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.