe that was because I am right-handed, as are most people. I dunno. He seemed to be having a bit more problems than most guys with whom I've worked. I wasn't a bad derrick hand, but it just got SO lonely up there. What with all the iron around you, it is nearly impossible to get decent radio reception up there, even up that high...not that the guys on the floor would appreciate you taking something - such as a transistor radio - up there that you could drop and have it go right through their hard hat into their brain.

What's that formula for speed of a falling object? 32 ft/second² or something like that? It'd take less than two seconds to fall from the board to the floor. "Watch ou....t. Uh oh."

They weren't going very fast, not even breaking a sweat on a rather warm afternoon, and it looked to me as though there were a couple of other fairly new hands on the floor crew; they sure weren't getting excited about getting things done. I was surprised because I had worked on rigs of similar size with only four man crews, the workload on the floor increasing by 33% because of one less man. I've worked the floor by myself a few times, actually. Then again, I'm twice the hand most guys are. Honestly.

Here in the next pic. they're setting the slips, squatty but massive things that grip the pipe so it doesn't slip on down the hole. This is where I thought they had some "worms" (greenhorns) because when pulling the slips, a couple of 'em would "put on, not put out". This is where I would, after about half a dozen pulls of that nature, would inform the lazy bastards slackers I worked with that from then on we'd just take turns pulling the slips, one at a time...that way it'd darn sure even out on the workload.

This is one of the parts I liked best, running the rig. This is looking back just behind the driller as he steps on the throttles. This rig had two huge Cat engines, but I didn't wander back there as I was told to not venture past the doghouse door. I did stretch out to take this shot right between the "A-legs".

I got a rush feeling not only the vibration, but the noise sink down into my bones...again, after years and years...and years. There's also the awareness of what I thought of as "danger close", spinning things everywhere you look, catheads that want to reach out and snag loose clothing, the rotary table turning at terrifying RPMs, the cacaphonous clash of metal on metal, the big cat motor's roar in duplicate, a throaty harmony in bass notes at idle and a screaming crescendo at full throttle. You can hear the chains as thick as arms slapping in staccato rhythm through their baths of oil in the compound, the whine of the drawworks spooling hundreds of feet of drilling line on or off in mere seconds, the "pssst" of the air clutches, grabbing another gear, getting another higher one to go faster, faster, always faster if you can and even if you can't.

It's probably not as loud as sitting on the wing of a 747 or in the front row at the rock concert, but it's darned sure some heavy metal up in the air; this rig had a 20 foot substructure and the top of the rig is usually another 120 feet or so on top of that. You can see a drilling rig before you can hear them, but you can hear them before you can make out any people on them from afar. Stand at the base of one, or up on the floor while the drilling is going on miles beneath your feet and you can feel the bit as it bites into the formation.

It's something to experience when a big rig picks up off bottom when drilling a deep hole; the ol' rig, derrick and all, squats and rocks and the motors lug down and the weight indicator spins like crazy and you hold your breath just in case you've got stuck while getting ready to come out of the hole, ever ready to kick out the clutch and ram down on the brake. That *drill pipe weighs 16.6 lbs./foot and drill collars can weigh 100/200 lbs. a foot. This rig was probably drilling to around 12,000 feet and I'm not so hot at math, but a couple miles of pipe and collars can be pretty heavy. I've drilled deeper where our string weighed over half a million pounds. I'm sure this rig's string would weigh a quarter million or so. There are a few more powerful man-made things in the world, but a drilling rig is near the top of the list.

And, it's funny about that long screwed together sections of pipe, the drillstem: the darn thing has a LOT of compression and stretch for all that length. On the deeper wells, they pick up the entire string to add another joint/30 ft. pipe, but the bit will never leave the bottom of the hole! Even figuring out the weight of the string requires some complicated formulas and books of data because the pipe surrounded by the mud has some buoyancy, just like a boat in water...but then you've got mud inside the pipe, adding so many barrels per thousand feet, so much more weight. As you take the pipe out of the hole, you need to add just enough mud to keep it from blowing out, but you don't want to fill the hole completely or the mud will remain in the pipe when you unscrew the connection and will spray out everywhere.

(a fair example of this is putting your finger on top of a straw in your soda, then raising the straw up out of the drink; the straw will remain full. Take your finger off of it and let it splash on a flat surface and multiply that effect by a million. That's what happens when you "break off a wet one". Pulling the pipe fast and having the level up near the surface will sometimes create enough of a suction to keep a 90 ft. column of mud in the stand, and when the suction is broken, it will flow out of the end of the stand...very quickly, splashing everywhere, all over everyone, all over the rig, in your eyes and ears. Until you can get the level "just right", it's a good idea to tap the stand before unscrewing it with a small hammer; empty pipe rings like a bell, but if it has fluid in it, it makes a dull "thud".)

I guess the thing that really hit me was the smell, it made me feel nostalgic, almost like the perfume of a certain woman, maybe one you sometimes had a good time with but didn't particularly like most of the time. That smell is a combination of many things: the fresh caliche of the location, on windy days it can sandblast your vehicle windshield, even strip the paint off the handrails, then add a whiff of the oily aroma of diesel in the tanks, soon to be the acrid smoke in the air like a hundred idling Greyhound busses and with twice the rumble.

As you get closer to the rig you start to smell the hot machinery and grease, iron on iron violently releasing molecules of ferrous oxide creating the taste of steel on your tongue, a copper flavor like an adrenaline overdose. Then the oddest smell of all twitches at your nose, some sort of sweet-sour, a " doesn't smell horribly bad but doesn't smell particularly good" kind of aroma. All I can say to describe it would be something like rotten gardenias, dollar store dog food or your lover's morning breath, that would be the smell of drilling mud.

It smells a little better during the winter when the sun doesn't bake it as much.

Drilling mud will have to wait for another time, so I can wax poetic about it. I've seen it get guys fired, seen 'em fall off in it, seen guys get burned with the chemicals or nearly kill themselves and others by mixing two of the wrong types and creating a deadly cloud and reaction....and I have seen it kill someone.

Part III

Patterson Rig 415

Driving along Hwy 70 the other day, I could see the derrick from miles away but could I get there from here?

Then I saw the rig sign.
(click any pic for larger view)

The drilling rig wasn't far off the hwy, either.

The location was fairly active, several drilling mud company people, Halliburton representatives, some others and the drilling crew was "trippin' in the hole" and had a derrick full of pipe.

There were too many vehicles in the way to back up far enough away so I had to take two different shots to get the entire rig.

The first thing I did was find the tool pusher; he's the man in charge of the rig and I would need his permission to even be on the location much less take photos.

Come to find out, he was from Pampa and had gone to school there. He loaned me his hard hat and told me to take all the pics I wanted but admonished me to not venture out on the floor. I had another couple of hurdles to overcome; the steps, not so much of an obstacle, but I also needed to obtain the permission of the evening tour driller to come onto "his" rig. (It's "his" for his eight hour shift, much like a ship "is" the captain's while he's in command)

Nice rig, nice steps. I've worked on so many piles of junk where you might stand a good chance of breaking a leg trying to get up to the rig floor. Climbing the stairs is just like going up any other, but if you're in a hurry to get down*, you can swing your legs up and over each hand rail and slide all the way down!

*In a hurry to get down because of a blowout, the rig is collapsing, one of your fellow roughnecks has threatened your life and you don't think you should hang around to find out if he's going to follow through on the threat, you've got trouble and need to go wake up the tool pusher/company man/whoever needs to be contacted or maybe your old lady packed you a sandwich made with mayo on a blisteringly hot summer day and now you need...you REALLY NEED...to make it to the Port-a-Potty at the edge of the location. All kinds of reasons to slide down the handrails, but I always did it because it was fun. Well, and the reasons listed above, some of them happening to me multiple times.

To be continued.....

Part II

Part III

DEBUT: Daily Definite Difference

Definite Difference # 000000000000001

Do you know the difference between a Texas Tall Tale and a fairy tale?

A fairy tale begins with:

"Once upon a time...."

A Texas Tall Tale takes this tactful tack thusly:

"Now, this ain't no crapola...."

Oil & Cattle

Workover rig on the Maddox Ranch
Roberts County, Texas
Summer 2006

The grass is new and green because it had been
burned a few months earlier during the out-of-control
prairie fires that broke out all over the Panhandle.

This is about two miles east of where I grew up.