Ep. #41 - Russell Wilson: Life as an Oilfield Driller

In this gritty and honest episode of The Crude Cast, we sit down with Russell Wilson, a longtime driller, tool pusher, and all-around oilfield veteran. From high-tech hydrate experiments on the slope, Russell shares battle-tested stories from his two decades in Alaska's harshest conditions.

We get into everything:

• The dangers—and discipline—behind continuous circulation
• $60M well disasters and the lessons they taught
• Why training and mentorship are the future of rig safety
• Hydrate drilling for the Japanese government
• And how wildcards, weather, and crew chemistry shape every hitch

Whether you're new to the field or a salty hand yourself, this episode delivers raw insight, laughs, and hard truths about what it really means to work the iron in Alaska.

🎧 Subscribe now and share it with someone who's ever pulled slips or swung tongs.

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Transcript

0:12

Yeah, I worked out on that for on a couple different projects and it was wild. It was wild working for the Italians. They get excited and you got interpreters and they're trying to throw a bunch of crazy technology at these wells. yeah, mean, well, you know, like money isn't always the answer, you know? Right. But it was cool, it some cool stuff. I just don't think the Juices worked the squeeze for them. What it was was their philosophy was continuous circulation. So while you're normally you come down to make a connection, you kill the pumps and make a connection. Well, what they had is they had these side entry subs screwed into the top of each stand. So you drill it all the way down and then you'd hook this high pressure hose up to the side entry sub, go over to your standpipe manifold. It was all electric over hydraulic actuate. So you just push buttons and it would open valves. So then you're pumping down the string while you're making a connection, which was just a really eerie feeling because you got like almost 4,000 pounds of standpipe pressure and you're screwing out of it, go and grab another stand. Then once you get screwed into it, obviously, then you reverse that process and get back to drilling. So the pumps would never shut off for like two, three weeks at a time. was wild. Does that, does that help you? Does that help with like hole conditions somehow? Like you're constantly getting cuttings to surface or something. Yeah, that's absolutely it. So anytime you go extended reach, which that that whole that's that really shallow, super thick, viscous. And I guess there's a lot of it, but it's tough to it's tough to produce. So they're going they they had some record wells on with the far as their like intermediate runs like They're pushing like getting close to foot measured depth. but their true vertical, I think was only like 3,500 feet. So you can imagine like the angle you have to build immediately and then you're horizontal for so long to reach a way out there. So what happens is, K does a really good job. They're torque and drag specialists. They're just an engineering firm that if you have challenging wells, you'll bring these guys on and they're just super nerds basically. And they come out and what it is is so when you're drilling horizontal, you have, they call it the conveyor belt. So your pipe's going to lay on the low side and all your fluid is going to run on the high side. And so as you're rotating, the pipe itself will kick the solids up into that conveyor belt. It'll travel up the well bore a little ways and then fall back out. So if you were to not rotate at all, basically your clean fluid would flow above the pipe and your solids would lay on the bottom and you'd never clean the hole. So So their whole thing was every time you shut the pumps off, you give those solids the ability to settle. So by not shutting the pumps off, you keep them, you keep that, they want, what is it? Turbulent flow more so than laminar flow. Cause that's what you're getting. You're getting this little pocket of fluid that's traveling and you're trying to keep your solids in that to travel up there. And which is the way it's going now because Basically all the low hanging through all your post holes have been drilled, you know, now. So everybody's got to start getting more and more horizontal and more laid out there. I imagine you make more production that way as well. If you're staying and pay all those thousands of fee, you know, Well, they really like so the Bakken zone, they found that like back in the 80s, they just didn't have the they didn't have the technology to produce that. And once they got the once the the directional caught up and they were able to really steer these things, they'll get into that Bakken zone, that shale, and then just serpent. So I think the PVD on those wells true verticals like around 10,000 feet where that zone is, but it's not super thick. So they'll get into it and then just snake through it to maximize surface area in that. And that's what allowed the Bakken to really take off. So how do you, yeah, that's kind of interesting. So like you said, every connection you have to rig up a hose and sit there and just. dude, was, yeah and these subs were like four feet tall and super heavy and they're just a nightmare. So like, you know, like now when you're coming out of the hole and you're coming out wet and you got this mud bucket you've got to put around. Normally each tool joint's like this big, the top of the bottom of the stand and then the bottom of the top stand. So your spread across your tool joint might be two feet. But now you've added this four foot sub in there. So your mud buckets got to reach around that. So when you screw out of it, that 90 foot of fluid doesn't go all over the place. And, you know, we try to use things like stripping rubbers down in the hole. So when you're pulling your pipe through it strips it clean because also oil base is another big like technological thing that has made all that possible just with the lubrication, the cooling, the whole cleaning. its ability to maintain its properties over a water-based mud. Like you have to use oil-based basically in that stuff because it, just maintains its properties way better. So, and then that's a nightmare. Like you got that stuff dripping everywhere and then, know, you got high winds and now it's blowing out on the location. It was just a nightmare all the way around finger pinching, you know, just dirty time consuming. And, you know, so I worked on that rig for a little while. actually came out, they had a I didn't realize it. I showed up and we were doing that. And then I ended up going to another rig and then I talked to someone there like, yeah, they didn't, they didn't end up doing that for, very much longer. They're called we subs, W E I some, some Italian thing, but they were so gung ho like we have to do this. This is one of our core values, continuous circulation. And then it's like a little bit later you find out it's like, yeah, we're not doing that no more. Yeah. Well, imagine you're handling equipment's different unless you're making it up manually too, like. Well, you just have an extra connection, you know, and you got in there super heavy. So you got to get, have to move those around when you go to lay down pipe and have these big racks to put them on. And, and, it was just, was a rough next nightmare. It's just like, man, we're coming out of a hole. We got to deal with these we subs and, and, yeah, it's just, I'm glad I didn't stick around on that rig, but you know, years later than finding out they kind of did. Like, you know, take the. take their best practices that seemed to work and streamline their operation and drilled some really pretty challenging wells and were successful with it. So that was cool to hear. Yeah, some of the guys I, one guy I talked to had worked up there as well. He was saying it was having to like call and ask somebody else instead of having people on the rig Like, waiting on a call from Italy or whatever it was to move forward and like you see the result of that. You know, it's like your cost per barrel goes way up, especially on those big jobs. You have so much personnel and I mean you're looking at so on that Crest job there towards the end when we were full tilt boogie with everybody, we were running like 250,000 a day drilling. So do the math on that. What is that? 11, 12,000 an hour. You know, so if you're shut down for hours, Bro, There's definitely some growing pains there. Like you can go too cheap, you know? There's a balance just like everything else, Oh yeah. No, I mean, and so leaving, Kind of to your point, when you have all this big infrastructure, big rigs and everything, like that makes some of these wells uneconomical to drill, you know? Absolutely, absolutely. Especially, it depends on what you're going after. I remember that one of those last programs on the they were trying to reach out to, I can't remember, as soon as you start getting laid out there and start adding high angle, like it really does change. It really does. Like everybody wanted to like talk smack about these torque and drag guys, cause it's kind of a pain in the butt, but like. We did some pretty wild stuff out at and we never lost a BHA. And you know, they get, they, always want to pull on elevators. Like you'll TD a section or you'll TD where like maybe you're at the end of the well. Okay. We're TD. And so what they'll do is they'll pump a couple of bottoms up, maybe send a sweep or two, look at the shakers and say, it looks clean. Let's pull a few and then pull on elevators. And then you start pulling on elevators and you're watching your weight indicator and it's getting ratty. And you're like, okay. You call. And they'll just, I'll just pull a few more. Next thing you know, you're stuck. And now you're spending a month fishing or you're leaving a million dollar BHA down hole. And not only that, but you just lost your hole because you had to leave pipe in the hole. um so a lot of those hole cleaning principles that K has been trying to like show everybody like this stuff works, it's a little bit more investment upfront because it takes longer. You got to back ream out of the hole and you basically have to chase those cuttings all the way out of the hole. Mm. like you have to do it all the way. I've seen holes unload like we back ring for four days in the last thousand feet. It just unloaded. It looked like you had side dumps dumping onto the shakers and just gravel. And it's like these guys are just chomping at the bit because they want to get that cost down and they want to pull on elevators. if you don't have those solids, they're in your hole somewhere and you got to get them out. And a lot of times, depending on your, you know, the mechanics of your well, you got to rotate and pump all the way. You basically have to reverse drill all the way out of the hole, you know, and it's just painful. It's super painful, but it's a lot better than, than, doing a, you know, a blind blind back off and leaving a million dollar BHA down there and then having to go in and do a open hole side track and then try to hopefully get back into the same zone that the geologists were happy with, you know, I've seen that. I've seen that where we left pipe in the hole, we twisted liner off and then we spent a month fishing it out. They got to where they were happy where they could do an open hole side track and then we re-drilled it and then they didn't like where they were at and we had to re-drill it. It turned a 10 million dollar well into a 60 million dollar well. Right. Yeah, there's not too many companies I can imagine that want to spend 60 million for sure. That's a death sentence in some cases. Yeah, and you know, a lot of it is that mentality of like, it's good. Come on, know, come out of the hole. Come on, faster, faster, faster, you know. And when you're drilling these extended reach, doesn't even have to be extended reach. You just add angle. start adding. There's a certain angle. And it's like in that, you know, 25 to like 65 degrees. It's almost the same as like, don't know if you do, if you ride mountains and snow or anything, but there's a, there's an angle in mountains that are like most prone to avalanche. And like, it's kind of the same thing with, with wells where, like if you're in that angle, if you're in that window, like you pretty much, you know, you're rolling the dice anytime that you try to like, just take shortcuts because it's just not going to happen. Is that back reaming as you come out? Is that easier on certain rigs? Yeah, absolutely. They've got so your newer cyber rigs like they and I've never even been on one of these rigs But they have like a back reaming most so like you have an auto driller where you can set your parameters on your top drive and on your You know, you'll have smart stuff on your on your draw works that will Add the right amount of weight and you can adjust all kinds of things and just sit back and watch it Will they have that now for back reaming where? If you see your pump pressure starting to climb a little bit, that means you're pulling up into solids. That means you need to slow your rate. You need to slow down and let that fluids and that stuff get them solids out ahead of you. And so all those parameters, you can now tie into like a back reaming mode, but I've never been on one of those. I've been stuck on the brake handle, just gripped the whole time for 12 hours, you know, like, sounds nice. Yeah. So where where all have you worked? I worked for Neighbors Alaska for a lot of years. I started roust about when I was 18 years old. I spent my 19th birthday up on the slope building rigs. I was just kind of thought of it as like something to save money to like go to school. was considering going back to school in my early 20s and kind of did some other stuff and bounced around a little bit. And it was weird too because... Back then, like some of the rigs I worked on, were real stingy with knowledge. Like, I don't know if they were scared of their jobs or what, but like, you know, the old timers just running on the kids. And like, I remember him trying to make me tail. We had some spaghetti, like two and seven eights pipe at 90 footers. So it can barely hold its own weight and we're, and we're running in the hole with this. So as a floor hand down on the bottom on the pipe rack, as soon as that picks up, that whip is going to whip you towards the hole. And they're like, Don't let that, know, like hold on to it, hold on to it. Well, that's exactly the opposite of what you want to do. You basically just want to like let it do its thing and get that whip out. had like bruises and stretch marks and like cracked ribs and stuff and they're just laughing at me. And I'll never forget. Finally, one day I had there the hand, I think I worked over on another crew and he was like, figure out your flow path, figure out how mud gets from the pits to the bit and back to the pits. And like before that, I was just like a glorified janitor for like a couple years, just like getting coffee, mopping and not having a clue what was going on. And then like one day it clicked. It was like, okay, this is what's going on. And then at that point I just found it super stimulating and fun. mean, it's like, sometimes it's like, I can't believe they pay us to do this shit, you know? And then I actually started making a hand, you know, so. Worked for neighbors till like 2010 and went to work for Doyon for a little while. And then went to work for inlet drilling on the glacier rig around Kenai for like five years. I think is I was pushing tools. So work motors on that rig, pretty much built it when it got shipped up from Texas and then drilled on it for a couple of years and then push tools on it. And then it stacked out And then I went to work for Nordic up on the slope, which a lot of good guys from Nordic, my dad used to work for them. And they're like, you know, one of the, the originals you had neighbors, had Doyon, had Nordic, like they've been around forever. And, I was actually really surprised to see, like, I was, I was expecting a little bit, a little bit nicer equipment Luckily, they've kept their group of core hands that have that getter done and can make things happen. And they do. They do make it happen. I'll definitely give them that. let's see. Finished up on the slope, we did some hydrate wells that were pretty interesting. was for the Japanese government and the Department of the Interior. Basically, so Japanese is 100 % Japan is 100 % reliant on natural gas imports, but they're surrounded by hydrates. And so they want to test the feasibility of drilling hydrate wells, but it's all offshore. you know, that's a spendy, that's a spendy project to just get into. So basically they got together with the United States government and drilled a, I think we did three wells. in and their TVD feet. But it was a bunch of stuff I'd never seen before. Like the surface casing was double walled. It was 14 inch inside 16 inch and they were seal welded at the top and bottom and they had a vacuum in between the two. So they're basically like each joint was like a thermos basically. Yeah. What they're trying to do is keep that to keep that hot that hot mud from Breaking down the hydrates while we're drilling it So they're basically trying to insulate the formation while we drill it and they actually had the mud going through mud chillers keeping the mud at like 20 degrees like super chilled mud and super complex completions we had fiber optics and I remember when we were running completions on those we had like we had like 20 people and and just going so slow putting these clamps on and then we had seven stainless lines going down trying to keep those from getting pinched. All these reels on the floor and out on the ground coming through shivs and so as a driller it was just it was super stressful it's like okay are you ready are you ready like on the radio are you is everybody ready I'm gonna clutch it and come out of slips okay yeah we're ready we're ready we're ready okay pick up come out of slips come down 30 feet stop, chain it down, do it all over again, just sit there and watch. It was like, it was wild, but, I'd like to, I'd be interested to hear how that worked out because it was kind of hush-hush, you know, a tight hole type situation. So that hydrate is like natural gas that is like in permafrost kind of like it's an ice cube it's natural gas and an ice cube kind of thing. So are you taking or do you think the intent was to like gasify it down whole and produce it or somehow. from what I gathered is while drilling it, they want to keep everything cold from keeping it because as it heats up, then it starts breaking out. And they want to keep minimize that. And then once we got everything in place, got made sure all their sensors and everything was working, then they would start pumping heated fluid down there and start getting it to break up and then start propagating. And these fiber optic sensors the guy from London was, I was talking to him about it. He said they could put one of these sensors in like a graduated cylinder. Wait, no, the sensor wasn't even in there. Just a graduated cylinder with an air pump like you'd have in a fish tank, so it's got bubbles. They could have one of these sensors in the same building, like a high rise building in another room, like several floors away. tell you how many bubbles, what size. It can read surface wind from a thousand feet. With these things, yeah, they're crazy, crazy. And it just had me thinking, it's like, if they're running this stuff in the hole, what else do they have? You know, it's like they're... by the by the US government. So that was the thing they just had no clue what was gonna happen after they got everything in place and then warm it up and then see how far These hydrates were actually gonna break up and like what what kind of production were they gonna get? You know and then do a cost analysis and all that kind of thing and see if it's because now we deal with so much thawing in we're gonna do the opposite of that to make more production. hydrate hydrates have always been the enemy, you know, it's like you want to get through them and leave them alone and just keep on going. No one ever wants to look at hydrates other than from a well control perspective, you know, the the blowout and when was that? Twenty twenty twelve, twenty thirteen or something like that. had a big blowout up there. They wanted to go a little further with their surface casing. And so when you drill a well, when you drill surface, All you have is a diverter stack. So it's a big bag with a 90 degree flange with a knife valve that's hydraulically actuated. So as a driller, if we take a surface kick, only, the only thing I can do is evacuate the rig and push a couple buttons in that bag closes that knife valve opens and you turn your pumps on full blast and basically get out of there. So you throw all your fluid out it. to see if you can't force it back down, usually doesn't work. And then you just let her buck out the side until it's done. But then what happens, especially in that one, is you get so much solids coming out, it just cut through that equipment and then filled the rig up with gravel and rocks and all that shit. And plus it was like 40 below. I think by the time, I can't remember if it was boots and coots or wild well control got up there, the rig was basically a, you know, it was just a frozen mess, you know. then it normally catches on fire after that at some point. exactly, exactly. And then so then once you get your surface casing set and you do your cement job and then you do a fit or you you do your tests, you test your cement job, then it's like, okay, we've got integrity in all this equipment. And now we'll put our regular BOP stack that has the ability like you can punt, you got your choke line, your kill line, you've got your different sets of rams, and then you've got your choke manifold where you can actually you know, handle a kick and then continue to drill, you know, if you catch it in time. But you can't do that when you drill surface. So what did is they had a, you know, they're well planned. We're going to set casing at 3000 feet or whatever it is. And then everything was going so good. They're like, well, why don't we try 3,500? And I think at like 3,200, they hit those hydrates and they had no, they had no BOPs. All they had was their diverter stack. So is that normally when surface casing is set around those, around that 3000 feet or? depends on where you're at, but I'd say 3000 to like 4500 4000 maybe is what we were doing out out at And so that'll a lot of that'll be like based on the history of the wells in the area. You know, you'll go look at data. What can we get away with safely and and then what kind of well because you want to build angle if you're if you're drilling a high angle well, you don't just want to post hole. and then try to build angle, you want to start building angle even in your surface casing. So that way you've got less mechanical forces as your drill strings going around that bend, right? Yeah, and Alaska has a history of shallow gas. you said your dad, he's in the industry or was in the industry. Where does he work or when did he, is he born here? here. No, my dad's from Michigan and he's an old ski bum hippie that just wound up wound up in Alaska back in like the late 70s. See, I was born in 81. Yeah. And he, you know, I think he got was going to kind of go the pipeline route and then just ran into some ran into some rowdy roughnecks and Kenai back in the day and fit right in. And so started started doing that thing. Met my mom. So my my mom's dad actually They're from Baker's field and he was up drill. don't know if he was on the break when they discovered oil on the swamp out Swanson river. I think I was in 57. Um, it was right, right before Alaska became a state, but basically he, he rounded up the family down here through everybody in the station wagon and, and, drove up the Alcan in 59. My mom was like two months old, Alaska just become a state and, So my grandfather was a tool pusher around Kenai. lot of old timers know him and really respected him. And he was actually killed in a super freak accident. He was in his quarters in bed and over in Beluga. And it was really cold out and the vent on the hot well. So your return condensate on your boiler, that tank, the vent had froze up and it just pressured up and pressured up. Not a lot of pressure, but... you and I know it doesn't take a lot of pressure, you know, when you got high volume and that thing blew, it blew out the side and basically turned it into like a water rocket. So then you had this water tank shoot across location and hit him in his quarters while he was asleep, balled him up and killed him. This was in 70, see my mom was 13 and she was born in 59. So what would that be 72 and, uh, He was getting on a plane, go home day, the next day asleep in his quarters and got blowed up and killed. And so really, really I have like, you know, I got, you know, all my uncles and everybody was, was, uh, was roughnecks pretty much, know? Man, that's too bad. Yeah, I know we always have the annual check your PSV on your water heater, you know, safety alert that comes out. So. And all that stuff, you know, it's all, it's all, there's a reason why they have it. eh you talked about working your way up from, rust about, forehand, you know, all that stuff. Is there like ongoing training that you guys, I know you guys go to like a five day class to get your BOP card. Is there, what other training do you guys have? And I'm glad you asked that question because that's something I've been thinking about a lot is, is not much, man. They do, you know, they do a little rig pass classes is like your little standard issue. HSE, a little has whopper, nothing real rig specific. It's like a trash segregation and like, you know, if you see a polar bear or, you know, spill reporting and stuff like that. Um, there isn't, there isn't really any training. other than once you get to that management level and, in well control, you know, that's where it comes in. It's all on the job training. And it's always seemed wild to me because it's definitely a trade, in my brain. and it's definitely a very, there's a lot of very specific skills that if you just had a little bit, especially now, dude, like when I went to work for Nordic, I had some kids at like, these kids couldn't make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. know, I'd have four handy was 18 years old. He would make a good hand. Like he was hungry and he wanted it, but they just don't know nothing. And then after COVID, like, yeah, a lot of people left the industry, you know, so they like threw all these bodies in these positions. And it was a nightmare as a driller, just like, because you can't trust anybody. And at the end of the day, it's It's everything's your responsibility. If homeboy leaves valve open and you spill 290 barrels out on location, which happened, uh, uh, seawater, um, it's not the pit watchers fault. It's the drillers fault. Uh, and, but it's, it's like, they just leave it up to whoever's on the rig that, that can like train these guys, but there's no absolutely zero organization to it. There's zero like checkpoints. Every once in while, they'll pass around a piece of paper. And like you check off like things that you think you can run, right? And then the tool pusher will look at it You know, but there's no organization to it. There's, and it seems like it would take hardly anything to make that more of a cohesive thing. was talking to a buddy of mine. I was like, dude, we need to buy one of these little rigs, get a permit, get a permit for like a thousand foot. Well, just cement it off. So you have a thousand foot cemented hole. and just go trip pipe and get these guys on there, show them how to run tongs, show them how to run chain tongs, show them how, like all this stuff. So when they go to a rig, it's not like I was where I was just like, what is all this? like you actually, like it wouldn't take anything. And then it seems like it would be, it would be better for everybody because you see these little incidents like, you know, dropped objects down the hole, you know. I've seen guys go try to unlatch elevators before the slips were in the hole, you know, and the drill just goes, no, no, no. And it's like, they don't know what they're doing, you know? So yeah. seen it, you know, offshore where, and you could probably speak to this, once you get the crew figured out, then it seems like it's more important than people realize to like, yeah, now they're familiar with the rig, but man, getting a consistent crew that works together well, you can get like three times as much stuff done. Absolutely. and you're doing that on a fairly consistent basis, you know, every job you go to, you know, and you're constantly mixing people and shifts. So, I mean, how do you deal with just the constant new bodies and training them and like, does that work and how does that impact the work? so that's got a that's got a you know, there's a lot of angles to that. One is permits and planning work like try to get your work planned so that you have a stretch of time and you're not firing up for a month and then shutting down and then everybody scatters and then a few months later you fire back up and you get maybe a couple guys back and then things get mixed up. It's like you know to maintain that cohesive you know, environment where everybody's used to working together, you know what that guy's going to do. You know what that guy's going to do. You know what this guy means when he said, you know, did you do that? And, you know, so like when I was pushing on that, let's see, when I was pushing on and we were doing a P and A kind of little P and A program trying to plug in a band and a bunch of old Wells and stuff You know, they did, they did try to plan it to where, okay, we know that these rigs are from Texas. Like they, they are garbage at working in really cold weather. So let's just plan on not working from like, say the holidays to like February, March. Okay. Because you're going to have, you're going to minimize freeze up. You're going to minimize, you'll spend days trying to thaw stuff out. It's just, it's super expensive. Sometimes you have to, but like, If you can avoid it, let's, let's avoid it. And then once that like March, you know, things start warming up, like let's plan our wells to where we can go from one well to the next. And, you know, and then. So right now we've got in management across drilling is, if can't get her, you can't stay type things. And I get that. I love that cowboy shit. But at the same time, I like being efficient and safe and doing a good job. like, I see a lot of room for improvement on the training, the cross training, the mentoring, maybe especially during some of these down times. And I wouldn't say more safety is the answer. would just, I would think like, you know, better safety that applies. And, you know, as well as I do, there's certain things that it's like, really, if you want to make this safe, in order to like really achieve this goal that you say you're about, like, if you want to go down that rabbit hole, it's going to cost money because that means we're going to have to fix this, we're going have to fix that. We've been making it work, but like, You know, you've got that pyramid of near misses and accidents and stuff like that. And so you want to keep all that stuff to a minimum, which involves having a competent crew. let's spend a little money on the front end while we got the time. And let's do some training with these guys. So that way when, when the Exxon's or the Chevron's or Conoco's or whoever call, you got a crew that, that is more ready to go, you know, and that would, it's going to be a work in progress always, but like, there's definitely room there, you know, as a, as a driller tool pusher, whatever, like, you know, it's a fairly small oil field. it's like picking any kind of team, you know, it's like, okay, I want I want these guys I want the best But it's it's just it's hard to do with sporadic work Yeah, I wondered if that's kind of how it went as far as, you know, you're calling the guys that you know work well and that's how you kind of circumvent having to bring in a bunch of new, I mean, of course you're going to bring in new hands because you have to, but you call as many people as you can to see if they're still able to work and that's how you kind of bring that safety back into it is because it's so close knit. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. like, you know, honestly, another aspect is too, is like roughnecks are a wild bunch, you know? And so not only which ones are available, but which ones can pass a piss test and, you know, and all that. Exactly. I remember who was it I went to work for and it was, it was a joke, but it would always stuck with me. It was like, are you on third party? It was like, no, can you be a third party? Mm-hmm. So, and then I guess one of the other things I was curious about is, so you're constantly working, let's just say, kind of with a new crew. Let's say maybe 50 % of the guys are new to you as far as having to supervise them and all that. How much of an uphill battle is it, or maybe how long does it take to learn a new rig? I mean, you know, they're all the same, but they're all different. So if like, you know, say you got, you got the crew that you want and you show up to a rig, I mean, within a hitch, within a hitch, if you've got your, if you've got your core group of guys within a hitch, you should be able to make that, you should be able to play that rig like a piano, problem. um mean, then ideally you're putting it, if it's stacked out and being moved and put together, I mean, does that help you or is that something you like to be a part of or? absolutely. yeah, getting that like, you know, tearing it apart and putting it back together gives you that, that like intimate firsthand knowledge of like where these pipes go. And like, you know, you've been around a lot of facilities and you know, like if you, if you, if you just were to walk in somewhere and look around, you're just like overwhelmed with the amount of like plumbing and equipment and all that kind of stuff. But it also doesn't take long if you got a couple brain cells to rub together and someone who actually wants you to because that was my thing is like I want everybody on my crew to know as much as possible like I'm not into that I'm not into that like you're only aroused about so I'm not going to show you this you know like like if you're a competent individual like I'm gonna give you a chance you know but that's just not everybody's attitude for some reason like it's like You get this, it's becoming less and less, but you definitely get people that are standoffish with knowledge. It's like, they don't want to show everybody all the little trial and error tricks that they've learned over the years because they don't want competition. I don't know what it is. It just always blew me away. I've gotten in screaming matches with my hands before that, like, I had a guy come over. to a rig and he knew that rig. He'd been on that rig for years. He knew that rig better than I did, far better. And I'd, hey, go grab this hand and go do this. And that hand would come back and I'd be like, so did you learn anything? And he'd just be like, like your kid when you ask him what they learned at school today, know, and like nothing. And it's just, it seems silly to me because... the more competent everybody is, like the better the job gets done and, and the better your chance of getting that next contract, you know, but there's people with the mentality though of like more days per well, like we're just going to like do the bare minimum and milk this well for as many days as possible. Cause we don't know when the next one is going to be. it's like, well, it's going to be a lot longer now you know, Don't do anything more than what is absolutely required. Yeah, yeah, you're bringing those costs up they're going to say, we can't do this next one. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's that's the bottom line. And like, I don't know, you just got to have it just like anything else. You got to have integrity, though, too. You know, it's like even if there's not a next one, I want to be able to say I did the best job that I could while I was there, you know. how long do you typically have between jobs? You know, and then what do you, like, what is your go-to as far as, are you waiting for a call or do you kind of look for another job or do you have, you know, like, do you go whitewater rafting while you're waiting for another call or do you look international? I mean, what's your kind of method to stay embedded? got my little, I've got my little like side hustles, you know, I do construction and I do commercial fishing. Uh, in 2015, I went and got on a boat and went sailing. Um, a buddy of mine been asking me for years, you gotta come out, you gotta come out. And then, uh, we, I was working for um, at the time and, and we stacked out and it was going to be for like the summer. So I got, you know, talked to mama and I was like, Hey, you know, I got this opportunity to go out on a boat. And I went and did that and it was awesome. And a lot of that carries over to hydraulics, just work ethic, making a hand. um And that's some of the best times I've ever had here. A couple of years ago, I went over to, I don't know if you're familiar with Alaska West Air, the brewers out in the Kiske. And I went to work over at their lodge over in Redoubt Bay Lodge. Um, did like fish guiding, bear viewing, kind of like a groundskeeper, you know, jack of all trades, working on outboards and that kind of stuff. was super fun. It was, but I mean, it was, it, the pay definitely wasn't as great, but it was, it was a great time. It was good enough, you know, uh, it was a blast. Um, international, I've never really, you know, there's enough work around here and I've just always kind of been like, I really need to go to some of these places? Um, I've never really felt that call. Like I got buddies that are all into that. Um, but I've never really wanted to do that. I do, I do kind of want to check out some other, some other patches, you know, like go down and see Texas, I've kind of gotten that out of my system a little bit. Like I love rough neck and I love the iron. I've got through all this hard work, fishing, all this stuff. Like I've got carpal tunnel pretty bad. Actually getting to go see a doctor to go get a second opinion on that. And so I'm kind of, I'm kind of over like that super cowboy shit stuff. I like now I kind of just like, mentoring younger guys and showing them the right way to do things and the safe way to do things and cranking out good hands, you know? And because like I was lucky once I did kind of realize this is something that I do enjoy being around people that took the time and me asking the right questions to learn the right way to do things. You know, there's there's just there's procedures and you can do it, there's all kinds of ways to do things, but there's a right way to do a lot of things. And I see a lot of that knowledge getting kind of lost in all this, know, topsy turvy industry, people leaving, coming back, throwing crews together, go drill a well or two, everybody scatters. And in the meantime, you got all these guys retiring. And I see a lot of that, a lot of that knowledge, a lot of little tricky stuff that you would never think. And someone had to go through that trial and error to learn that. And, and, you know, I mean, I'm, I'm all about minimizing trial and error, you know, it's like, uh, you know, especially when it comes to like safety type stuff, you know, production is one thing. Um, but, know, I've been really blessed. I've been really blessed not to have been injured myself or really see anything that gnarly. I've showed up after the fact and, um, I've seen some close calls. The one for was really disturbing. And it just goes to show you like just that moment of complacence. So that was the one on big rig, big triple. And their pipe shed is on the second floor above their motor skid. So you have this elevator that comes down, loader comes up, rolls 10 joints of pipe on there. pipe elevator goes up, kicks it onto the racks. Okay, so the motor room, you got all these giant cats down there screaming and they've got these totes of oil in there. You know, the big stainless totes, you've seen them. And so they, they use their total oil up. They need to get the empty one out and get a full one in there. Well, the doors that open, they've got these louvers for cooling and all this stuff will hit one of those vertical beams that that elevator rides on. you, the thing they had a safety meeting about it. The plan was they're going to put a choker at the bottom of that beam, hook the loader to it, put a little bind on it, knock the pin out, pull that beam back, swing the door open, relax, let the beam swing in, change the tote out, and then reverse that process. Well, they go to do it, loaders like, I forgot my strap. I'll be right back. He goes to get the strap, comes back to find his buddy, the roustabout pusher on the side of the building, stuck his head between that beam and the building and knocked the pin out. And it just went like that. And it's like, so, I mean, it just goes to show you, you can have all the safety meanings, you can have all this and that, but like eliminating that right there, whatever you want to call it is, you know, I mean, I don't know. before you do anything like okay like really what's going to happen situational awareness you know um things built right. You know, that's always your engineering control. know, but then, yeah, having a... When everybody comes up with a plan. sticking to the plan. And I mean, I've seen people do stuff. I've seen people smash a finger and stuff. like, man, that was stupid. Why'd you do that? And like, you know, I don't know. But that, you know, that one right there always stuck with me. was just like, man, like that just split second Well, I think people probably underestimate how dynamic a rig is. And again, this is from the outside looking in. You know, so like we talked about earlier, you're in a new place with new people, and now you have such a dynamic environment as far as you got air tuggers on the rig floor, you got stuff coming up and down, you have pipe coming in the V door, and all those people. playing all their little part and we're saying that it takes a long time, but it also is like part of the beast as far as making sure it's all coordinated. people, like you said, a lot of struck by falling, know, all those types of hazards. ah I think it's pretty remarkable that it's kind of as safe as it is. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. absolutely. One thing that I was always taught, you know, is like, you don't grab things, you know, you kind of touch them, you know, and you don't want to grab something and pull it towards you, you know, you want to push away from you and check your body position and like what's... So like the tugger situation, that's a perfect one. Like, say you got something heavy in the far corner of some of these rigged floors are huge, you know, so you start getting like the shiv, that tugger line goes vertical. but now you're picking something up right here and it's a set of tongs in a cage and it weighs a couple thousand pounds. Well, guess what? As soon as it comes off the ground, what's it going to do? It's swinging in. So like, what are you going to do there? You know, and just that situational awareness takes two seconds. Grab a piece of sash cord, tie onto it, wrap it around there. And as soon as it picks up, you got total control over it you can just kind of let some out, have your buddy, you know, and it's real easy to use mechanical advantages. And not only that, but I always thought it was fun, you know, to make something that's like pretty sketchy safe. but I mean, you know, not everybody's the same. Like, so it really, it really requires, you know, some of the, some of the older, better hands, more experienced hands to speak up. but then they're on the flip side of that. I've had guys too that were like always like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, and you're like, just freaks you out, you know, and you chain it down, you're like, what? And then like, whatever, I'm like, dude, it's like crying wolf, you know? I've had some close calls. I've had some really close calls. and it's, it's really scary. And like I told my hands, I stacked out on a stand on the rig and we were breaking stands apart. So floor hand puts the joint in the mouse hole and coming down, well as soon as it got in the mouse hole, I'd just seen the stand was just like boom, and then all these pieces of cocoa mat come falling down. And what had happened was I was linked out so far when I was coming down, the elevators hit the board. Normally I have a camera that I can watch, but because I had the Derek man running the tugger, I spun my monitor around so he could see the camera in the pipe shed and I had this roof over me. We were, we had like 15 stands to break apart. We were doing some, you know, it's always the, the, what do you call it? Like the non, non routine tasks. Something weird was happening. We had to some goofy stuff. And so on like the 14th out of number 15, I, I hung up on the board, bent the board, the Derek man's monkey board down like four feet. and just tore up some iron. But it scared me really bad and I chained it down. I told them guys, I'm like, you guys out here playing grab ass and bullshit and talking about days off, you know, I said, here's the deal. Like if I screw up, I'll feel really bad, but I'm still gonna go home. You guys, like you guys will die, you know? So I really, that tells me that I probably missed it by like that far every other time because I didn't really do anything different. Yeah. you know, that was a big wake up call for me too. You know, it's like monitoring your, the awareness level of your hands, you know, because they just get taught, start talking about days off and all this stuff. And of course I've been there too. You know, it's what we do. but you know, that was one thing where it's like, I got to step up my awareness of their awareness, you know, Yeah, keeping them all focused. Mm-hmm. I mean it doesn't take much so it was always pounded into my head like if these blocks are moving if the top guards moving whatever it is someone's looking up you guys could take turns figure it out amongst yourself because at the end of the day if you're looking up for 12 hours you do the end of the day you're just like dude my neck especially with that heavy hard hat on and so figure out how it's gonna happen but I want someone looking up at all times when this thing's moving tugger lines get hung up like you know especially up on the slope, the wind will get whipping and that kelly hose, I've seen it blow over the wind wall and so then you're coming down, then you rip the kelly hose, you rip the kelly hose off the top drive while you're drilling and you're drilling a thousand gallons a minute at 3,500 psi with oil base and I don't care if you shut it down right now, dude, you got a mess. Right. I you've talked about your crew's awareness, and that kind of being something you're really focused on. I think everybody, and we always talk about taking kicks and those types of things. Is there something else that You know, when people talk about the rig taking a kick is is, you know, that's kind of forefront in our mind, because that's something we always talk about. And I do agree with like the crew awareness and all that, how dynamic it is. Is there something else that really sticks with you as far as like? people don't realize that actually this is a big hazard. is something that I think about. Um, yeah, absolutely. Uh, uh, something that's kind of gotten a lot of people that's, uh, was, you know, it's just, there's one specific incident I can think of over in Beluga in like 2010, um, is, is low pressure and trapped pressure and ice plugs. Uh, you know, trying to remember exactly what happened, but at the end of the day, there was an ice plug on a low pressure stuff, cam lock stuff, two inch. they thought they were bled off. Motor man goes, pops one ear of the cam lock and is popping the second ear and that thing blew apart. probably had, I bet you it had less, 50 pounds on it or less, 20 pounds maybe. And one of them cam lockers fish hooked him and got him all the way to the ear, you know, and so, you know, we'll use rigor, rigor, 120 PSI for a lot, you know, blowing down, blowing down stuff, whether it's for freeze protect or, you know, to get, you know, oil base out of a line. So it's not draining all over location when you're dragging it around. So you're sending this 120 pound air all over. And your lineup and knowing where it's going, you know, your flow path. having people really be aware of exactly where everything's going. uh, and these systems are huge. You know, I think on the pits, I think we had 200 and over 200 butterfly valves. Um, And that's just in the pits, you know, and that doesn't take into consideration all the unions and everything up to, you know, to the motoring, to the air compressors, up to the rig floor. And time after time again, it's like, okay, you ready to go? Yeah, I'm ready to go. Okay, here we go. Sending it. And then you just hear this noise. It's like sound like a train. coming from a different area that's not supposed to be anything going on. And it's like, that's right. I forgot this valve right here, you know? And usually nothing happens, you know? Maybe make a little bit of a mess. One that got me, did you ever work with around Yep. Yeah, I worked with And he's his pipe. He always smoke in his pipe. oh that pipe, you know up. You know, and he was my dad's driller back in the day. And then I start coming up through there and that's like kind of when I really started coming into my own making hand. He was the first guy that was like, all right, we're going to send you to well control school. And, you know, really started getting into the swing of things and that was working for neighbors. and a little side, I almost dropped a, like a 10 pound sledge on his head. One time I climbed up the a leg, knocked a pin out and I had it. I had my harness on, I'm double clipped. I got everything tied off, but the lanyard on that, on that, overhead work hammer that's specifically designed, it's got its own integrated lanyard and all this stuff. I had clipped it to this like little key ring looking thing on the front of my harness. I just clipped it in right there. Well, I'm coming down with this giant pen and like a shackle and the hammer down this ladder. And I accidentally bumped it off the ladder and I was like, it's tied off. It's okay. So I just brace for impact and it hit that thing, stretched it right out and kept on going and landed in the trash can right next to him, like 20 feet below me. I was like, I'm done. He didn't miss a beat. He didn't even say shit anyway. Another time with back to the whole low pressure thing. We were doing these gravel packs over there. So had BJ come over and we're sand pack gravel pack. And we got all this ceramic, what do they call it? Prop it um throughout all of our well control stuff. You can just feel it crunching in the valves and our choke manifold. And so we're spending like a whole day trying to flush and clean all of our well control stuff out. And I'm working pits at the time. And so he wants to blow from the rig floor. He had a little blow down sub made up to the top drive. Got a one inch air hose hooked up to that. And then out through the choke house, which is down on the ground outside the pits. And then at the end of the choke house, I had a two inch cam lock hose come out into the pits. I'm thinking like, I've done this before, no big deal. So I just open up some grating, throw that hose down in the grating. close the grating and stand on it, call them on the radio. I'm like, yeah, go ahead, we're ready. Dude, that thing spit me out. It launched me off of there, flew out because we had tarp windwall. So it slithered out the wall and was just out on location. trying to be all calm. Like, shut it down. Shut it down. uh got it all rigged back up, tied it off this time. And a little later he seen these are you didn't try to hold that hose did you? I was like yeah, yeah, because what he did what he did is he had a valve closed on the standpipe manifold. So when he kicked the air on he charged that whole basically the whole like six inch line, you know, probably 150 feet of it. So then when he dumped it, you had all that pressure. And it was just like in actually in that particular instance, that thing whipped by my face, it probably missed me by a foot, but almost, and that was the same job that the other dude got fish hooked on too. yeah. we got, you know, steam is, that stuff's brutal. And you know, you take, like, and I'm just as guilty of it. You know, you're cleaning something, you got a one inch hose, should be coming off a regulator depending on what drilling outfit you're working for. Some of them don't, might have one regulator on You know, so you're only supposed to be getting like maybe 20 pounds of steam, 40 pounds of steam, but I've seen plenty where it's just wide open. And, you know, you might tape a broom handle to it or something and, you know, radiators, whatever it is. And I've seen guys get burned before or just that condensate dripping down by the time you feel it burning you, you can't get your gloves off quick enough. You know, Are most rigs that you're on their steam heat? Yeah. If they have any kind of heat at all, yeah. Now, on the rig floor itself, because of the different hazardous location classification, so class one div one, which I think is 10 feet from the hole or 20 feet, something like that, it's gotta be class one div one. So we'll have the intrinsically safe electric heaters that that don't run steam, which is weird that the electric ones are the class one div ones. I think it has more to do with the windings and the blower and stuff than the actual heat source. But yeah, they're all steam for the most part. But then you go in the doghouse. And I heard of this happening out where a new company man was trying to get rid of the coffee pot because it wasn't class one div one. And it's like, my gosh. Hey dude, like, you know, don't be coming in here trying to make a name for yourself. What about that cell phone? You know what I mean? What about like all this other stuff? So it's one of those weird gray areas where, where it's just, you don't mess with the coffee pot, you know? And I think his relief. do people even drink coffee anymore? I mean, are we just drinking like monsters and sea forest? Yeah, yeah, we're dry scooping C4. I think one of the one of the ringers or something like a scoop to scoops of C4 and a and Dasani bottle and I'm like that cannot be good for you. He just take it up and then shotgun it. That's insane. Yeah, but you got the, you know, you got the old school guys that they want their coffee and especially like when you're testing DOPs, like instance, we have our, they call a mud saver, IBOP on the top drives, which it has two ball valves and they're high pressure, they're well controlled valves. One's hydraulically actuated and the one above it is manually actuated and they're just ball valves. Well, so we go to test it with water and... It doesn't want to get that low test 250 psi, which is oftentimes the more difficult test, you know, cause when you get high pressure, it'll seep that stuff better. Um, so we functioned it, refilled it with water, closed it, it, it tested and held is brand new. You know, we threw a new one in there. It tested just fine. Sent the one that was no good to the shop, tested just fine. We just put it right back into service. It was our good spare, you know? And it was just one of those things you know, there's just times I've seen on was kind of new on the scene and they had all brand new BOP equipment. And I had four, I had both my inside and outside kill and inside and outside choke valves. None of them would test. And I had to get, let's see, what was it? What was his deal? Did you ever know Yeah, I had to call him out. I had to call the, handout, and I can't remember one other guy, and I was like, I want you guys all to see this. um had them all there. I'm like, watch this, OK, just so everybody knows. OK, close the valve. That's tight. Let's back it off. There's your stem play. OK, so we had 13 and 1 half whatever it was, cannon valves. OK, so all agree these valves are closed, right? And then I knocked my kill line off on the other side because my test is coming through from the choke side. Got some pipe ramps closed and I got my kill line knocked off for a tattle tail and I'm pumping on it and it's just sitting there. Drip. Four valves closed. Right. They took them back to the shop. They all tested, you know, and I knew they would. I knew they would. It's just one of those things. I'm just glad it was summertime, you know, because that turns into a nightmare when it's when it's winter time, because now you're freezing up to because, you know, you don't got salt water or anything like that. You can't use methanol. Have to use water. And it's definitely not set up for that. That's horrible, horrible situation. And another one was out and it was pouring rain and you've seen those rigs like there's nothing to them. The rig floor is basically is literally just metal grating hanging from some chains and it's pouring rain and we can't get it to hold for it wants to but we're losing like 50 pounds. It just at the very end of the five or 10 minutes it's just falling under that line and we cannot find this leak because it's raining out. There's water everywhere. Go home. Come back next day, sun comes out, take the air hose, blow everything off, pressure up, and it's a damn gland nut on the well head sitting there. Drip, tighten her up, let's go. You got a 24 hour pressure test. Yeah, absolutely. And that was wild. I never see anything like that because we were just working daylight towers. So we'd work five, we'd have our pre-tower at 530, start doing rig work at six. And then at 530, we'd stop what we were doing, come down, stab a valve, close the valve, close the pipe ramps, and kill the rig and walk away and go to the house. Yeah, I thought that was pretty interesting when I seen you guys doing that. I'm like, so there we don't work 24 hours anymore. It just. It kind of makes sense, but at the same time, it was so odd to me not to see all the lights and everything running, you know, and I don't know. Is that something you guys? I mean, granted, you're probably not making the overtime, but at the same time, it seems like a good gig. you are though, because you're still working 12 hours. You're getting your 12 and a half and you're working two on two. You know what I mean? You're still getting all your time. And actually the only person who was getting hosed on that was me, the tool pusher, because our buddy we'd send the rig crew home and he's like, you're going to hang out with me and run wireline. We're going to do wireline runs for another three or four hours, you know, because I'm a day rate. So whether I'm there for two hours or 24 hours, he's like, I already paid for you. You're going to stay, we're going to watch Pollard run in and out of here. And anytime they need a tugger, I got to go fire up the rig and sit there. And then I got to do the report too, you know, like run 67 with the, you know, L I B blah, blah, blah. Uh, that was brutal. That ran that wore me out cause we were out So there's an hour drive way out and coming, coming home every night. And then getting a little bit extra out of me. Um, Yeah, that was brutal because then too it's summertime and you get off work. It's all sunny. Wife and kids hanging out. Everybody's doing stuff. You know you got to get to sleep. Next thing you know, it's like dude, I gotta be up in like three hours. You can't do that for very long. No, no. What is the tool for people, mean, even myself, I think there might be a lot of people that think they know what a tool pusher does, but what does the tool pusher do between, so you got the driller, the tool pusher, and the company man. Kind of what are all those people coordinating and kind of working together? How are they all kind of interconnected? You know, so your company man is obviously the company representative, you know, whether it's or whatever oil company it is, and they have, they have a well plan. The tool pusher is kind of the liaise between the company and the rig. Now some places, you know, the drilling outfit owns the rig and other places they don't, you know, might own the rig and All American has the contract, you say. So. That's why they stagger their shifts like six to six versus 12 to 12. So you get an overlap with each crew and you come to work with your guy, the other company man, you guys come in and you'll have a little kind of managers meeting of like, okay, where are we at in the well? And what are we seeing? What are we seeing out there right now? What's going on? And what do we need to do to make sure that we are adhering to this well plan? And or is there something that is like, do we need to possibly call town and modify the well plan or, you know, modify how we're going to achieve what the plan is. So once everybody's in agreeance there and that little meeting that might be four people, you know, both company men, both tool pushers. Okay. You know, clocking in and clocking out. All right. See you later. Okay. So then at that point, the tool pushers is going to go do a walk around. And so when I'm coming to work, It's usually the drilling crews on lunch break. So a lot of times what I do is I'll go run the rig after I get the thumbs up. Everything's good. I'll go check in with the driller. how's everything doing? Is there anything I need to know about anything broken? Anybody got hurt feelings, whatever it is. Okay. All right. Go eat, like go do your books and eat. I'll run the rig and uh, which I like running rigs anyway. So I was like doing that, you know, get yell at the guys a little bit and, kind of, kind of show them how it's done. And then, you know, let that driller get a little time, you know, because when you're drilling, especially, you know, depending on what rig and what crew, like you're just gripped the whole time. And like, you're always standing in one position, same, same posture, same everything. Like you let go of that brake handle in your head and neck, and you're just like, my gosh, like go sit down, go, you know, go text mama, you know, grab a bite, drink some water, go to the bathroom, kind of reset. get your books done, get your report done up to the middle of your tower. What was your depth? You always write your starting depth down. You always write your starting volumes down. And then come back out and be like, okay, you got the next six hours. Then I'd go do a walk around the rig, make sure everybody's doing what they're supposed to be doing, make sure nothing's broken, make sure all the equipment's getting maintained. Okay, everything looks good. then I'll go back to my office and start working on, what's the next crew coming out? I'll look what scheduling look like. Do I got a full crew? Did anybody go to jail? Did anybody, anything like that? Like, am I gonna have a full crew here in a couple of days when I got change out coming up? And then, depending on the company, man, you got your or your or whoever, and they're always like, hey Rusty, what are we gonna do? let's go look at these pup joints or let's go like, let's go do that. You know, so you'll go run around and make sure that the equipment that's showing up on location for the next part of the job is what it's supposed to be because I've seen that I've seen, I've seen pipe handling equipment show up. That was four and a half and the tubing is four inch or, or safety valves. So when we, know, especially on that rig, we're moving like every, every couple of days, every 48 hours, something like that. And Every well has its has whatever components are in it, whether you got two and seven eights, three and three and a half, four and four and a half. And so you need to make sure you've got elevators for that. You need to make sure you have you've got safety valves that are the correct thread that can screw into that. And if they're not, you need to have a crossover and you probably need to have backups on all of that stuff and just putting putting eyes on all that equipment and going back to the company man and being like, OK, I put eyes on all this stuff. It's on location. This is where it's at. It's confirmed. This is the thread. And so we can move forward. you know, and then a lot of it's just, you know, mentoring, personnel management, scheduling, and then the BOP testing is a big one too, you know, in Alaska coordinating that. That's what it is in drilling. It's every two weeks. In work over, it's every week. Okay. I always thought was kind of weird because, but the theory behind that is when you're in work over, you are in a pay zone. You're in a production zone. So you're open to that. So they want you to do it every week. But planning your work, know? So like, we're at this stage in the well, we're going to have to make a bit run. So let's plan it, even though it might be a couple days early, let's make a bit run. get out of the hole and then do our BOP test. So we can like, you know, kill a couple birds, one stone, be as efficient as possible. Instead of making a bit run, come out, change the bit, maybe some BHA components and then head back south and then you get on bottom and now you gotta come out of a hole in 24 hours and test BOPs, you know? Yeah, because they can cost you a lot of time and money to make these. mean, how long is it? You're like, you know, six, 8000 feet. You're spending 12 hours, 18 hours coming out a hole at 200,000 a day. Yeah. So, uh, you know, on, on like that big rig, uh, we yanked, we inked out, we came out sideways, I think 11, just under 12,000 foot of pipe in 12 hours. Um, and so that you got to imagine you're breaking every 30 feet instead of pulling full stands where you're racking back 90 feet. So you can get more than that. You can get, you get 15,000 feet in 12 hours. If you show up and everything's ready to go and the well is in good condition, like if you're in case tool, if you're an open hole, you gotta, you gotta go a lot slower. You can induce a kick. You know what I mean? Like you start yanking that out too fast. You decrease bottom hole pressure and now you, now you're induced to kick. So a lot of it depends on that, but yeah, you can do 15,000 foot in 12 hours, but it's not really that common. Like, especially anymore. Like, That would happen a lot more back in the day where you had, you know, it just more cowboy stuff, or it's just like, just get out of the hole, yank it out. And it's like, we just, where'd this extra 10 barrels come from? now we're going to spend a week on the choke because we just induced a kick. And that was a lot more common back then, just like getting hands smashed and fingers cut off. And for the same reasons, just because it's like, there was more, there was more priority on just trying to go fast and be wild than there was. One thing that I heard that I always liked is slow is smooth and smooth is fast. So by planning your work, you know, to do those BOP tests or do a bit change, coordinating those two things, you're saving yourself money like you said, 12 hours, and that's your 200 in and out. But that coordinating that work is actually saving you money, doing it early potentially. absolutely, absolutely. You know, and I've been on places where they'll try to push it to like, we're almost TD. We're almost TD. Do we think we can get this last 500 feet and then get out of the hole by the deadline that we have to test BOPs by? Because they go by the hour. Whenever you finish testing and you're finished, that number gets written down, that date, that time. You have... two weeks to test BOPs, not two weeks in an hour, none of that. And then if you don't get her in that time, you're looking at fines, you know? then that's all gonna be up to how you conduct your business with the state. Now, if you show integrity by like, look, we're always trying to do the right thing, we maintain our equipment and we are serious about well control and we're serious about being responsible about... our equipment and being on top of it with our personnel and all that, you might get a little leeway if you're one of them out. Exactly. Exactly. But if it's, you know how it's just like anything else, it's like if it's you're always that guy, you know, if you're always that guy that's late, it's like they're going to they're going to break your balls, you know, and they're just going to come down on you and be like, no, no, we're not giving you a waiver. And if you're not out and If you're not out and testing by then. But there's some things you can do too. Like you can do a, you can hang the string off. You can pick up, get out of whatever zone that might give you problems. Any of those coals that like to swell up and grab you. Try not to do it in open hole, but I've seen it, but get up into cased hole, make up your, man, why am I, I'm having a, I'm a blank right now. It's a hanger. It's the damn ah test plug. Yes, there you go. And they always have IF connections on both sides. So you can get a crossover, make that up into your string, pull your bushings, and then slack back off and hang the string off of that test plug, and then back out of it and leave it down there, and then go about your testing. but you can get into binds there too because you're putting all that pressure on that thing. So it's getting super seated now. And then if any junk falls in on top of that, like it's not something that you necessarily want to do for sure. Uh, but I've, I've definitely seen it done. you know, another thing is a wear rings. put a wearing in the well head to keep it from getting beat up with all that rotation. It's just a sacrificial ring. has the same profile as your test plug, you set it down in there when you're drilling. Well, that thing's gotta come out when you go to run completion, because that's where your tubing hangers are gonna sit in that profile. So we got like 13,000 foot and other driller comes out and he goes, dude, where's the wear ring? And as soon as he said it, I was like, which I mean, I should have thought of it, but I... I got handed, we were already like a thousand foot in the hole when I got started. So I wasn't the one that forgot it, but I didn't think about it for 12 hours. I just ran pipe. I'm like, let's go. Kind of similar thing. We hooked on, we came out, found a crossover and our test plug was also a wear ring puller. So I had these little dogs on it. So I was able to go down with 13,000 foot of pipe and go down and engage the wear ring with that thing and then rotate my pipe handler, engage it. back the lockdowns out and then come back up with the with the wearing on it. that was because that would have been that yeah, that would have been a nightmare. Come all the way out of the hole with all that stuff. Jewelry, everything, gas, mandrels, you name it, all that stuff. Mm hmm. who's calling like for mud and pipe and you're saying that you're I'm informing the company man of what we need to do the job. you know, so, you know, obviously pit watcher communicates with the driller. you know, everybody's communicating with the driller. A lot of times the driller is busy and I'm like, Hey, let that guy do his thing. Call me, you know, like, Hey, we're running it. We're getting low on mud. We're getting low on product. you know, you got the mud engineer. He kind of reports directly to the company, man. But it's a team effort, you know, and all that stuff. But it must be decided ahead of time by like your tubing vendor, like, and mud people, what the whole plan is then. And then you're kind of just like, with the exception of maybe some fishing tools and those types of things, like. Yeah, absolutely. All that stuff, that's all well documented in the well plan. We expect a formation integrity of whatever max allowable surface pressures, whatever. So we're gonna run a max mud weight of 10 pounds. Obviously you can do the math, calculate the volume there. You know what your surface volume is. plus whatever safety factor you wanna have on there. And the more data they have, like they can, you know, they'll have, okay, we've got two matting boards out there, double stacked with pallets of bars. So we got enough day right to weigh up to a, you know, a 14 pound, the whole system up to 14 pounds if necessary. And if it goes more than that, this is how we're gonna get more. All that's talked about like okay, so so we have this even though it's not on location You guys know where it's at So if we start getting down to the nitty-gritty and in our stash you guys can start getting that That's kind of another cool thing about up on the slope is they got those mud plants right too So they can just mix that stuff up and then send 250 barrel trucks and just start blowing it off in your pits right there, you know So you get better quality that way than mixing on the rig. I would say so. mean, yeah, cause they've got, it's dedicated to that. And you got guys that that's their one job. You know, that's one thing about Roughnecks. It's like, you've got all these people that do one thing, but like Roughnecks are supposed to be like the jack of all trades. So like a pit watcher, for instance, the mud engineer hands them a formula. Okay. This is what I want the properties to be. I want a viscosity from between 60 and 65. I want my mud weight to be between a nine eight to nine eight heavy. Don't go above a nine nine. then I want this many sacks of this, this many sacks of this, this many sacks of this mixed over your 12 hours. Now here's where it gets kind of screwed up. say you've got. shoot, what would it be like a flow Xan or something like that, which is basically just like Xan, powdered Xanthan gum. It's a viscosity fire. And, and you're, it is absolutely it is. Well, you know that you're losing water down hole. Your water will, will, will leave your mud and it hydrates the formation. That's what causes it to form up. So we know we're losing water down hole. And so we're going to turn our water on at, we'll time it with a five gallon bucket. going to, want to add water at hub. say 10 barrels an hour or something like that. Okay, so now we're adding all this water. Well, we have to keep our other products going in to keep our mud properties where we want them. So that means we want, you know, X amount of sacks and flows in and bear blah, blah, whatever. So these guys, what they'll do is I want to mix this sack, one sack every half hour. What they mean is they want you to trickle a sack in over a half hour so it gets spread out. Well, you know what they'll do? They just cut it open and dump it in there. And then half hour later, come do it again. And you end up with these big wad of fish eyes. And it plugs up all the suction screens. And I hate it, man. I hate it. It's obvious when it happens, too. You can see it in the suction screens. You can see it when it gets down in the mud motor. And it just. It just is a pain in the ass and it drives me nuts. So they must have different equipment at that mud plant than what you have on rig or something. Yeah, absolutely. They've got some, they've got super fancy stuff too. They've got these Coriolis, you know, the stuff that they can do real time monitoring of the properties of the mud that can tell you what the weight is and all this stuff without having to, you obviously want to go check it with your scale to verify, but they can sit there and look at this thing. And as it's pumping through this orifice, it's got, you know, it's got little sensors on it and it's giving them a real time readout of what it is. And then they've got, you know, there's those systems are, are really designed for shearing out those products, mixing it up properly where a lot of times these pits on these rigs have been chopped up, rebuilt, you know, usually some tool pusher who fancies himself and now he's a rig builder. And then all of a sudden you're looking at the schematics of this plumbing and it's from Mission Magnum from NOV and they're saying you need to have the suction of this thing at least so far away and not have more than 190 degree in it. And it's like doing all this and it's like, no wonder this thing can't pump. So those mud plants have been built to optimize all that mixing process and stuff. so some those pit systems I've seen, not so much. Yeah, probably not volume, you know, in that most rigs probably don't even maybe have the space in a sense, you know, I mean, unless maybe are you saying you're building it on the fly or adding to something and. yeah, you're building on the fly and then like you'll go to clean pits when the job's done and the corner of the pits piled up at four feet of product. They never even got mixed up. It just went over there in the corner and settled out, you know? um And that's just one of those. It's like we know we're not going to chop these pits up and redesign them and replumb them, you know? So what can we do to help improve that, you know? And that's when some of that ingenuity... You know, like... you come show me how to mix this stuff. The was extra special because your pill pits, which is like if you're gonna mix up a special concentrate of something, they call it a pill. So it might be a real high this sweep or something. Those are down by the mud pumps on that lower level, down by the forklift. And so you mix up this super thick sweep that you think you're gonna clean this hole with. And then you try to pump it and you can't pump it. What Yeah. We had an ISO that we filled up. Well, we were filling up the, the hand on top of the ISO tied the hose off and we were doing like a multi-stage transfer from the pill pits or the cuttings tank down by the pill pits up to the pits, the reserve pit, and then over and then up into the ISO by right outside the office. And so we had like, We're sending it from this tank up into this tank and then recharging it with this pump and sending it up to the ISO. And so we get this huge safety meeting, get everybody radio check, okay, all right. We got this bypass line in the reserve pit. we're gonna establish that we're getting returns where we want them. It's not going anywhere else. Once that's established, then as you're able to kind of pinch that bypass back, and feed it as much as you can handle, well, he kicks the pump on and the guy's on top is like, yeah, we're getting returns. So it's just kind of starting. Well, then that thing stood up like a Cobra out of that tank. And we had just gotten the biggest attaboy about how clean the rig was and like how great job we did at keeping this oil base everywhere. And that four inch hose stands up out of the ice of like a Cobra. and just starts hosing everything down. This dude jumps on it, trying to like wrestle this hose and he's trying to say, shut it down. But what the guy at the other end heard was like, give me more. So he pinches the bypass back. And so you see this guy's just up there and we just painted the whole deck and the office and the pipe rack and everything black after we had just cleaned up everything. I was downstairs for all of that and I came up and I was just like, What are you gonna do, you know? Yeah, start cleaning, guess. Is that pretty common? Like most places is talking over radios. Yeah, I mean that adds to it like noise, background noise, being on the radio. Yeah, especially for driller like that that hydrates project I was telling you about. So I had, why was it so loud up there? I think that top drives, no, that's right. That's what it was is the brakes were so loud on that rig. And so it was double hearing protection situation. But yet at the same time, it was super critical with radio communication. And I think what we ended up having to do, because it's like, I'm not going to sacrifice my ears anymore. I've already done it. Like, um, is I had to have a guy go sit in the dog house with the radio and then like hear what's being said and then run out and tell me like, and screaming, like you'd have to write it down. Like they want you to do this. You know, I told him, I said, there's gotta be a headset. There's gotta be some kind of noise canceling. but also you can communicate through, you know, it's hands free also. Like, I don't know how you integrate all those things, but like I'm a guy came up to me on the actually. And he's like, Hey Rusty, Hey, uh, you have a daughter, right? And like, yeah, yeah, I got a daughter. love her a lot. And he's like, so she in school. I was like, yeah, I think she's in kindergarten at the time. He's like, you like go into her little Christmas, you know, recitals and stuff. I'm like, yeah, of course. You know, like Where's this line of questioning going? He's like, well, wouldn't it be a shame if you weren't able to hear those anymore? Cause I was on the rig floor and I was working motors running around, no earplugs in. And, and I was just like, like you got me. And so like from that point on, I just always was super anal about my, hearing protection and was not interested in like not being double hearing protected around these. super loud draw works like I'm sure you've heard the squealing brakes before, you know, especially when you're time drilling or when you got the auto driller and it's just sitting there and you're standing right next to that thing. It's like, I'm not doing it. know? Mm hmm. Exactly. when they did my audiogram one year, I had like a slight step down. I'm like, whoa, this can happen like, this can happen pretty quick. Cause I would see the guys go out of the office and be putting their ear protection in like when they're standing in the turpent room or an engine room. And it's like, you do that your whole career, you know, that's, you can take some hits on your hearing for sure. What? m Yeah, you know, I got my, went to work, I took a little break and did some, some pot fishing for cod, which is the same setup as like crabfish and deadliest catch. We've all seen it. But we would just had different bait and we were fishing for cod. And I went back to work for Doyon after doing that cod fishery for the winter down in Homer. And I was, there was a noticeable decrease. And my left side, well, that's the side where that power block is. Like, so you have to throw that hook, you throw that hook and then like, boom. it, and, it came back. were like, it's, it's temporary for now. you know, but it can totally be permanent if you don't do something about it. And I, and I actually did get it back because like that was around the same time that I started taking my hearing super seriously. on the rig with the traction motors, the blowers and the brakes, I can't remember what numbers the safety guy was getting, but it was like double hearing protection was barely covering it. And I told them guys too, it's like, can only tell them so many times like, hey, you guys, you got your little earplugs in, they're barely in first of all, um and that's all you got like. We've already got double hearing protection signs out around here. We're trying to do some engineering stuff to try to like reduce the decibels. But as of right now, it's super duper loud. And, you know, I mean, well. Yeah, if you're going to be in there for quite a long time, mean, yeah, really benefits you to do double hearing protection for sure. The other one I started wondering about is like just being covered in all that, all those hydrocarbons a lot, like hopping down in the cellar, like cleaning that stuff out and just getting, you know, whether it's diesel, freeze protect, methanol, crude, produced water, whatever it is, like, you know, how much effect, how much benzene have I soaked up and how much, you know, that kind of stuff, but You know as I've gotten older and just kind of started like maybe actually like go get checked actually just got a bunch of labs done and like you're good as far as that stuff goes so but like part of me was definitely Worried because as a youngster you're like, yeah, I'll jump in there, you know, I'm not worried about it so I know I've gotten some gnarly stuff on me, but You know, hopefully it doesn't come around to bite me too too much later on Yeah, seems like people are doing somewhat better on wearing their tie back and rubber gloves and everything, you know? I mean, I don't know if that's just clean up mode and they don't do it the rest of the time or what, but. Well, mean, you know, as well as I do those Tyveks are there. I mean, they're great as long as they're good. But you know how many times I've seen them just shredded, you know, or guys. blown out or the crotch is blown out. Exactly. know, it's tough too because now that it's like, especially if you're roughnecking hard and you're going hard, like you just get burning up in those things too, you know. So I understand the desire to like want to get a little ventilation going. It's just everybody's got to take their health into their own hands, you know. uh What kind of personalities do you think are kind of drawn to this industry? I had another buddy, my just general thought is he said he just loved working hard, basically. You know, that was kind of the crux of it. I mean, do you think that's true or what kind of personalities do you see most successful? for people that excel, yeah, like the combination of that like kind of thrill seeking and working hard, the camaraderie, like, you know, because I was never in the military or anything, but I always kind of likened it to that too, because I mean, sometimes it is you got to have your brothers back. Having that camaraderie and just, you know, big iron doing big stuff that's sketchy. And you get a little thrill out of it, you know? And I always thought that drilling was something I never wanted to do. It seemed too stressful. And then they pretty much banged like, you're going drilling. And I was like, man, I don't know. I don't know if I want to. And they're like, nah, you're going. My good, good friend, he's like, man, same thing. was same exact thing, wanted nothing to do with it. And then I loved it. And then, and that's exactly what happened with me too, because now you got this whole rig. and you get to run it. And it's just super fun. Like once you figure it all out and you get her dialed and you make like, you'll sit there and watch your drill recorder. And like my thing was always just, I wanted to have smooth lines. Like as you're, you got all these parameters, you got your weight indicator, your pump pressure and all this stuff. So it'll look like, like whether you're going deeper. So you're getting, everyone's getting a little heavier, a little heavier, a little heavier, a little lighter, a little lighter. And just having a really uniform look to all that was like, that motivated me. And I'd go down, one time going down to the pusher's office and he's like, uh, he's like, man, you make these other drillers look really bad. He's like, look at your lines. You said you haven't stopped for 12 hours. I said, yeah, I said, yeah, well, it's hard to get pipe out of the hole when the blocks ain't moving because that's the thing. These guys want to chain it down and sit there and bullshit and talk and then they'll pull a few. And like, I would just keep going and going and going. And it was just kind of like a personal challenge to me. And like I told you before, my thing was like slow is smooth, but smooth is fast. Well, as you get the muscle memory and you get more and more comfortable with it and you kind of start pushing it and what your hands can handle and how fast you can go and everything starts clicking along. then it's like, you know, boom, boom, boom. And you got iron just flying out the door and you see like you look out there and you see that loader operator just like doing all he can to keep up with the amount of pipe you're laying out. Like I remember drilling out and we had a 17 and a half inch PDC bit and I was drilling surface and I tagged bottom. We had 120 foot conductor. I tagged bottom, picked up, kicked the pumps on, kicked the rotary on like, okay, we're getting ready to do this and then start, start giving it a little weight and just start pretty soon. I'm just like feeding this thing and just burying stands. Well, you're 17 and a half inch bit and you're getting ROP like 500 foot an hour at times. but you're probably getting 20 % over that if not more. So you're removing like this much dirt that, you know, I would say an average of maybe 150 to 200 foot an hour. And I remember going and looking out the window and then poor rig support hands. had every box, the company man came up after 12 hours. I was like, I can't believe they're gonna let me just keep on going like this. I was just like burying stand after stand after stand. and the whole rigs jump in and like everybody's just covered with sweat. Pit watchers doing all he can and they came up and he was like, man, great job, Rusty, great job. And then my drill, the driller that was relieving me, he's like, hey, you guys, we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to hold up for a bit. Rusty filled up every box on the peninsula. Like G &I is full, like there's not, and so like on one hand it was super cool, but on the other hand it's like, Okay, so what's the point if we now have to stop and wait, could have, I could have slowed it down and like done a little more controlled drilling, but I was just one of those things where I just like was getting a huge, anyway, to answer your question, like, yeah, a combination of like street smarts, that like that kind of MacGyver ingenuity getter done. And you know, you got it. You don't necessarily got to be like really physically strong. And in fact, I've seen, I've seen wiry little 60 year old man out work with this dude. I'm not going to name no names, but we used to call him muscle milk because he was just like swole, you know? And, and he's like, yeah, I can work there. It's all this stuff. So we seen him and I come up there and we're just looking like, is he looking doing? And this was on a double and he like, couldn't even pull back like pipe. And we're like, what is the with this guy. Get down from here and next the next crew goes up and the Derek man is literally like 65 years old and makes it look like it's not even a thing and so it just goes to show you like technique and stuff where your rope placement up there all that kind of stuff because remember we had this like 19 year old Derekham, couldn't get her. Same thing, couldn't get her. like, give me a belt. I'm going to go up there and show this youngster how to pull back pipe. And I was kind of new to the crew and my was always taught like you do not let that tool pusher like if they grab a tool, you take it out of their hands. Like don't let them, you know, and they were like, no, no, just let them go. Just let them go. And he ran up the derrick and showed him how to pull back pipe and all this stuff. And it's, it's some macho shit, you know, it's like, you're getting paid good money to go run big rigs and do big, cool shit. And it's all macho stuff. And it's a blast, man. It's a blast. of you know, when everything's kind of like, you have to work together with everybody in order to make that operation happen. You know, you can't have that attitude, that holier than now, like I'm not going to give you the time of day type stuff because in order for you to do what you need to do, which is going to improve, increase production, I need to. like I need to help you, I need to show you something, I need to do something, so we got to work together. always liked, I always liked, uh, you learn a lot more, like you said, because those guys are constantly like, Hey, how do I get air or steam or, know, what are you going to do to supply us salt water to the pits? Or it's like, are kind of working toward the same goal. I was actually pushing on and so this is where it helps having some of those guys like your and your that have seen some shit because stuff happens sometimes. So I heard a bang and I was like, huh, I wonder what that was. And like, I was just getting ready go out there and my door swings open. The drillers like, my God, like, I'm like, what happened? I'm like, we're already on our way out there and we go out to go out to the rig floor. and the bales that the elevators hang from. I'll send you a picture later. They're bent. Everything's just smashed on the rigged floor. I'm like, what And so he's telling me what happened. So he gets the motor man up there. we had a lot of weight hanging. It was like, you know, you had to be serious about the brake to clutch transition And the thing is is you want to clutch out of your brake So you'll clutch it and it'll lift the brake handle up now you got it now the motor has it and you're powering up Well when you have that much weight is even more important. So he gets the motor man on he's just start doing his books he stops the blocks with the elevators like this far from the floor, because they're working pipe up and down. Chains it down, tells the motorman to get on there. He gets on there. I mean, it's chained down pipe. So you got to push down and get that thing off there. You got a hold of it. And then that motorman just never having ran a rig with that much weight on it, or maybe he had, but not a small rig. Like it wasn't much weight, but it was a lot for And, uh, All he did was just barely squeak the brake handle, like as he clutched it instead of just holding it down and clutching out of the brake. And it just sucked the elevators right into the rig floor and bent the bales and But like when he came through the door, like I thought someone had died, you know? And that's where having those people that like have, you know, like I said, when I was. dropped a hammer on didn't blink. know, it's like he's seen it all. Like is everyone okay? Okay. Like is the train wreck stopped and everyone's okay? All right. We can, we'll figure it out. Like, you know, don't, yeah. already done? Let's not get excited that same driller and on that same well, actually, another time he came flying through the door, all freaked out. They're picking up sections of the torque tube and they had a tugger on the top and a tugger on the bottom. Well, they over pulled with the bottom one. So it swung over and we were right next to a producing well and it smacked one of the flanges and there's gasp. And I go up there and I'm like, I'm to have to go tell somebody. and I reach up and the damn studs weren't even tight. And I'm just like, go get a wrench, dude. We're good. We're good. Like I thought it was a big deal. Let's not do that again. But like, you know, just goes to show you like sometimes it's like, it seems like a big deal Well, like you're saying, you want the safety that kind of applies to your job, where your awareness of, like you mentioned before, as far as blowing down hoses for freeze protect, or you're getting ice plugs and hoses that are going to blow out into somebody's face, or I'm big on people taking, you know, having integrity and taking responsibility for not only their safety, but people working around them and and you know can let them know they got some skin in the game literally and you know and hopefully it doesn't take seeing some a close call for them to pull their head out of their ass and because you can bullshit and work safe at the same time I know I've done it for sure. Well cool man, what's what's, what's next? What's next? Good question. I'm down here in Southern California right now and talk about a culture shock. Like I'd never even seen an electric vehicle before I got here. And I remember one of the first nights I was here and I could like hear like they're everywhere. I'm like, dude, it sounds like the Jetsons. And, uh, but I mean, it's pros and cons. Like I love Alaska and I'll always call it, call it home. It actually just applied right before you called. I was applying for a job keep it close by trying to keep it in California. I do eventually, like I said, want to go check out some other oil fields. what I was going to say. There's oil everywhere, so... exactly. So I've been on RigZone and LinkedIn and kind of reaching out there, getting a few callbacks here and there. Yeah, one guy reached out to me a couple weeks ago he's like some offshore platform and I don't know, Los Angeles or something, you know, right, right offshore of these big major cities. And it's like, okay. was just looking at them when we went down to Huntington Beach and they were right there. It looked like one of them didn't have a derrick on it and two of them did, but they were right offshore. you know, but there's oil all over the place down here. I don't necessarily want to be a part of the crew anymore. Like I'm done, done going to clubs and done like doing all that shit. So When I was pushing tools on like it's just too much, too much opportunity even having other hands not show up, we had to have the cops come out and Tays and pepper spray dude. because he couldn't make it back to the house and time had to go out and like find some and then get into some other and then showed up and they like were trying to wake him up and he was just out of his mind and they had to call the cops and the cost came out and he got all combative. So I come back from days off my release like sorry dude I'm like sorry for what there's police tape on the damn crew house and I walk I got to write the report on this stuff and I wasn't even there you know so it's just I mean, I love it. Don't get me wrong. And it's changing a little bit, Like I'm kind of, I'm kind of a little bit adverse to that scene anymore. As much as I love the iron and I love the people like, It's one of those things when you, when you, know how it is, like when you go to work for a new company, you kind of got like, I can't be like, a, I'm a tool pusher. And unless they're in a bind, like they're not going to make you a tool pusher. You're to have to go at least drill a little bit and show that you know what you're doing. Right. And, which I mean, I wouldn't really mind doing, but I wouldn't mind getting into that management to teach younger hands, like good rough neck, like etiquette, basically. you know, to try to help that younger generation like, hey, don't put your hand there. Hey, before you do that, make sure you do this and this is why and stuff like that. Because you hear all these stories of guys being in the, being in an oil field five years and like, I'm going pushing tools and There's a lot of ego there and you know, because it kind of attracts that type of person, you know. So yeah, It's I've been I've been looking at all kinds of different stuff actually. I was the hardest working one because we were only working five man crews. So we didn't have roustabouts. We didn't have loader operators. So guess who was doing all that shit? This guy. And I still had to write the reports at the end of the day. So I'm like looking at the hands and I'm like, I'm dirtier than everybody else. So I don't know. I'm lucky to be in a position where I can be a little bit more picky. And just want to, you know, go check out something else. And I guarantee I can do it just as good as anybody else, you know? And that's big one, you know? That comes with growing up, you know that? Like, you know, from walking onto a rig and just being overwhelmed with like, my God, like how could one ever learn all this stuff to being competent and comfortable with it? You know, it just seemed like it was like, would have been impossible when I first started. And now it's like, I can walk on any rig and just, you know, take a quick lap around and... Real quick, I'll tell you a story before we go, So we were working, we were at and, you know, I've got my crew out there. I'm pushing tools. I'm watching them. pulling, we had just got this packer unseated and it was pulling, it was pulling rough. It was a nine and five H packer and it didn't fully disengage. So like every 40 feet where you have a connection, the dies are like hanging up. and we'd have to work it, but we don't have jars, we don't have anything, we don't have a top drive, all we got is these little deaky yellow blocks, pull on it a little bit and slack off, pull on a little and slack off. And so, like, the first thousand foot took like 16 hours, but it started getting beat up a little bit more and started pulling a little bit more. Well, my load indicator might, so my quadco come and set up this, weight indicator that basically it's got a clamp in a, in a, a big thumb screw in the middle and you put that on your dead man line. And so it just goes to this load cell. it like takes that. So it puts a bend in the, in the drilling line and as it pulls tighter, it pushes and pushes on a little actuator and that comes out to read out on my screen. Well, that thing wasn't working. And so, and their weight indicators crap. So can't see, so I got to keep running up there to find out how much weight, because I got to write all this stuff down. we hung up at this depth and pulled 20,000 over whatever it is. So I get on the phone with That's what his name was, Quadco And I'm like, dude, my load cell is not working. And so he drives down from Anchorage and we're still pulling pipe all the way. He gets there. He's like, does some stuff. He's like, yeah, sorry, this one's broken. I got a brand new one. He slaps it up there, hooks it up, boom. All of a I got my stuff. I'm like, thank you so much, bro. He's still packing up to get in his car. We had since made it to like, well, we made it to the wellhead because that packer hung up at the wellhead. Well, you have no stretch. You got like 30 feet of pipe and then the packer. He hung up and hung up because he was getting a little bit, he's getting a little bit brave. So he's going faster. It hung up. It pulled so hard over. that it came loose, the pipe shot hit the blocks and came back down and slammed. And when it slammed that dynamic load, that shock exploded that load cell. He was still there and it just blew. like, I called him. He's like, I'm still here. I'm like, dude, it's, and I went back and looked and you can scroll through real slowly. And like the spike I saw on that thing was like, 280,000 pounds, that rig's only rated for like 80,000. But I mean, that's that like dynamic load, you know? And he was like, I didn't bring another one. So I literally had three values. It was like 10,000, 15,000, 280,000 and kaput. I'm still here. Yeah, exactly. He's like, what? He's like, I've never seen anything like that. hey, I appreciate you coming on, you know, talking about everything. I'll stay in touch, man. All right. Yeah, take care, Travis.