Drilling advances

	Vol. 230 No. 8
LES SKINNER, PE  CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Keep it safe! And other stories

I’ve been working pretty hard in my consulting business, so I thought that for this month’s column, I’d paraphrase a couple of stories from the book Crude Oilfield Stories: This Ain’t No Bull! by “Mondo” Arenivas. It’s a collection of about 60 stories, mostly about safety, that were printed in his local Lovington, New Mexico, newspaper. Mondo also hosts a radio show about the oil field. He has worked on rigs for many years, and works as a driller today. I hope you enjoy them.

Hanging the kelly hose. We were rigging down on a hot, windless summer day. Everything was ready except for hanging the kelly hose—after which we would call it a day. My derrick man had rope ready to tie off the hose after it was hung. I told him to be sure to use a chain instead on the top to hang it. The phone rang in the doghouse, so I went off to answer it.

My workers were very tired and trying to end a long day. They could not find a chain, so the derrick hand suggested just hanging it with the good piece of rope. So that was what they did. When they were taking the cat line off, the rope broke. That was the moment when I walked out of the doghouse. I heard a whistling, hissing sound overhead—so I ran back in the doghouse. Right behind me, the kelly hose crashed to the floor. I turned around, walked back out of the doghouse, saw what had happened, and made sure everyone was all right. I did not see the motorman, so I asked, “Where’s Tom?”

The chain hand said that he last saw him running the cathead. I heard some hollering and looked up—Tom was hanging upside down from the cat line rope in the derrick. Tom’s foot got caught in a loop in the cat line when the rope broke, and the weight of the kelly hose took him for a ride. My chain hand and I scurried up the derrick to untie him. The first thing that he said was, “I should have found a chain to tie it with!” We were thankful that the only thing hurt that day was Tom’s feelings. Always use a chain to hang the kelly hose; it is heavier than it looks.

Oilfield trash. I’m not sure where the term “oilfield trash” originated, but I’ve never heard it used in anything other than an endearing or positive way. In a book by Gerald Lynch, titled Roughnecks, Drillers and Tool Pushers, Lynch explains how he thinks the term came to be. In the early days, the oil patch was manned by former ranch and farm hands who were used to long, hard work for little pay. Entertainment was limited to spending a few bucks on Saturday night.

When they left the farm for the oil patch, they found that the work wasn’t a bit harder—but they had a lot more money in their pockets. Thus, every night became Saturday night!

These young men became the backbone of the oil industry. They had a rough reputation, and treated outsiders pretty badly. As a backlash, the outsiders started calling the oilfield workers “oilfield trash.” These young men were tough and full of attitude; they were proud to be called “oilfield trash.”

Stripping rubber. After every day, sometimes after every trip, the driller would put “new stripping rubber” on the needs list; but the pusher would always erase it. One day the driller asked why he could never get one. The pusher said it’s because no one takes care of it—you’re supposed to take it off when you get to the drill collars. After the driller promised he would personally see that it was used properly, the pusher bought a new stripping rubber. It arrived the next day.

The driller told the lead tong hand to get it and put it up. So he got it out of the truck, took it over to the cellar and threw the brand new rubber in! The driller and pusher could not believe what they had just seen. When they asked why he had done that, the lead tong hand said, “Because every time I had looked for it, that’s where it was, so I thought that was where it was kept.”

Golden rig in the sky. Once upon a time, there was a young man named Jack. He started roughnecking right out of high school. He loved the job and talked about it all the time. Everyone called him Roughneck Jack. When he went to sleep he often dreamed about roughnecking. Sometimes he would even say, “When I die and go to heaven, I want to go to that Golden Rig in the Sky.” He would look up and wonder if they had roughnecking in heaven.

Roughneck Jack worked evening tour and worked his way up to derrick man. He was very proud of that and would ask everyone if they knew that he was working evening tour derrick.

One time, the bit played out early, so they started out of the hole. When the relief crew showed up short-handed, Jack volunteered to work double if he could work derricks, and everyone agreed. After finishing tripping out, the tool pusher told Jack to go ahead and leave early.

On the drive home, Jack fell asleep and was killed in a bad wreck. Jack did get to go to heaven, though, and after he got through the Gates, he was met by an angel who asked him his name.

“I’m Roughneck Jack,” he answered.

The angel said, “I see that you have been a hard-working, good man, and you deserve to be here. But I sense that you are sad. Why is that?”

Jack said that he didn’t see any drilling going on in heaven, and he was afraid that he would miss his job. The angel told Jack to follow him. After walking around a few clouds, they came to a place where Jack was awestruck: He looked up and saw the Golden Rig in the Sky!

Jacks eyes lit up as they got closer. And he could now make out letters on the rig hands’ shirts.

“What are the letters for?” Jack asked.

“That’s their job; you know, lead tong has LT, derrick man has DM, and so on,” said the angel.

“Who is the old guy with the beard sitting in the dog house? I think he has TP on his shirt,” asked Jack.
The angel said, “Don’t mind him, that’s God; he thinks he’s a tool pusher.”

And as Mondo always likes to end his radio show, “Stay safe out there.”