Flo, over and out

Wednesday morning held a surprise...10cm of snow! and a cold bitter wind. Well at least it looked a bit more like the Siberia I know. Plus mud. Loads and loads of it...


After doing the morning report and my final morning meeting RJ and I went to pack and made sure everything was in order in the work caravan. We both wanted to get back to Base ASAP but Roy wanted to do his driving licence and knowing what that can be like,I had agreed to take him to CPF and have a shower while he did the test. We were due to meet Sasha K there, who was going to pick up his tripsheet (finally!!) and was going to be Roy's translator. So far, so good.

The trek to the car though, was no fun at all. What a struggle-the sandy mud just seemed to have liquified all over the pad after the cementing truck-solifaction would be the word I think. Anyway, somehow made it to the car after almost loosing my boots and bags.







Never been so happy to see the Niva!








We made it to the CPF a little late and stocked up on petrol while Sasha and Roy went to sort out the driving. A waste of time later, they came back really angry with a) no trip sheet for Sasha, who hadn't had a health check the day before (?!) and b) no test for Roy because the instructor decided to use his *power* and change the time of the test...well well, my best friend in action again...




So we started the long and arduous drive back to Base...soon enough the dieti in the back were fast asleep and RJ was kindly chatting to me so I wouldn't fall asleep. Although the state of the road did keep me awake for the last 25 km...complete rallye conditions, with mud spraying everywhere and some controlled skidding...Niva challenge to the end!!






Finally in BC, got some lunch and a nice shower after which I hid in the SSFT 1 caravan with Radik and Max in order to finish off the work I had to do for Bert. Time seemed to fly as I ran around the place trying to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything/anyone. Vlada had organised some goodbye cakes for Simon and me so we tucked into those before it was time time to go...

There was a pretty good turn-out of people despite the awful weather...goodbye Sergey A, Sasha K, Luc, Vlada, CJ, Radik, Vassya, Bert...and hopped onto the bus with Simon, Max, Slava (DSV), Reginald, Gert-Jan, Vitaly and Ravil. The bus took us direct to Surgut, which was a relief when it came to bags as the body bag was back inbusiness, as well as a normal bag (note: I had 3 when I arrived! Much better...but...still). For some reason Reg did not seem to want to even hear of my bags this time ;-)


Eventually arrived in Surgut at 21.45 and after dumping bags in the room and relaxing a bit, went up to the bar to have dinner and drinks with Max and Ravil. It turned into a pretty long evening...I learnt Russian Billiards (taught by Max-it is really difficult) and Alexey turned up on the way back to his next shift, so that was fun. Went to bed at 3am...and up at 5.15 :-(


Enjoyed the caviar on UTAir :-) and crashed out for the rest of the flight. Plan for the day was to go into Moscow with Ravil and meet up with Sasha A for lunch. Which is exactly what we did after having left our luggage and Reg (separately!) at the airport. I had booked myself onto the later flight at 9pm to avoid any repeat of last time's drama :-)







Ravil in front of the Historical Museum







We headed into town on the train and went to Tverskaya metro stop, where we got out and walked towards the Red Square. Tverskaya street is an expensive shopping street, and it was nice looking at the expensive cars lined up in the street (a far cry from the lovely Nivas) while eating ice-cream in the sun.
Came to the Red Square, which for some reason was cordoned off. It was great to make it to such a landmark...wasn't tempted by the Lenin mausoleum though. Tried to absorb the view/feel of the place, the Kremlin and the Cathedral...and took some photos on the antiquated camera. which I shall be developing very soon (promise).







Here they are! The Kremlin (and two random ladies posing in front of the cathedral :-(











A better view of the square with St Basil's Cathedral, the Kremlin and a piece of GUM shopping centre on the left












We then headed to the Alexander gardens and back over to Manejnaya, a relaxed square with the Central Exhibition Hall on the end of it.

Sasha got in touch and we agreed to meet on the way to the Arbat. We first walked through the Novy (New) Arbat and then onto the old Arbat, which is where we stopped to have lunch and a drink. It was very interesting to walk down this street which is well-known for its street artists and its cafes. There were a lot of tourist stalls too, selling the usual stuff as well as some Cheburashkas...I almost bought a fluffy Gena crocodile but resisted the temptation ;-)
Unfortunately Ravil has his eyes closed on the Arbat photo so I won't post it here :-)

After a nice relaxed lunch it was time to head back to catch the 3pm train in time for Ravil to make his 5:30 flight. Tried the BA desk and they eventually gave me a seat on the flight after someone cancelled which was nice as it cut out a rather long wait in the airport. Reg was quite surprised to see me swan in 15 min later!!

Until now, the whole trip back had just felt like I was going off-shift, as always feeling happy about the time/work in the field but very much looking forward to going home. Saying goodbye to Ravil in the airport, though, the finality of it hit me pretty hard and it was quite a struggle keeping it together through customs and during the flight home (not exactly much privacy in BA business on that route). I cannot believe this whole adventure is over...

I am now home, trying to recover from it all (still in the usual 1-week recovery mode but with rather more this time) and generally feeling a bit fragile emotionally. I had no idea when I headed out to this tough and alien environment (and it feels like yesterday) that I would grow to love it so much and meet such amazing people. I guess these things always catch you when you are least expecting them. It has been an inspiration so see how hard people work out there, how important it is to be part of a close team and how well a true mix of cultural values and local experience can work. I have been lucky to learn a lot about Russian culture and its people, and have come to love some of what I have found there. I feel there is still hope for Russia while it has such great people...but then, is there really hope for these people in Russia? Only time will tell, but let's hope that spirit does not get choked by the inert masses and boxed-in world views...

It is going to take a while to get over my amazing adventure but in the meantime I really need to thank everyone out in Salym for looking after me, teaching me so much and accepting into their community this rather random geologist girl being flown in from central offices miles away. In particular I will never forget the support, patience, understanding and friendship given to me so generously by Pasha, Gilles, Ravil, Sasha A, Sasha K, Sergey A and Marc.
And of course, things would just not have been the same without Sergey R, Radik, Anna, Vlada, Alexey, Denis, Vavan and even our drillers in caravan 2 :-) Yes, Buyanov, that includes you!!

Finally, thank you dear readers for your interest in my time in Siberia and all my random thoughts and feelings. It has been great getting people's feedback and comments on the blog...

I have decided to keep this blog open as it is such a nice way to keep in touch with friends and family around the world. And of course I have become rather addicted to writing here so I need an excuse to keep doing it (by the way I will be back-posting a bit for this last shift-will let you know as I do it).

I think I might rename it Florence's Journeys though as that seems to cover rather more than just physical travelling.


And of course...who knows just what the future holds?

36 hours to go...

and I can't quite get my head round it.

I want one

wonder if I could get a trip sheet? :-D

Car thief

well well well. The rest of the world might as well know-my car thieving tendencies have just been exposed to the whole of the Basecamp community by my friends Sergey and Ravil...hrmph.
When we were driving to CPF yesterday I didn't have a tripsheet as we had left too late on Friday night for me to get one. I was going to get one on arrival at the CPF before going on (obviously). And..yes, for the first time ever, I got stopped...asked for my tripsheet...oops. So much for the squeaky clean driving record...
I did a very good job of pretending to not understand what he was telling me while speaking English very fast but it didn't stop him from reporting me as a vehicle thief! (which is what happens when you are found with a car and no tripsheet). And it has just hit basecamp now...I am being msn'd from several quarters...argh

What a beautiful day!

Getting up this morning, I remembered exactly why I get a kick out of this job. After extracting myself from my bed with difficulty at 6.20 I opened the front door to be greeted by brilliant sunshine and crisp fresh air. The rig was drilling away and the ground was frozen-take that, mud!


There was a lot of work to do this morning preparing Winlog/the morning report in time for the morning meeting-as per Bert's request, this needs to be in before 7.55 so they can use it during the meeting. It is nice to know the report is being used, but...anyway this morning I was teaching Roy how to put everything together but we ran out of time so I had to go for a manic rush at the end and sent the report through at 7:54-I guess I can teach him that last bit tomorrow ;-)

The morning meetings here are a bit of a struggle as the DSV does not really speak English so a lot of the translation gets lost somewhere down the phone line and although I can pick up a bit of the Russian it is not ideal. But it is important to be there to answer questions, like this morning about the logging.

After the meeting we came back and polished off the Winlog for the previous conductor section in time for lunch. After which, the boys went to bed to get some rest (we are going to be logging tonight) and I was just on the phone when I ran into Bert and Yuri who were on their weekly rig visit, so I joined them and had a cuppa while they had lunch. Had a pleasant chat once they had finished winding me up about coming back to a real job ;-) then came back here in time to watch lots of mud action-yes, the sun has melted the ice and things are getting quite sticky again (though without the rain adding to it it doesn't seem quite as insurmountable).






Piotr is stuck! Endless entertainment from the geo-wagonchik.













but at least it's not like the road to pad 10...

Excursion on a miserable day

Yesterday was a thoroughly miserable day weather-wise. Getting up early was made harder by the sound of rain gushing off the roof of the wagonchik into our private lake...and the walk to the work caravan took a good 10 minutes.
Roy was very tired so we let him sleep in and I showed Robert Jan how to do the geo-report. There hadn't been any drilling the day before so it was pretty straightforward and we headed over to the morning meeting in good time. Beforehand I decided to drop by the DSV's office as I did not know him (he is new and our only contact so far had been an email I sent). I knew he didn't speak much English so I introduced myself and Robert in Russian. Picture this " Hello, my name is Florence, I am the geologist here, nice to meet you" "You?!" "Err yes..!...and this is Robert, who is learning about what geologists do" "ah OK, thanks". Hmm. Interesting way to start.

During the day, we worked on finishing up a lot of the documents that needed doing and I ran Roy through a few procedures etc. In the late afternoon, Roy wanted to go to the gym at the CPF so I agreed to drive him there while sneakily timing it just right for...hockey later ;-) Robert Jan came too and we decided to go on to pad 26 where he wanted to collect some of his smart wells data.

After dropping Roy off we headed off down the muddy but still acceptable road to pad 26. I really enjoyed the tougher bits as I am starting to master driving in the mud a bit...but the road to pad 10, which is currently closed (with people stuck on pad 10!!) did look rather daunting...

It was interesting to see Robert's work on pad 26 - he downloaded the data collected on a PCMCIA card to his laptop, and checked the results there and then. Last week, he had explained to me all about the work he does on Smart Wells so it was great to see how this translates in the field.

Once this was done we headed back to CPF just in time for the hockey semi-final...where Russia lost in extra time to Finland :-(( ah well, it all had to end some time...saw Tom the SLB engineer there and caught up a bit which was nice though I think I scared him a little when explaining hockey rules and players to him...

After dinner (my first at CPF would you believe it) we headed back to the rig and started wading through some (mud and) work. We were all getting rather tired and thinking about bedtime when the trainee DSV burst in announcing that CBL logs were being run in slots 1 and 2 and did we need anything from them? Well guys, thanks for the warning! A minor panic and super-fast timebreakdown generation later I gave him some papers to take over and explained what we needed (new CBL crew) - that, unfortunately, was after having had to check with Ravil to find out if they were doing a conductor CBL only to realise that they had already been done...DSV had given us the wrong slots.

At 1am we got the logs and finally went to bed...

Back to Rig 3/Pad 3

On Friday, after getting woken up at 13:15 by the fire alarm (almost like student days...except 12 hours later/earlier) I had lunch and packed all my stuff-a bit for the rig, leaving the big black bag in Base.
I then did a few hours' work until dinner, following which we had a class on cementing from Reginald, which was very interesting as it helped link together a lot of the information picked up on the rig. This went on till 8.30, after which I still had to finish gathering bits, bobs and geologists before setting off for rig 3, where I am due to spend my last few days.
As it was pretty late I couldn't get a trip sheet for the car so drove without one, which wasn't a problem as we didn't get stopped.
Dropped Malinki Sasha off at pad 50 then drove on to rig 3 with Roy (my new B2B) and Robert Jan (I'm sure I've mentioned him before; he's a PT who wanted to see what real work looks like).
The trudge through the mud in the pouring rain was pretty dire, especially as it was close to midnight; luckily Roy helped me with my bag else I might have actually lost my boots for good...
So, back and happy to be here despite the difficult conditions...

Learning

I have been learning a lot about PT work and my time as a PT tagger-along is coming to an end. But it has been really useful to help me understand what goes on next and the links between understanding the reservoir, modelling it and seeing and learning from what happens in the field.

Today I learnt about Water Injection and it is definitely an area where a lot of things are up in the air, and the uncertainty on the models is high. However it is an important area as it affects future production so much. For example, if you inject too fast, the water doesn't displace the oil but travels straight through to the oil well and you end up producing water that you have just injected. But if you don't inject enough then you lose oil production.
By the way, the size of the pumps in the injection station is that of a medium-sized car.

What I especially like about the last couple of weeks is that I have actually had time to record all my learnings and think about them for a while, which has really helped with assimilation. I have never really had a chance to do this, only plan to, and I hope I will be able to do it again in the future-unless someone invents human RAM in the meantime.

Off to a perforation shortly :-)

Victory Day

It is Victory Day today in Russia, celebrating the WW2 victory over the Germans.
There have been a host of war films on TV over the last few days and a lot of German jokes...the Deutag caravan is a bit of a target ;-)
Here is a picture of the poster on our door:




"Fascists can't escape us-we will hunt them down to their (bear) dens"
















Apart from that, I have been teaching our charming but rather impractical TA Vlada how to re-pot a plant...(please don't ever mention gravel to me again)
















and today saw a bunch of people leaving on crew change, including my good friend Pasha-the-DSV... :-(( and his side-kick Sergey the Hoist Supervisor. The Rig 4 Magic Team legend will live on...:-) I know I was lucky to work with Pasha as he was so easy to communicate and get along with, which really helped when I started out on my own and when I was really really tired sometimes. Another big part of my life here...

Hockey

I am developing into an ice-hockey fan!
What started as a casual interested in such a large part of the Russian sports culture has become rather more...after a few matches I am hooked.
Last night saw Russia beat Sweden-one of the more important matches- and it had me on the edge of my chair. I still don't understand all the rules but enough to know what is a good and what is a bad game. And, not having a national team to support, I can happily find myself chanting Ra-ssi-ya! Ra-ssi-ya! without any guilt whatsoever.

The Disadvantage of Being a Girl

I've had a pretty good day, starting with a cheeky lie-in (finally!!) and typing up some notes on what I have been learning from the PTs.
In the afternoon, Ravil, Vitaly and Andrey (PT) announced they were going out to pad 1A to look at the water injection plant there. I was about to start having a cuppa with Luc and on impulse asked Vitaly if i could tag along...request granted :-)
It was very interesting to see the water injection pumps and how everything was connected. Very briefly, here is the idea: it is important to keep pressure up in an oil reservoir, so it keeps producing its oil. But if you start taking enough oil out, pressure is going to drop as there is less fluid in the same space. So to keep up pressure we can inject water into the reservoir, and wells are drilled following a special pattern with this concept in mind.
The water needs to be pumped along to the injector wells and into the reservoir at high pressure; this means you need large pumps which heat up the water and bring it to high pressures.
The water in this case is currently coming from some of our existing wells; it then goes into a couple of large separators (which we got a chance to examine) which separate gas from the water, then into a small centrifuging machine that separates out any particles and finally through into the main pump. The water is distributed through a pipeline to all water injector wells in the field.
Cleverly I completely forgot to take the camera so have no photos to illustrate this, but it has been really helpful for visualising how this kind of set-up works. I remember vaguely looking at some diagrams of similar installations during EP00 and dismissing it as the most boring topic ever, but I have now revised my opinion!
Anyway, ran into Jim, head of ops, after dinner (less than an hour after getting back) and he started winding me up about going onto one of his sites without an HSE induction. He caught me completely by surprise! Clearly news travels fast and they don't get visits from devushki very often so they noticed I had never been to this pad before...oh to be a man sometimes (very rarely) (almost never)...

French Elections

I have just seen that Sarko has won-well at least a disaster has been avoided...
So now, bring on le Status Quo...

Sad

I have just said goodbye to Gilles and am feeling a little emotional.
Yes, I am sure we will stay in touch, but for now it really is the end of something.
Gilles is the person who has really made my time here what it has been-he has taken interest in me, tested me, pushed me and watched me bounce back. He has taught me a mountain of important lessons, the importance of being human yet organised and efficient, firm but fair; and confirmed to me that you can be honest, driven and passionate and really succeed in business. Finally, he has given me the chance to be myself 100% and really think about what I want from my job.
Onwards and upwards, I will always keep what I found here with me, wherever I go...

Slightly mad day

yesterday, but I ended up getting stuff done somehow.
I finished up all my AAR and XPT documents as well as my penultimate Performance Review draft before lunch, which I was quite happy about as these things seem to take ages to do.
After lunch Marc and Marina arrived from SLB-Marina will be replacing Marc as he moves on to a different position and this was the start of their handover.
I was really happy to see Marc again as I had come to the conclusion that this would not happen, especially as he has not been in the field out here for a while. We had a good chat about the XPT procedure which I have been working on, and which I am now final-finalising before Gilles leaves tonight.
I was also a little sad because it meant yet another goodbye to someone who has been a big influence during my time here. It is such a nice luxury to work with someone so enthusiastic about their work, who is willing to give you so much despite having a hard job to do-when working with Marc I always had the feeling I could understand anything, explanations were there to be taken and he would be happy to explain things in detail until I (finally) ran out of questions...and now I have him to blame for my XPT obsession ;-)
In the evening I had a really good session with Ravil where he spent 2 hours explaining in depth the way PT work fits into the bigger picture and the different aspects of production technology, especially completion, which is what happens straight after drilling. It has really helped make a lot of things clear and brought together a lot of information I have been picking up here and there. And of course all the time I have spent with the other PTs seeing what they are doing. I am looking forward to my next lesson with such a helpful and thorough teacher.
Back to polishing off these docs then (and some PT stuff in between)...only 4 hours left with Gilles...I will try to catch up properly with blogging tomorrow.

Working in Basecamp

Just thought I would post a few pics of life here...before the whole of basecamp moves to the CPF some time next week. Obviously things are quite different and rather more comfortable here, and there is a lot more interaction with people all the time, as the main caravan I am sitting in has a constant stream of visitors.
Which I love, as it means I get a really good feel for what is going on, although it does make it a bit difficult to work sometimes.




with Vassily (junior geologist), Andrey and Vavan
enjoying the sunshine












with Radik, Sergey A, Gilles and Sergey R















My desk













With Tofig (Well Engineering) and Gilles

Good managers

Last night, Harry (CEO) came round to the geologist's caravan to have a chat with Gilles about the geology, our latest wells, and the way we operate here in the field...and the future of the company in the rest of Russia, whether the kind of difference we make here and the best practice examples will be enough to convince the authorities that this model is a good one and should be replicated...
I must admit I am very impressed with this guy-apart from being a geologist :-) he seems very switched on and is a very good communicator (which is quite rare for someone of his nationality). It is nice to see people like that in this kind of position-reminds me why I joined this company in the first place...

HSE

After 1 million man hours without LTI (Lost Time Injury), which is a pretty good safety record, we sadly have had 2 fatalities in a month- one a road accident, where the driver smashed into a heavy lorry on the federal road, and the other 2 days ago when a 16m-scaffold fell down with a contractor on it. This of course is a very sad occurrence and a great shame after all this time operating safely.
Today, the CEO came to basecamp and just did a talk about the situation.
Awful circumstances aside, it was interesting to see how the management team is dealing with this situation, informing staff and stakeholders and how the problems are explained. Whether the extra entreaties to work safely will be heard I do not know, but I was very impressed with the delivery. Far more relevant and human than any HSE review meeting I have been to so far-although of course there have been no office fatalities as yet.
Something to mull over.

Software

I am just discovering Mozilla/Firefox. Nice...

Crew change

Today was crew change day so I had to say some goodbyes...

I have been taking people photos over the last couple of days, here are some with Oleg and Amit (PTs) and Anna, who all left today.

with Oleg-now I know everything there is to know about ESPs! (electric submersible pumps, which are used to help bring the oil to the surface)

with Amit - completely rubbish weather today, it actually snowed overnight and is now raining and windy and about 1 degree :-(

with Anna, integral part of the superteam in caravan 1!

Time flies...

I have finally decided to just write this offline and post it later, so that I can do it in my own time and catch up with the week. I cannot believe another week has flown by…

Starting again where I left off:

Andrey, the Schlumberger engineer, eventually came round with the data and after a few changes we signed the acceptance papers and I made my way back to Basecamp. Unfortunately it was dinner time so I didn’t eat again, but I had a collection of fruit in my room so that was fine. I got back in time to catch the second half of Touching the void, a documentary film about a couple of glacier climbers who got stuck and the extreme survival of one of them who pulled himself out of a crevasse and down the mountain with a broken leg! Amazing…and quite moving too.

The next morning, Alexey noticed that some data was missing from the logs…eek! Basically I asked SLB for the wrong logging interval and the engineer didn’t double-check it (I misread the depth because the program had changed). We had all the reservoir data though so it wasn’t too much of a problem but it was a bit of a wake-up call for me to pay more attention to the job. I find it quite tough to just drop in on a well without knowing it from drilling, so it requires a lot more concentration to get it right. Gilles asked for a small AAR (after action review) document on this so that this kind of mistake could be avoided in the future, also from the SLB side (they didn’t quite follow standard procedure in this case).

After discussing this issue with Alexey, I left for pad 3 to help Simon with his PEX-XPT job. Incidentally, communication with Alexey has improved a lot since my second shift-it was already a lot better last shift and this time I found it very helpful to be sitting in the same office as him on that level…I could just hit him over the head with a log if he started annoying me :-)

After pad 50, which was very well maintained with sand all over, pad 3 was a bit of a struggle as it was very muddy with large ruts. I decided to not even try getting in and parked at the entrance by the security cabin. It was pretty difficult walking over to the geologist’s caravan but I made it without letting mud in over the top of my boots. I did get stuck on the way to the SLB unit though and Denis-the-DSV had to rescue me :-)

The engineer was Andrey again and after discussing the depth problem from yesterday we got on with the job. We went through all the XPT procedure and made sure we were all clear about what we needed from each other. For this XPT job, another engineer, Serge, was there and although he hadn’t done XPT before he has a lot of experience with pressure testing (just slightly different tools) so it was really interesting talking to him.
Denis stayed in the unit with us which was nice; in this well the drillers decided not to do a wiper trip to clean the hole before logging, because there was a power shutdown planned for the next day and they wanted to save time and finish work on the well before it. Bad idea…we couldn't get into the hole so had to pull out and they had to do the wiper trip anyway…obviously this meant staying in pad 3 for me, which was nice as I could catch up with people and of course the cleaners made up my bed nicely straight away (the Deutag magic).
Next day, we started over again and this time, after a couple of small struggles, we managed to get in and log the hole. At this stage Andrey and I were starting to get the giggles at it seemed that we were having a bit of a Groundhog Day-especially when it turned out that another tool needed calibrating!
After that everything went smoothly with the PEX and XPT, although we were a bit worried before the job about getting stuck with the XPT tool due to the poor hole conditions. We applied all the new procedure a la lettre though and did not have any problems as we took the XPT measurements, except with the penultimate point where the cable tension got really high- almost to snapping point. There were an amazing 20 seconds in the logging cabin where no-one breathed as the operator tried to free the cable...luckily he managed and a lot of pale, shaky-kneed people heaved a sigh of relief!
Because Serge had never done XPT and Andrey didn't have that much experience they were asking me about testing rates and volumes, which was great fun :-) obvioulsy I made it clear the responsibility was theirs but they basically let me pick all the sampling volumes and rates for the points :-) with a bit of guidance on the tight formations (ie the ones where liquid doesn't flow very easily or at all). Basically what we measure is the formation pressure, by sucking out liquid from it and waiting for the pressure to stabilise again; the time this takes depends on how well fluid can move through the formation and therefore the amount taken and the speed at which you take it can really influence how well the pressure stabilises.
Anyway, another XPT job happily finished and we went back to the work unit to wait for the data from SLB. Simon had been bringing me food throughout the day, which was nice, as I didn't have time to leave the logging unit at mealtimes.

I decided to go to the car to get my book and some bits from my bag, to help with the wait for the data. Unfortunately on the way back the digger was working in the only path I knew so I had to work out another route back to the unit. My friend the moustachied digger driver(for it was he) saw me waiting and pointed me towards a dry-ish path which I followed happily until it was time to cut across to the unit. And then...it all went terribly wrong! after 2 steps I ended up completely bogged down with mud to the top of my boots :-( luckily for me, the digger was still nearby and the driver staged a rescue worthy of a princess :-) and I eventually made it back safely to the work unit.

I found Pasha near the DSV's office as he is living in pad 3 while rig 4 moves, so spent a bit of time relaxing with a nice cup of tea and ice cream :-) then back to the unit to wish Simon a happy birthday at midnight! Ivan had brought a cake back from Salym village and we even had birthday candles which were fun to light. After enjoying a slice of cake I sent the boys to bed as it seemed pointless for all of us to stay up waiting for data-especially not Birthday Boy.
The data eventually came, and after sending the boys back a few times, and an interesting conversation with Andrey (he is only 2 weeks older than me, a geologist/geophysicist and has played the piano as long as I played the violin, also in a music school, and also wants to go electric so we were discussing the merits of electric violins/pianos and how he wants to get a mixing set-up) I finally got to bed at 5:30 am!!
After a few hours' sleep, I explained to Simon how to do a full-hole CBL and left for Basecamp after lunch. The main road back has a lot of potholes and I am getting a little bit fed up with that section so I tried singing at the top of my voice to make it less boring...and make sure I stayed awake. Which luckily worked.

No time to write because...

I got up at 6 am yesterday, worked all day in BC till 10 pm, relaxed for 2 hours then drove to pad 50. At 3 am went to bed for 3 hours as the type of logging did not require my presence at this stage. I have been working since; it is 3.30pm and there are at least 4 more hours, then 1 hours' drive...and that's assuming Vassily can come over to relieve from having to wait for data/check logs.

Still busy

This shift is a lot busier than the previous one, as 3 rigs are currently drilling reservoir sections. Rig 4 is still moving and this will still take some time, which in a way is a relief as 3 rigs is quite a lot to manage already!
I went to bed at 5:30 am and slept till 11 so am feeling a little spaced out at the moment, but happy because the job went well yesterday. I have just been told I need to go back out for a while tonight...an interesting prospect.
More soon

Boris Yeltsin

Mr Yeltsin left us today...

Busy bee

So here goes-a summary of my first few days back on shift:

Day 1: Wednesday

after a long train journey with hardly any sleep due to the 3 snoring Russians I was sharing a compartment with, arrived late in Basecamp just in time for lunch. Had a good handover with Stijn, who was just finishing his time here in Salym. He will be moving on to a new posting in Oman...
He also handed over the car keys and it sounds like the good old Niva is really having a hard time. Apart from the usual accessory problems (no horn etc), the battery is playing up quite badly and the tow-rope is broken because they got stuck in really bad mud. Apparently the car lost all acceleration power on one of the days, although that has now been repaired. So the Niva768-Florence relationship is not currently one based on trust.
That evening I drove up to pad 16 with Sasha "little brother" K to pick up our gear from the living caravan. Had to park the car near the entrance as we almost got bogged down, then squelch through wellie-deep mud to get to the living caravan-quite an experience. The rig is moving so there is quite a lot of heavy equipment being shifted, resulting in thigh-deep tracks which thankfully were not filled with water. Once in the living caravan, we realised it would be almost impossible to carry all our stuff back to the car so enlisted the help of the bulldozer driver who was luckily (for us) on a break at the time. Rig 4 contacts worked again...he drove our bags round to the car for us, despite getting stuck for a while behind a bogged-down lorry that was being dragged out of the mud. Great guys.
I then drove Sasha over to pad 10, which is the new location of rig 2 (SSK). This was a different story altogether...the last 5 km of road to the pad are impracticable by car, so we had to call Sergey who was on the rig to ask the DSV to be picked up by their digger-which was promptly refused. We were told to wait for SLB to arrive, which would have meant at least a 2-hour wait (no dinner yet and a 2-hour drive back to base ahead for me!). Luckily we found out that SLB had not even left basecamp yet and managed to negociate for Sasha to be picked up. I was rather tired when I got back to base just before midnight.

Pad 16...looking rather different!

Day 2: Thursday

Another day of beautiful weather-still cool here, nothing like London last week but extremely pleasant. My new position here for my last shift is "Queen of the Field" ;-) to follow on from "Lord of the Rig" (Stijn-don't ask). Basically it means that I am in charge of organising the movements etc of geologists currently on rigs and making sure they are OK with their jobs/providing support where they don't have the experience. Currently, Sasha G (technician) is on rig 1, learning to be a geologist, so he needs training on some specifics; Sasha K is on rig 2,

apparently swimming from the work caravan to the canteen; and Simon is on rig 3, drilling away with leaking boots.
My time this shift, as agreed, will be spent 50% on wellsite geology, 50% on PT work. With this in mind, Gilles let me know about a frac job which was going to take place that afternoon. A quick chat with my good friend Ravil and I was in on the job (as an observer of course)...and Sergey R agreed to teach Sasha G how to call TD, on his way back from pad 10. Separate frac post coming up. It was a good day.

Day 3: Friday

Another beautiful day. On Thursday I thought it would be interesting to go along to all the morning meetings with Alexey, to see what it is like at that end of the phone. I did regret that decision when my alarm went off ridiculously early on Friday morning but soon cheered up when I walked outside and breathed in the crisp fresh air and saw the sun shining already.
After the meetings I helped Alexey with some documents he had to prepare, then went to sort out my trip sheet for the day...which was promptly taken from me! A bit of anger and several phone calls later, it turned out that the lovely man in charge of my driving license wanted me to sign a piece of paper to certify that I can drive in summer conditions (???) before I could get another trip sheet . I needed to be at the CPF to do that...which of course I would need a car to get to. So Alexey managed to negociate that I would go next week when I had time after my work, which is after this man's shift change so he didn't care anymore anyway. Oh dear.
When I finally had my driving license it was time to go back for the second part of the frac job, which I was determined to make despite a pending logging job in rig 1. This was planned for the same night so I decided to take some overnight things in case I needed to go straight to pad 50 but I ended up with more time than expected so went back to base anyway.

The dryest spot in pad 16...in the Good Old Days before I lost my hard hat :-( (I am very upset about this)

Day 4: Saturday ie today

This morning I woke up at 1:30, 3:30 and 5:45 to check on the logging job. I felt sorry for my roommate but had warned her that I had a night job...she is the onsite English/Russian teacher and she spends 2 days in basecamp and 2 at the CPF so I hadn't seen her yet. Seems quite friendly.
The logging job was planned at 3am, with a PEX on TLC, which means that the logging tools are fixed to a tube, not a wire as we usually do. TLC jobs are very time-consuming and we usually only use them if we have problems with wireline jobs. There was no problem here but there have been a lot on rig 2 (also SSK) and to cut a long story short, it was decided that all logging jobs in SSK should be done on TLC from now on.
However, I was happy to find out that this one had been changed to wireline because of planned power cuts tomorrow. This means a 5-hour job instead of 25 :-)
So I phoned Sasha in the middle of the night to get status updates, and ended up leaving base at 6am as the logging was delayed a little. Not the best night's sleep, but better than just 3 hours. We have just finished this job and Sasha did well for his first time. Now waiting for SLB engineer, going to check data, and back off to base. Tomorrow I will be going to pad 3 to do an XPT job-Simon's first. There is a lot of pressure on this job (no pun intended there-XPT...pressure...following?) because the XPT tool got stuck on rig 2 and had to be fished out of the hole. This was mostly because the procedure wasn't followed correctly, so I have re-written it yet again to spell out everything in minute detail, and I need to test run it again to make sure everything works ok. I have my "XPT girl" reputation to preserve as I am one of the people with the most XPT experience here. We'll see what happens.

That's it for now, more later and photos too, which I am being useless with. The problem is I have been taking pics with a very old-fashioned film camera which I came across while tidying a cupboard at home...so once that is finished I can start using modern technology again!

Paka!

Arrived happily in Siberia

I'm back :-)
The weather is gorgeous and it's great to be here again.
I have already learnt loads in 1 1/2 days.
It is very muddy in the field...but I am based in Basecamp at the moment.
Photos and updates coming soon, including posts from time off.

Week One back home

After getting the night train back from Moutiers to Waterloo we arrived home early on Sunday morning, and I headed straight for bed. Unfortunately the eurostar did not have any couchettes :-( as hoped for so this might not be an option next time.
Monday and Tuesday were taken up excitedly going to IKEA and (less excitedly) putting together loads of flat-packs, for the new TPA office in Old Queen Street. Just when I thought I had seen the back of those terrible diagrams...oh well. The new office is looking good, and is so much nicer, quieter, more spacious...and cheaper! than the old one.
On Tuesday evening I attended and said a few words at an IEA dinner with John O'Sullivan as guest speaker...I was lucky enough to sit next to him and he had many inspiring words to say.
Wednesday seemed to fly by and Thursday saw me visiting Grandmother and Uncle Robert and enjoying some sunshine in the garden (and desperately trying to eradicate the racoon markings acquired in France ;-) And that was the end of week 1-we left London on Thursday evening to spend the Easter weekend in Leeds. How time flies...

In one piece

Well, we both got home in one piece after a fun week on the pistes.
Thursday was quite a good day spent practising what I learnt from my lesson then going over to 1850 to join Matthew and enjoy the better snow ( it was starting to get into a pattern of icy mornings/slushy afternoons down in 1650). I still prefer 1650 as it is a lot quieter than 1850 and has some good runs, especially towards the top. Andy, James and I also skied over to Meribel-just to make use of our 3 Valleys ski pass! it was quite nice doing a few different pistes (including quite a tough red) but the snow was a lot worse on this side.
Friday was a difficult day for me-although all the aches and pains had gone and I was definitely feeling a lot fitter, my worst skiing technique was impossible to get rid of, especially as the snow was pretty poor and icy everywhere. It didn't help that I took a very difficult red (I suspect it was a very dark red!!) that was a real struggle and then kept bumoing in to my ski instructor every time I made a mistake :-o
The snow line receded dramatically over the length of our stay, from an all-round powdering on the trees to feeling like we were skiing in the green grassy summer!
Snow was planned for Friday during the day but it actually ended up snowing all night Friday.
Which meant that we were all up bright and early on Saturday enjoying the 35cm of lovely powder...after doing a blue which felt like off-pisting (not groomed) we went straight up following Andy's inspired itinerary to do a red...but ended up doing a black! Which was a slightly scary but in-retrospect enjoyable experience, thanks to the good snow. After that we did several reds, and I finally felt myself let go of the fear in the blues, which felt rather easy after all that!
Matthew came with us on the black and did pretty well considering he was a complete beginner at the start of the week. He is now a blue-piste skier, and I would put myself as red.
All-in-all a great trip/holiday-despite the occasional hallucinations of not having left Russia??! (many, many Ruskis in 1850).

Courchevel

I found my bag waiting for me at the bottom of the escalator in Heathrow :-) and got home safely on Thursday night.
Friday was spent unpacking and repacking as well as sorting some admin, and Saturday we were off!
We took the Skitrain from Waterloo straight to Moutiers, which was a pretty easy and straightforward journey despite the rather noisy children who got in at Ashford.

We arrived in Courchevel 1650 early evening, where Andy, James and Yasmin had already arrived and we were being cooked dinner for by Ben, our chalet guy.

The ski hire people came to visit to measure us up so we could have our skis ready first thing on Sunday. We also ordered our skilift passes and Matthew signed up for some lessons with New Generation.

On Sunday morning, we were ready to go!

The snow was lovely and the sun was shining-what more could we ask for:-) James and Yasmin are snowboarding and started by practicing on the beginners' area, which is where we took Matthew to introduce him to the snowplough before his private lesson that afernoon (as a kickstart). Andy and I then went off skiing down a few greens and found tha we are a similar level, which is great as it is always nice to have someone to ski with, and we can push each other when the need arises :-)

I went through the pain barrier on day 2 and not midweek as expected :-( I didn't do enough stretches in the evening and my calves were in complete agony the next day. In fact I have only just started walking normally again (almost). But squeezing into tight skiing boots actually made it possible to keep skiing and it has been a un few days. Matthew has made very fast progress and I decided to catch a private lesson with the ESF today before he catches me up! ;-) Today also saw me go down 2 red pistes, confidence boosted by the lesson and the lovely views (and the fact that it didn't look that steep fron the chairlift :-)

So we are all having a good time, everyone with their own aches and pains and some of us working on the badger look.

Photos to come once we get home...

Drillers

I have just realised that I haven't really written much about our friends the drillers, apart from a few comments about drilling supervisors (DSVs). And this shift I have had quite a lot to do with them, so I thought they might finally be worth a mention. Just.
As I have been working on Deutag rigs most of the time I have mostly been interacting with one team (Denis and Pasha as DSVs but also Bert who is their boss = senior well engineer). There are in fact 2 Berts back-to-back, also known as "young Bert" and "old Bert" but I only really know old Bert, who is an interesting character to say the least! Having said that, I have immense respect for him and all the other "older guys" - real oil men who know their stuff and who really care about what they do. Good stuff.
Usually wellsite geologists attend morning meetings at the rig with the rest of the drilling team, mostly in an observatory role (keeping in touch with what is going on-and learning how problems are being fixed and drilling improved) but every once in a while there are some questions to be answered (pressures measured in the reservoir, how the logging is going etc). I have had a few of those in the past and luckily have been able to answer satisfactorily - which was a relief as Bert's capacity to give people a hard time is well-known...especially if the target is as easy as a poor little geologist :-) It is always entertaining to watch the DSVs in different stages of nervous breakdown in the run-up to morning meetings.
This shift though, things got a little hairier when Bert started complaining about some depths not making any sense at all etc. After some investigation (and still no sleep, this happened during the first few days when we were drilling the special deep well) it turned out that he had been looking in the wrong column. When confronted during his visit at the wellsite (as if I were going to be shy!) he actually apologised, which I have been told is a pretty rare occurence, so I was pretty happy about that.
Next thing I knew, a strong email came round after we sent out the Winlog for the previous well (finished drilling on the day we arrived) requesting a lot more clarity. For some reason, I didn't panic (lack of sleep numbs the senses ;-) and instead got on with improving the report and understanding what the drillers (sorry, Well Enginnering) needed. It was actually a rather useful exercise in that it made our output more useful whilst helping us understand more about the well/drilling issues. A good exercise in communication-and How To Deal With A Driller.

I have found an excellent photo on the server, taken by Misha, which I feel really captures the essence of Bert so here it is:

Moscow

I am currently in the BA lounge in Domodedovo airport and all is well.
My flight this morning with UTAir (that airline) from Surgut (that airport) was perfectly fine, I slept most of the way except when it was caviar time and made sure I had checked where the emergency exits were about 5 times.

Last night we went bowling in the hotel, which was good fun. "We" in this case being Simon, Reginald, Robert-Jan and Misha (from well services). Oh, and me.

This morning I flew to Domodedovo direct with Reginald and Misha. I had seen Reg on the BA flight over here and we were also booked on the same one back.
This time I decided to actually make it into Moscow this time, and the weather looked like it was trying to make up for last time as it was really sunny and quite warm. I was far too hot in my polar coat.
So I left my bag with Reginald, who kindly offered to look after it and even check it in for me, and set off on my little adventure to meet Alexey in town.

First, I took a minibus to the nearest metro station, which cost me 50 rubles (1 pound!)- at first I was a little worried about the whole minibus experience but it was a lot easier than my previous experience in Saratov.

Then I bought a metro card for 5 trips (75 rubles) from the unfriendly cashier and went down to the platform, where I met Alexey and we headed into town. We went to our Moscow office as Alexey needed to drop off some paperwork, and went on to lunch nearby. After lunch we went to Prospect Mira for a drink with his wife Tatiana, who works nearby. She doesn't speak English so it was good for my Russian practice and Alexey helped with the translation, as she spoke rather quickly for me at times.

Alexey then took me to the Express train station, where I caught a train that takes 40 minutes to get to the airport. Unfortunately, this train only leaves once an hour and not every 40 minutes as we expected, so I managed to miss check-in by 12 minutes and they didn't let me on the plane (even though I only had hand luggage and was very willing to run for it!). So I changed my ticket to the 9 o'clock flight and came straight through to the business lounge.

I have just had a nice long shower here, which was lovely after all the running around, and have decided to update the blog a little as there are some things that I haven't posted yet. It is quite nice to have a little bit of time to relax here and catch up with emails etc...

The only problem being that I currently have Reginald's Russian mobile, and he has my bag. Which with a bit of luck will be waiting for me at LHR...?

Home soon...

Two days to go...I am looking forward to going home, and skiing next week.
Two days till the end...of this shift.
And not, dear reader, of my stint out here as was originally planned.
Yes, that's right! Crazy little me is so happy here that she will be staying an extra shift!
Next time, I will be working with the PTs a lot, to learn about completion-going out and perforating some of the wells I have drilled, and learning about production too.
So loads more to learn and a lot of excitement ahead :-)))))
The adventure goes on...

It gets worse

aaah-now we're on One Way Ticket to the Moon...time for a cuppa with the PTs :-)

Karaoke

It's karaoke time again in the SSFT caravan-Vlada loves singing away and it's quite fun. Though if I hear another rendition of Mariah Carey's Without You I might do something bad...

Cool

Three snowmobiles just drove past my caravan-I wonder if I can try???

Skating

Well life in basecamp is pretty nice as there is a good bunch of young people on shift at the moment. Sasha, Slava and I are in our own caravan, Radik has been sitting in the main SSFT caravan with Sergey, CJ and Vlada. So a slightly different crew to last time.

End of well report is coming along, with explanations from the PTs which is always good-learning.

The highlight of the day, though, tends to be the hour to 90mins after lunch where we would usually go for a nap. Instead, a bunch of us go skating on the ice rink outside the canteen building :-)

Vlada and I are both beginners and starting up was difficult but it's been great fun.
I have been skating every day since I arrived and I feel a lot more comfortable on the ice now. Yesterday was a struggle, as legs and feet were hurting (exercise? wot?) but I pushed myself and got a lot of good practice in.
Today the ice was not so good as the temperature exceeded 0 degrees today!! Although we did get a thin layer of snow again.

I feel like a young child as I am covered in bruises but it's a good feeling to be doing some sports again. And it's fun to play :-) Here is a video of our train:




I have started to learn hockey...sort of...Sasha is my coach and I can just about skate along with the stick, and hit the puck into the goal (providing the puck is in the right place ;-)

2 days ago, the CPF challenged Basecamp to a hockey match so I went along to watch and support. Poor Sasha, the best player in the team, was completely exhausted by half-time: we had been playing at lunchtime, and the basecamp team only had 4 players, whereas CPF could rotate as they had 7. We almost won ;-)

I am now sitting in the main SSFT caravan as Radik has gone to pad 16 to help the guys out there with Achimov drilling. I am looking at the correlation as they come in with Sergey-it's fun to be on this end too, although it might have been more interesting with Gilles around.

There are curently 4 geologists in pad 16, which is quite a lot! and Well Engineering are getting a little upset about this. Currently out there are Sasha (aka my little brother from the last 2 weeks on rig 4), Simon, who has moved over from pad 3 to do the Achimov drilling, Radik, who was called out for help, and Dina, who arrived on Thursday for her first shift.

I am a little disappointed not to have been able to stay with Dina, as was originally planned, but her arrival was delayed (bad weather in Amsterdam) and plans here changed slightly-I stayed on the rig last week instead, as there was no computer for me here. But she seems to be settling in fine and enjoying here time here, so all is good :-)

In basecamp

I drove down to basecamp on Thursday and am due to spend the rest of the shift here.
Working on end-of-well reports, which is a little tedious but there is a great atmosphere as most of my favourite geos are here: Radik, Sasha A, Sergey A as well as the usual basecampers of course.
More later...

Trip to pad 26

On Sunday, I took Sasha to pad 26 for a special CBL. It was very strange getting there and finding it empty bar the Christmas Trees and a hoist! Although not as strange as it had been when I went back to pad 5 on our pad tour last shift.

Here I am with the hoist, which is basically a lorry with a pullie which is used for work on the well after it has been drilled and the rig has moved.

While we were waiting for TPG to rig up, we had a good look at what was there. Sasha did an operational placement during his studies and new a bit about the control centre for the ESPs-these are the pumps that are put in the wells to help bring the oil to the surface. Here is a photo of the control centre:

And the best bit of it all, I discovered where I can find oil on tap :-))
Isn't it amazing that you can just open a tap and out comes oil all the way from 2+km below you???

Then back to the CBL truck, where they were rigging up-it was our engineer friend Anton again, so Sasha was happy and communication was good there.
Here is a little video of the rig-up:



I then left Sasha to it and returned to pad 16. It was a glorious day and I was enjoying the drive (and the car was behaving) so I decided to go back via the winter road. As I made my way down to it, I realised that no-one had been along it for quite a while. It had only snowed a little since though so I could still drive through it. About half-way along, I suddenly felt the urge to get out and stand in the sun, and enjoy the peace, quiet and sheer beauty of this wilderness. The only sounds around me were those of the snow slipping off branches, and the flapping of birch bark in the wind. I heard a couple of birds hop around but did not see any. Those were a perfect 10 minutes all to myself, just enjoying the fact that I am here and that I love what I am doing. It also helped me get a bit of peace, as I have been thinking about a lot of things recently (finally have time/mental space to really THINK), especially about what comes next...

Global Warming video

For all those Al Gore fans, and everyone else too, please watch this show, now available on youtube.
It was high time someone made a program to counter this climate change hysteria and helped people take a step back and think about it a little more logically...and dare I say scientifically. As in: real science, not the government/NGO funded Daily Mail scare stories which seem to have become the norm in today's world...
Here is the first chunk (of eight):

Books

I haven't had much time to read this shift but I just found this link and found it pretty funny...must get back to those counts and princes pronto!

Menagerie

Jaika, Cheburashka and Mishka are all well and say hello!

Pad 26

Today I will be taking Sasha to pad 26 after lunch, for a CBL job in a high-angle well (80 degrees!) which should be interesting. I will try to take some pics of the tools, if they have them laid out. After which I will leave him there, as the job is likely to take hours! So we are off to the canteen to have a good lunch and stock up on food/cake for him to eat later on.

Basecamp visit

Yesterday, we decided to go to basecamp for the afternoon. I was supposed to be moving there to do EOWR but there are no free computers...
So we decided to get there in time for the weekly quicklook meeting, which we usually have every Saturday at 3pm. This was a good opportunity for a geologist reunion and quick photo-we were tempted to asked Well Engineering to take it ;-)







Simon came to pick us up as we were car-less; all the computers (including his laptop) on pad 3 were infected by a virus and were being sorted by Vavan; also there was no drilling because of a broken top drive. So it was a good distraction for him!

About 1 hour before leaving we suddenly spotted a UNGGF truck out of the window and realised that a CEL was going to take place! A CEL is another type of Cement Evaluation Log, which we do only for a few hundred meters into the well, just to check that the cement is OK. We later run a proper CBL for more precise information.





So we ran out to meet them and managed to sort it all out (just) before going to base. Except that today we noticed that we had put in the wrong well name. Ho-hum. All sorted.


Anyway, we got back fairly late last night but...I now have my car back :-))) so I'm happy. Slava wasn't.


We were planning on seeing the Baroid guys (remember Ivan? my English/Russian practice mate-he's back on shift and invited us over) and visiting their lab/watching them make the mud etc but just then we started drilling the last conductor section so everyone was rather busy. Let's see what we can do this evening...

Reports

Almost finished the report we have been working on for the last few days-such a relief.
Yesterday we finished drilling another conductor section although TD was delayed 3 hours till midnight. We were so fed up with making reports that we decided to go and catch some samples from the bottom of the hole, just for fun (and to check we were in the right place :-)

Shale shakers:

Catching a sample:

More more more

More flowers, more chocolates :-)
Again from basecamp...this time from a different department :-)
Arrived by special Vavan delivery...

CBL finally done!

It took 54 hours for TPG to do the logging, but after the earlier cable problem, followed by a broken tool problem, they finally managed to do a good job. We are starting to know the engineer, Anton, and he was perfectly fine with our sitting in his logging unit for the important bits. Progress!!
I was trying to have a conversation with him and was despairing at my complete loss of Russian understanding when Sasha told me that Anton was speaking in colloquial Russian. No wonder...!



When we get the printout from CBL logs, we need to do some basic interpretation on them; nothing too detailed but just to capture the key points. A CBL log looks at the bond between the cement that has been pumped down the well and squirted up the outside, and the casing. It is supposed to form a bonding layer between the rock and the casing. The casing is made of metal, and the amplitude of the vibration of the casing is measured, to see whether it is unattached or attached, and therefore, whether or not we have a good cement bond. More on CBL here.



Here is a picture of the CBL printout (we need to correlate it to the Gamma Ray measured during the PEX logging, to make sure we know where we are in the well). And yes, that is the full length of our caravan!

Women's Day

Today is International Women's Day according to Russian tradition.
At 8am Pasha called the office to invite us over to the canteen, were I was presented with gifts, along with the other ladies (kitchen and cleaners). I got some chocolates and a travel iron!! :-)

Yesterday, I travelled to basecamp to see off some of the geologists (1/2 crew change, Alexey, Sergey R and Vassily went home, Sasha A, Sergey A and Slava came back) and have a bit of time off-did I mention things have been rather crazy here?!

The boys decided to throw us an advance Women's Day party as all 4 SSFT girls were around (crew change for our TAs Anna/Vlada, and Genia-the-PT also just arrived). We had tea and cake, and received roses and soft toys :-))) one more for my private zoo ;-)

All in all another nice day yesterday, even though Slava *stole* my car, hrmph!

SSFT ladies: Eyvegenia, Vlada, Anna and me

Gorgeous weather

It was -8 degrees this morning but has now gone up to about +7 degrees! It is very sunny and the sky is its usual magnificent deep blue.
It struck me that not many people are lucky enough to get this kind of view from their office window...

Drilling

Monday evening, after having a nice relaxed day for my birthday, we started drilling the interesting new stuff in the night.

To do this, we had gamma ray being recorded behind the drilling bit. For most of the drilling, the GR was at about 20m behind the bit, which meant that we had to back-calculate where we wanted to be. It was really fun seeing the data coming in directly, live, and being able to confirm what was going on straight away rather than having to wait for the logging.

Here is an action shot of us discussing the current information and geological model in Petrel:

Once we got to the point we had decided on, we stopped as there was something we were a little bit uncertain about, which could be resolved in the next stage; the drilling bit was pulled up and they removed the directional component, which allowed us to bring the GR down to 4m behind the bit. It also meant that we had to drill straight down, with no deviation, which is why we kept this section to the minimum.


Without any extra drilling, we could therefore get an extra 16m of data, which helped us work out a few answers and decide what total depth we wanted, based still on what data came in as we drilled. We were on the phone/email to Gilles and Alexey during all this, and used software called Petrel, which I had only used back in the office before. It really helped with correlating wells, to understand how similar this well was to the ones nearby, which helps to predict what might be coming in and what decision to make.

The Sperry Sun guys were very good at letting us take over their work unit (see above) during the final GR drilling and getting us the data as we needed it. The drillers listened and did what we needed, drilling slowly and carefully in the tricky bits. All in all good example of interdisciplinary teamwork at the wellsite :-) even though the mudloggers did go to lunch during the most important part of the driling...rig radio can be very entertaining ;-)

Mishka

Meanwhile Mishka has found the best place to sit in the caravan and is very happy.

Caravan move

A few days ago (how many??) we skidded the rig to drill a new well. To do this they had to move our work unit backwards and sideways. They didn't switch everything off this time, and we needed to work so they moved it with us inside, hanging on to the computer screens to keep them safe. Which is unfortunately why I couldn't take any photos of the bulldozer dragging us with toe-ropes! But it was quite fun-the roughneck in charge usually came running round to the door, shouted in "ready?" "DAVAI" we answered, and the bulldozer went for it.
They moved us quite a lot and as a result we ended up on a little slope, which apparently was not these people's business to fix.
It took 12 hours of lobbying for the toolpusher to send his men to sort it out (Sperry Sun had the same problem). During this time Sasha and I were going completely mad trying to work while rolling backwards-of course the computers were at the top of the slope...here is a little video of Sasha climbing up our work unit. And...my chair had wheels too!

Crazy cowboys

I am still on pad 16 with Sasha K, training him to make sure he can do everything on his own.

Night before last, the PTs asked us to check a CBL (full hole) log and just make sure the data is OK.

This job is usually done by a company called TPG, and last time I did this with Radik I found that the engineer knows his stuff but the methods are just mad. Last time they didn't tell us when to come and check the data, which meant we missed it-although how useful it might have been is questionable as they were several hundred metres out in their calibrations.

This job is not part of the drilling per se, but of the completion (what happens next), which is why we are doing it to help the PTs. After the wells are cemented, they are closed off while the cement dries. Some time later, they are re-opened and a crane is used as a pullie to allow the wireline cable and CBL tool to run into the hole. Here is a photo of me with the crane and the TPG logging truck.

Anyway, this time Sasha and I made sure they would be letting us know when to come and take a look, and as it was a night job, planned that Sasha should get up and check the status at about 3am. Not because I am being lazy! But I cannot communicate on that level in Russian.

So he did, and all was well till we both got up at 6 and went to check again...to find that they had got completely stuck in the hole because the operator had gone to sleep while running in with the tool!!! The cable had kept going in and become all tangled up around the winch on the truck.

Then the engineer asked Sasha not to tell anyone!! because they were waiting for a specialist from Tyumen...of course, Sasha called Pasha, who was none too impressed, and we also called Vitaly (PT in charge) and let things take their course.

Currently there are two TPG trucks here, one of whose cables doesn't work (truck 1) and the other with broken computer systems. They have linked them both up but there still seems to be a problem.

Unbelievable.

Time

I am thinking of starting a campaign group for more hours in the day.

I don't really have time to blog but I'm going to do it anyway!

I had a crazy time from Monday evening last week. The next 3 days have merged into one, involving only 12 hours' sleep between them. We drilled the special section and logged it.

After that, it seemed like everytime I wanted to finally collapse into bed someone phoned/emailed with something urgent to do.

Since then things have been crazy busy trying to finish the report for the well drilled before we arrived (we are now on the 50 000 000 th revision) as well as the one for the well we drilled last week and filling out the winlog for the current well being drilled. Every time we send in the final version of the report someone decides to change the procedure...argh.
More soon, just thought I would let you know I am still alive (just!).