Toxicity

I'll tell you a little about camp.

There's a main road running north from Fort MacMurray for about 45 minutes before reaching a dirt road. Down that dirt road for about 45 more minutes and you hit our camp, which is called "husky sunrise". The Sunrise lease is a Husky energy thing, and we're just contracted out along with many other companies. The camp is 6 km's from the lease. The lease is an open area of land hundreds of acres wide (maybe thousands). Among road construction crews, safety companies, and excavation companies, we are the only oil rig up there.

Camp is very small, with only 100 people in it. Of that number, 10-15 of them are woman. They are either camp admin, kitchen employees, or rock truck drivers. I say that this camp is small because 10 km's away is the PTI camp, which houses 5000 people. The camp is basically a bunch of portables put together. That being said, the outside appearance makes it look lame, but inside it's actually not bad.

The camp has 3 wings of rooms, and I'm in a6. There's a rec room with pool/fooseball and satellite tv. My room is small, but it has a shared bathroom with a5, a desk, and a tv. The kitchen is fairly big, with 10-15 tables seating 6-8 each. The food is the best part of camp. All food aside from hot meals is available 24/7. There are buffet stands for each meal of the day, with hot food, and a huge salad and fruit bar. Desserts like crazy, including 32 flav's of ice cream, as well as sandwiches and any drink imaginable.

Many of the employees in the camp are there to assist our rig in some way. Their days off are all dictated by how our work is going. If we finish a well two days behind schedule, scheduled days off of other employees get pushed back. So there's some pressure on us. At the same time, we're kind of VIP's. If dinner ends at 8, and we work until 9pm, then dinner waits for us. Everyone knows my name, which is weird because I haven't been introduced to anyone besides the cooks and my own crew.

Now I'll tell you a bit about the work I'm doing.

I'm on an oil rig, but there's no oil that we deal with. In 1981 on this lease there were 50 active oil wells that were 'abandoned'. Abandoned means that a cement plug is set down the well, rendering it inactive. Some wells had more than one plug set.

New drilling is planned as part of the Husky Sunrise project. It involves steam pressure to release oil from new wells. The problem is that this steam pressure will affect the abandoned wells in the area, rupturing the cement plugs. This is where we come in. We set up our rig over each of these abandoned wells, drill through the existing cement plugs, and set new thermal cement plugs which can handle the steam pressure. Each well should take 2-7 days to complete, depending on a number of things. We got 3 wells done in 16 days, but the first was a ridiculous nightmare and took 10 days.

Husky tries to set a estimation of what each well will cost and how long completion will take. The problem is that when the wells were abandoned in 1981, little to no records were kept. Our first well was estimated at 1 plug, 3 days, 100,000$ budget. Well it became 3 plugs, 10 days, 170,000$.

We drill through plugs using super expensive drill bits. A metal drill bit is worth between 2000-10000$. In one day we wrecked like four bits trying to drill through one plug. The plugs are made of a carbide alloy, which is the third strongest material in the industry. Second strongest is ceramic, but it's too brittle and doesn't get used. The strongest is a diamond alloy, which gets into the 200,000-500,000$ range. It gets flown in with a security team when it's needed.

I'll try to outline a little about my job, but it really isn't interesting. My job is the most dangerous one on the crew, as I work directly below 6-8 high tension winch lines, a 400 lb. set of 'tongs', 200 lb. 'elevators', and a 75 ton block. 75 tons. We had a pressure change in the well once as we penetrated the plug, and I was on the rig floor. Normally on an active well this means a blowout of oil, but we we're on an inactive well. Ground water spewed out of the well though, and I got soaked in gross smelling water. I spend my time either on the rig floor either putting pipe into the well, or pulling it out. The plugs are set 200-500 meters deep (which is shallow in this industry), and the lengths of pipe are 9 meters long. When I'm off the floor I have two basic jobs. If something moves, grease it. If it doesn't, then scrub it clean. Woot.

This is getting long. I'll probably post before I go back. Have a good holiday weekend.

'Don't drink the water...'