Looking forward

I may go back offshore this week. I haven't been since the drilling moratorium began and I wonder what will have changed. Most likely a lot will have changed, just nothing that I would or could notice. I'm looking forward to my helicopter ride over the Gulf. The first time - on my way to my first rotation offshore - I was petrified. Afraid that I wouldn't remember where precisely one needs to press on the window for it to pop out and allow for escape in the inevitable helicopter crash which was about to occur. But as soon as we took off, I was out, rocked to sleep by the helicopter's pulsating sound and shaky departure. I awoke when we got there. Most of my subsequent helicopter rides went the same way, and I'm sure the half dozen men sitting around me were always envious of my talent for falling asleep aboard anything that moves. This time though, I will force myself to stay awake, so I can see it. The Gulf of Mexico.

My last time on a helicopter I willed myself not to drift off because I was too curious as to what I might see. The oil spill dominated all forms of media, and while I was sick of hearing about it, I had to see It. The rig I was on was only a few miles away from the Deepwater Horizon, so I was sure I would see something on the 1-2 hour long flight. All I could see was blue at first - the surprisingly beautiful Gulf of Mexico. Then I saw it. What looked like a single red ribbon heading towards where we had came from. The ribbon was a wave, and within minutes it was followed by a few more. And a few more. And a few clusters of some oil balls. And then they were gone, replaced by the pristine and relatively unblemished sea I'd grown to love. Wow, I thought, that was kind of lame.

Then my heart sank. The beautiful body of water that had made being offshore for 21 days straight seem worthwhile at sunrise at the end of a 12-hour shift, changed. It went from bright blue to an opaque reddish-brown color that Crayola calls "Burnt Sienna." It looked thicker than water, like clay, and I craned my head around to try and find the blue Gulf again. I noticed that many of the men in the helicopter were doing the same. They looked worried. Maybe they were thinking about their jobs and their families, but I think it was something more visceral. It pained me to see the Gulf like that. It's hard to articulate, but something about seeing nature corrupted in such a way so that it's completely unrecognizable for miles...It was red and it was thick; it was wrong and utterly heartbreaking.

And that's how I left it. I'm not sure where in the Gulf I'm flying to, but I hope I pass over a sea that's dark blue, almost navy. That's how I like to remember it.

Spare time...and lots of it

I haven't written in awhile because I haven't worked in awhile. It's been about a month and a half since I was last on a rig. Work is picking up in the Gulf and I'm on call to work on a deepwater drillship once drilling begins again. I went to a "Spud Meeting" (pre-job meeting) last Monday and they described the changes they had done to the BOPs (meaning blowout preventers, which were what failed to stop the Deepwater Horizon explosion) since the drilling moratorium. How they were really busy making the necessary changes so that operations will be safer than before. One safety guy made a comment on how in retrospect, some things about the old BOP were disturbingly unsafe. Not comforting. So in approximately two weeks I will be returning offshore for a 4 week on, 2 week off rotation. I've never been offshore for 4 weeks straight, and will write about how that goes. Hopefully cabin-fever doesn't set in. I should be okay, though, as I've heard that this rig is really nice and has a fancy gym.

At this point I'm fully aware that no one is reading this, other than my devoted and supportive boyfriend. Maybe one day I will turn these posts into something--an article perhaps. I have told two people that this blog exists, but never got a response (likely busy) so I assume they're not reading this which is perfectly fine with me. I'm reluctant to tell anyone about this blog, probably for the same reason I won't let anyone hear me sing: I don't want to find out I suck at something I love doing, which in this case is writing. I know these postings aren't beautifully crafted, as I don't write drafts or think of clever language or metaphors, but I like to write and this will do for now. This blog helps me to convince myself that my job is part of some bigger plan. That the life experience gained on an oil rig will prove invaluable when I'm an investigative reporter or science writer or executive something. This job can't just be a job, and I can't just be a field engineer.

Rachel Bernard: on the surface, a mild-mannered engineer, but who is in fact an undercover reporter on a secret mission (so secret that even she does not know what the mission is)

Pre-life Crisis

I heard a discussion on NPR a few months ago how many of today's college students struggle with having too many options -- too many things that they could do with their lives -- which was certainly not the case for past generations and surprising considering the lack of job opportunities in today's economy. You'd think that the recent graduates who were lucky enough to get jobs would be desperate to keep them, but I can't think of many people I know that want to be doing what they're doing now in two years.

I know that's the case for me. I always thought that I would do something really awesome when I was older, and graduating from Princeton solidified the idea in my head that I would be successful. A part of me has always wanted to be an editor and journalist, but I feel that dream slipping away whenever I see the lists of publications on the resumes of people I knew from high school newspaper. I chose to go the practical route in college, focusing on engineering and quitting the newspaper for lack of time and interest (who wants to write stories about snowball fights on campus?). I knew engineering was the right thing to study if you want a job post-undergrad, but is it practical if you don't actually want to work as an engineer once you get out? Maybe not, but the money I make may buy me some time to figure it out.

Today is the one year anniversary of my start date, and I've started to browse the internet for jobs. I applied for a position with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as an engineer, and getting it would be really great as I would be minutes away from my family and boyfriend. I'm scared though because unlike this job, that's a job I could see myself sticking with for several years, even until retirement. A comfortable government position. I hear my boyfriend talk about the older people that work in his office at the Department of Homeland Security, just doing the minimum to get by. I'm scared of that. I don't want to feel less successful when I'm 60 than I do at 23.

Wise words

Since coming to Midland I've been talking to a girl who started at this company a few months before I did. She works on a nearby rig and knows a lot about the equipment used here, so I bug her a lot online by asking her questions. This morning there was some bad data coming up on the computer and I told her about it and that I hadn't noticed it for a few minutes. Her response:

"woops

oh well

it's just a hole in the ground"

It made me think of the last post I wrote and how you can mess something up, but most things are fixable and it's not something to beat yourself down over.

Highs and Lows

Three close calls in the past 24 hours:

1) I almost shorted out the electronics on a very expensive tool. I had the power on when we plugged into it when it should have been off. This is a well established no-no for my job. I realized what I had done almost immediately and when my lead hand walked in, I pretended that I had correctly turned the power switch on after plugging in. He sat down and said, "That's weird, the voltage is reading twice what it's supposed to." I replied, "That is weird." Nevertheless he programed the tool and everything seems fine. Phew.

2) On the rig floor. I tried to remove this plug that is responsible for protecting the electronics inside the tool until we are ready to put the tool in the hole (underground). The tool is like a huge pipe with a whole bunch of electronics inside it. Tools communicate with each other through delicate connections which fit into one another (male-female) once the pipes around them are screwed together one on top of the other on the rig floor. The way you remove the plug is with a socket wrench. So I'm turning and turning it and it's not getting any looser. Turns out the plug was stuck on the connection it was protecting and I was spinning the entire innards of the tool round and round. You're not supposed to do that (delicate, remember?). Paco, my lead hand, banged on the wrench a bit and loosened the plug. Anyway, we did our shallow hole test -- a test that you do once all the tools are connected together and underground to make sure they're working properly before you send them 11,000 into the earth -- and everything was fine. I asked Paco if I had done something wrong up there on the rig floor, and he said no (though maybe his attitude would have been different if I actually had broken the electronics in the tool). Phew.

3) Okay so I had managed to get this far without shedding a tear until close call # 3 happened. There is a sensor that we have to install on the rig itself in order to get signal from our tools downhole. This sensor is screwed into a pipe where many, many gallons of nasty petroleum-smelling mud flows through.

Anyway, our sensor had broken and needed to be switched with a new one, and Paco told me that it is safe to install this sensor while the crew was lowering the tools to the bottom of the hole. So. I unscrew the old broken sensor very slowly, knowing that there was likely pressure built up behind it and mud would shoot out as it normally does -- I had seen people do this before. I saw a slow trickle of mud seep out. Okay, no big. I keep unscrewing and BAM!! The sensor vanished almost immediately and before I knew what had happened a very pressurized stream of mud shot up 20 feet into the air. After what seemed like eons of watching it shoot up in full force, I realized that this pressurized mud fountain wasn't stopping any time soon, which is what is supposed to happen. I walk up to the drill floor to let someone know what I had done. Upon looking at me and my mud covered face and clothes a rig hand asked, "What happened to you?" I said, "I tried to change out my sensor and mud is shooting up. Is it going to stop on its own?" "No," he replied. He informed the driller and they managed to stop the fountain of mud, which at this point had covered most of the ground and that side of the rig in a thick milk chocolate colored layer.

I felt humiliated and scared that someone would mention this incident to the company man, who would likely run me off when he found out what a safety hazard I was. I could have been seriously injured if my hand or face was directly in the path of the explosive fountain of mud or worse, the metal sensor which had been catapulted. Why do I keep fucking things up? Am I so much more stupid than everyone else in the oilfield that I haven't learned these things by now? Maybe I should quit before I really mess something up or get hurt.

Walking back toward the trailer I ran into the DD, Dan, who took one look at me and asked if I had been playing in the mud. Even though I was embarrassed, I was shook up by the experience and said, "I did something stupid" and told him what happened. My voice cracked. Dan said, "Oh hell, that exact thing happened to me once, except when it happened to me I was so startled that I fell back into the cellar under the rig - It was about as deep as I am tall! Don't worry about that. I'm sure it's happened to every guy on this rig at some point." I laughed. Him saying that made me feel so much better. It was the first time anyone in the oilfield had ever recounted an embarrassing story to me - a story where they did something foolish. Maybe I'm not such an idiot after all. God I felt better.

Fast forward several hours later in my shift. I pick up the phone. A stern voice on the other end said, "Yeah who was it that made such a mess on the rig earlier?" I was speechless. My mind flashed to the ground below the rig, covered in a thick layer of mud.

"Uh...You mean the mud on the ground?"

"Yeah."

"Um, that was me."

"Well you gon' clean it up?"

Silence. I didn't know what to say. How could I clean up mud? It's not like you can mop it up. What do I say? Is this the company man? Is he gearing up to run me off?

More silence. And then...

I heard what sounded like ten people laughing on the other end of the phone. Never has being laughed at been such a relief.

Hurry up and wait.

I got a call a few days ago asking if I was willing to work for two weeks in Midland, TX, home of George W. and Laura Bush. If they had asked me a few weeks ago, I would have tried to come up with some excuse not to go. But doing absolutely nothing for three weeks was getting old and I was starting to miss the extra $130+ I get from being on a rig...

Sure it was fun in the beginning. I made crafts and decorated the patio of my apartment (see below), but after a week of that my days became variations of the following: wake at noon, People's Court, Desperate Housewives, Starbucks, read 30 pages of a book, glass of wine.

Oh yeah, one day me and a friend went to a place called Jungle Gardens in Avery Island, LA and it was beautiful. The Tabasco factory is also there but we passed.

Anyway, now I'm back to work and on loan to Midland, TX until my vacation at the end of the month. I've been here for about 3 days and haven't been sent out on a job yet because the rig isn't ready for us. I'm nervous about going to the rig because the measurement tool we're going to use (called PeriScope) isn't something I've ever seen or learned about before. I have a 350+ page .pdf explaining the tool, but I've only skimmed it. I'm hoping I can learn when I get there...?

On this job I'll be working days because the lead hand that I'm going out with likes nights better. For the most part, the person working days on a rig (whether it be the company man, directional driller, etc) is the more experienced person and I don't want people coming up to me assuming I'm in charge. The lead hand is very experienced so I know I can always wake him up if necessary. I just hope he doesn't assume I know a whole lot, because my experience is limited to the way things are done in Conway, AR. Things that are done in Texas may not be the same things that are done in Arkansas on a job.

Though I'm nervous, the sooner we start this job, the sooner it will end (9-12 days) and the more days I'll have before my vacation starts. If I get out of here early enough, I can go to Maryland before my trip and see my family and boyfriend. I'm really excited and hope it works out.

Overdue

I'm writing this post because I haven't posted in awhile, and not because I want to. Since my last post a lot has changed. A new DD came on our rig -- one no one got along with. He didn't speak to me for an entire week, which I was fine with because he's a jerk. I'm not sure if it was because I'm a girl and he just didn't have anything to say to me. Most likely, he just doesn't like MWD's (my position). Him and the night DD (who my previous entry was about) talk a lot behind people's back, especially when they think someone is incompetent. They thought both of my day hand's were bad at their jobs, so I was very excited when I found out I would be leaving Conway right before I was scheduled to take on the day hand position (because I know I am less experienced than the guys they thought we unqualified).

So I'm out of Arkansas after exactly 3 months. It came at exactly the right time too, because I was as close as I've ever been to wanting to quit. I had made a small error in assembling our "tool" which was caught before we programmed it. When we tried to program it (properly assembled), it wouldn't work and while troubleshooting with the people in town, my mistake was mentioned. Everyone agreed that my mistake was likely not to blame, but my mistake was still broadcasted to the office. I wouldn't have minded, except now people think I'm unable to do something I'd done correctly multiple times before. I felt like shit.

As I drove away from the rig for the last time, I called my boyfriend in tears because my day hand didn't feel comfortable signing my competency sheet in light of that event. My boyfriend told me I should quit, because I never say anything positive about my job. That made me feel worse. I really want to like my job. I want to be the type of person who travels and has a wild job and loves every minute of it. I wanted to have this blog where I document my life, treating this job as a sort of experiment where I chronicled this most amazing experience. When I tell people what I do, they're impressed and I want to fulfil their expectations and gush about how exciting it is.

That's why I haven't written in over a month. I just can't get it up at the moment. I was holding off on writing until I loved my job and had something inspiring to say, but I can't.

I Spoke Too Soon...

There's a new Directional Driller (DD) that works nights here. Engineers and DD's share the logging unit (office area) alone so you get to know the person fairly well. Sometimes it's a good thing--the last DD cooked me bacon on a daily basis--and other times you just wish that person would never talk to you.

This DD is nice, but I was warned before working with him that he is very political and likes to voice his opinions whenever possible. I had avoided such discussions with him until today, when I got grilled for about an hour about my beliefs on "big government", health care, gay marriage, abortion, Obama's religion, Obama's alleged U.S. citizenship, atheists, self-identified liberals, the Mosque being built near Ground Zero, the public school system...to name a few. This DD doesn't identify as a Republican or Democrat, but as a "Constitutionalist" who is a devoted listener of Alex Jones (http://www.infowars.com/). He suggested I give it a listen, and I probably should because he's already asked me if I have gotten the chance.

It's very hard to have any sort of productive political debate with someone like him as he's convinced that everything he knows is fact. For example, he asked whether I thought Obama was a citizen. I said yes, to which he responded, "Then why won't they release his birth certificate?" I replied that I was pretty sure they had released that, and he replied, "No, if you look at it, it isn't an actual birth certificate." How do I argue against that? I personally haven't looked up the copy of his birth certificate because I feel no need to. Call me an optimist, but I don't believe there was a master conspiracy to make Barack Obama president. The DD then asked me if I knew that Barack Obama's name used to be Barry Santos. No, I did not know this. The DD says, "There is a recording of him calling a radio station and he says, 'This is Barry'." I pointed out that Barry used to be Barack Obama's nickname. He didn't reply. He also asked me about Obama living in Indonesia, which is a Muslim country. I told him he was a child when he lived in Indonesia; it wasn't his choice. (Inside I thought, And so what if he were a Muslim?).

For the other issues, I played dumb for the most part. For some of the topics I didn't need to play dumb because I honestly don't know very much. I don't know a lot about the health care plan for example. So I let him talk. I doubt he knows very much either, but he thinks he does and I can't pretend I do, so it's impossible to debate him on anything. I don't have good reasons for supporting universal health care, but people whose intelligence I respect do, and that's good enough for me. But I supposed that's what he's doing as well...we just respect different people.

We found common ground on a few issues. We both agreed that marijuana should be legalized (he doesn't like government telling people what they can do in their own homes...you know, unless you're gay). Um...I think there were some more things we agreed on but I can't think of any at the moment. I know there were some things I pretended to agree with him on, but mostly because I lacked the mental energy and evidence to support my position.

I can't say I'm happy about spending my nights with this guy. I will continue to pretend to not care about politics and not know anything about anything and be apathetic about gay rights. Fine.

--------------------------------

p.s. -- When I was watching Ugly Betty in the trailer earlier, the DD walked in as the character Justin (flamboyant young teenager) was talking in his usual sassy tone. The DD then started talking in a stereotypical gay voice, swishing his hips and said, "We're different and that's okay because this is America!" Yes, it was awkward.

I, of course, said nothing.

White men

I think about race and sex here probably more than I ever have before. It would make for a more salacious story if I told you that I'm mistreated, that I'm the victim of racial slurs and unwanted spanks on the ass, but that's not true. All of the men on this rig have been very polite and nice, and while they make the occasional woman-joke about me, it's said playfully.

No one's ever made a racial comment to me or around me. No one has mentioned race period. I wonder sometimes what they think of me. I wonder if any of them are closet racists. I wonder if they can even tell I'm half black, and if they would be as nice if I were dark-skinned.

I have my own prejudices. I assume that if you're a white man from the south with little education and you watch FOX News...you're probably a racist. Not Hitler-racist, but don't-date-my-daughter-racist. When I was in college my friends and I would watch FOX News on occasion out of boredom to see what the other side was saying. We would laugh about Glenn Beck's paranoid rants, or listen to Rush Limbaugh on the radio and get angry, coming up with counter-arguments as if he were there. We would worry that those men were instilling fear and hatred of a changing world in people that didn't know any better.

Everyone here, all these nice people, they watch FOX News exclusively to find out about the world. I don't think I had ever met anyone that did that before. I pretend I have no opinion when I walk by a co-worker listening to Glenn Beck talk about the Obama Administration's link to the Black Panthers. I don't say anything. But I do worry, what do they think of me?

I know I shouldn't assume that these men are racist based on where they come from or which talking heads they listen to. I've never been one to assume racism when someone was rude to me or I didn't get my way, but that was in Montgomery County, Maryland - probably one of the most liberal and diverse places in the country. Now, I'm surrounded by Republican white men. And I'm out of my element.

What I Do

I would have to guess that almost none of my family members or friends have any idea on what my job entails, so for them and you, this is a post about what I do.

Actually, first let me clarify that despite what my extended family may think, I actually do work on oil rigs on a daily basis. I do not work in an office. Here's proof:

I wake up every day at 4:45pm. I shower, I eat cereal, I drink coffee and I go to the "morning" safety meeting. There are about a dozen people in the meetings. I'm the only one not chewing tobacco. I'm one of the few people without a visible tattoo. I'm also the only girl. At least one joke is made at my expense. I smile. The joke is either something about being a Yankee or a girl, but I don't mind as it's always good-natured.

At 6pm, my shift starts and on a normal day, my responsibilities are to monitor data coming from our equipment down-hole to our computers on the surface. Around once an hour I email datasets and logs to the client. The client is a company such as Exxon, Shell or a smaller company such as Southwestern Energy. If things are going well, I can stream TV online between datasets. If things are going badly (equipment failures, transmission issues), I am likely close to tears and fantasizing about driving off into the sunset, leaving whoever is still here to fix the problem themselves.

The busiest days -- those days when I don't get to sleep and I must stay up for as long as the job warrants -- are when we are preparing our equipment to be lowered into the hole. There is much paperwork to be done, and we have to place various sensors around the rig. It gets dirty. I took the picture above after a particularly messy task of climbing on the Blow-Out Preventer (BOP) to remove a cable.

We work in 12-hour shifts, which go by much more quickly than any of my 8-hour-day office jobs. Because things are either going to shit and you're racing against the clock to fix something, or you're doing nothing and get to watch Mad Men season 1, which is what I am doing now.

During my 12 hours off, I sleep. The whole time. There isn't really anywhere to go because we're in rural Arkansas. Most people like to leave the rig every few days, but my short time working offshore has prepared me to be isolated from the world for up to three weeks, so being on this rig for a week without leaving is easy.

Usually it takes about a week to drill a well. If they are drilling more than one well at a location they'll skid the rig over a bit. This usually means a day off before we're needed again. If they are done drilling all the wells at one location, they'll move the rig to the new location. This gives us about 3-4 days off. Right now we're doing a 2 weeks on, one week off rotation. (They've only been able to do that in Arkansas since all of us offshore people were relocated here. Before that, there weren't enough engineers in Conway for anyone to get substantial time off.)

For now, I'd say my life is going pretty well. Sure, I'm a 7-hour drive away from all of my possessions and I'm even further from anyone I love or who loves me. But right now our equipment is working, I'm relaxing, and nothing needs fixing. Things are going well.

First post

Picture: nail polish and grease

It's weird writing the first post of a blog no one knows exists yet. Who am I talking to? I'd pretend that this is my diary, but then I would start writing as if you know me. You don't know me.

My name is Rachel. (See, if you were my diary you'd already know that) I grew up in Maryland and later went to an ivy league school where I majored in geological engineering. I graduated in 2009 and began working in October for a large oilfield services company. I am currently on an oil rig.

I lived in Lafayette, Louisiana and worked on offshore rigs until very recently. I was working offshore 60 miles away from the Horizon when it exploded. After the ban on offshore drilling, I was relocated temporarily(?) to work on land rigs in Conway, Arkansas where I am now and have been for the past month and a half.

I enjoy writing so I was encouraged by more than a few people to start this blog. I haven't told anyone about it yet, mainly because I haven't decided what kind of blog this is going to be. I don't know what people will find interesting. But I guess most people don't know someone that works on an oil rig, so I've got that going for me.

This is going to be a blog about a lot of things, like adjusting to life in the South, starting a new job, and being the only girl on a rig full of men. I hope I can talk about some important stuff, like the oil industry and the people in it. But to be honest, I'm probably going to talk a lot about some of my less intellectual interests, which includes an embarrassing amount of reality TV. Just a heads up.