Domodedovo airport

I am now sitting in the BA lounge @ Domodedovo. It is quite modern,, with a small food and drink area, large windows, a nice computer area and a shower. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a corner with relaxing chairs where I might sit back and have a snooze...

Yesterday, Radik, Sasha and I left pad 5 after lunch and drove down to base camp, which takes about 2 hours. Yet again, the weather was amazing and it was lovely driving along the main road to base, soaking up the sun and the views of the forest.

When we arrived we went to the main SSFT unit, where the Team Leader and Lead Geo sit-it was lovely to see Sergey again, if a little surreal, as the environment we had last seen each other in was pretty much the exact opposite!

After a little while, Stijn, my B2B, showed up and I had a little chat with him to bring him up to speed. He will be working with Sergey Ryzhkov on pad 5 at the beginning so he's in good hands.

After a bit more chatting, Sasha and I headed for the bus. Radik had had to leave with Vlada-the-TA because someone had forgotten to buy him a train ticket... We met him at Salym train station and waited together in the waiting-room, which was another interesting experience. There was only one other woman there, wearing stilletos and a long fur coat. Everyone else was male, with a fur hat, a dark jacket, a rugged face and was very quiet. The train was delayed so we had to wait (in silence) a further 30 minutes. The ticket booth was a small slot in the wall-very soviet. Mind you, I expect the ticket lady had her own personal heater and was happy about the lack of gaps in her booth-it was bitterly cold outside; still about -30 but windy.

The train was announced and everyone traipsed outside. Now I had been warned this part was going to be dicey, but again it is rather hard to imagine beforehand. First we waited to see which way the train was arriving, and on which tracks. Some people were standing in between 2 tracks, ready to hop over depending on where the train came in.

The point is that the trains stops for about 1 1/2 minutes in Salym, although it has been known to stay only 40 seconds, with people still jumping on as it moved off...

When we saw the train we had to start running as we were too far down the platform; you are supposed to get on in your carriage and they check tickets as you climb in. The platform wasn't lit past the waiting-room so we had to gallop along (luckily one of the boys was carrying my suitcase) in the dark, trying to work out which carriage we were looking at.
Somehow or other we got on the train in time, although in the wrong carriage, but Sasha explained and we only got a mild telling-off by the train lady (a friendly character).

Gasping for breath (yes, a month of chocolate and cake abuse has not helped) we dumped our bags in our compartment and made our way to the restaurant, where we stayed for the 4 hours.
I quite like Russian trains, because they give a feeling of occasion. You are given a pillow, a mattress and sheets when you arrive in the compartment and they bring round food for dinner (which we gave the 2 men who were sharing our compartment). The restaurant is a proper "old-school" one, with benches, tables, nice tablecloths and a proper waitress. The trains are very high off the ground, too, which makes them difficult to get into (did I mention we had to climb into them from the tracks, not the platform?) but fun to ride in.

We left Radik in Surgut, where he lives, and took the minibus to the hotel, where we went for a drink-a bizarre experience of drinking Newcastle Brown in a random Siberian hotel full of oil men. After which I went to bed, as the minibus to the airport was going to be leaving at 6 am.

Getting up this morning was rather painful due to the cumulative sleep deprivation but things went smoothly. The business class experience in Russia is excellent-they really make things easy for you, and in Surgut airport especially. I only worked this out once I had reached the businees lounge after a bit of a confused tour of the airport but in fact you can just walk into the airport and go straight to the business lounge, where they will take your passport and ticket stub and sort out your check-in and your bags for you! After which, you are taken in a special minibus to the plane, accompanied by a very polite stewardess.

The flight was uneventful; I did get rather excited as we flew out of Surgut as I could see an amazing example of a meandering river system unfold below me, but even that could not keep me awake for too long and I slept most of the way, except during breakfast (which was offered to me in Russian and for which I must proudly say, I made informed choices all in Rusian :-)

Once at Domodedovo airport, I phoned Alexey to see if he could meet up in Moscow but I couldn't reach him. I decided against going into town on my own, without preparation or a map, as I felt too tired to enjoy the experience. So I sat down in a corner and read.
I was provided with pre-flight entertainement for a while when the builders on the floor appeared to have drilled through some water pipes. Water started pouring down from the ceiling, just far enough away for me to see but not get wet. It was rather amusing to watch various men wearing an arrray of security passes turn up, stare, start talking animatedely down the phone, disappear for a while then come back to comment on how someone else was dealing with the situation. The bag-wrapping man nearby seemed to be especially skilled in the arm-waving department and even tried to start ordering the cleaners about. Finally a female supervisor arrived and the situation was under control within 5 minutes.

I am looking forward to a good sleep on the plane as I am feeling rather wooly-headed right now and have to keep fighting the urge to curl up in a corner to sleep. Could I be jet-lagged already? And why is it that I always feel it more going West than going East, unlike everyone else?

Click!

Last week, my language neurones finally clicked into place.
I started speaking a lot more Russian, and a couple of people independently complimented me on my pronunciation/accent :-)

I put this down to 2 factors:

- I have finally managed to do what I was planning to do for the last 6 months, which was to go through my Russian lessons from the start-ie good old revision. I have been through most of the book that Galina, our teacher, made. It is all quite basic but it relly helped me to start making sentences
-A mud engineer called Ivan knocked on my door one evening for some geo-information; he mentioned that him and Matt (Brettle) used to practise conversation, so I suggested we do the same. Which is what we have been doing, and it also helps because he has been speaking slowly to me

Petroservices found out that we were doing this practice and decided to teach me more Russian too. Unfortunately they always speak too fast, and when I ask them to repeat they repeat the easy word slowly and the bit I didn't get really fast! But it's been fun.

I need to write more now too. Like this message for Galina:

галя, спаснбо за письмо. мне очень приятно. приятно посмотреть зто кино!

Leaving today

I'm off today after lunch...
The last few days have been busy. After the Russian company did the CBL, the drillers cleaned the hole out, which was supposed to finish at 4am. Schlumberger were supposed to arrive in the evening, so that everyone could get some rest before logging at 4 am. I slept in the work unit so they could let me know when they arrived...what an awful night. I woke up every hour, everytime getting a little more worried about what might have happened-had the lorry fallen off the road? I got up at 5 as I couldn't sleep anymore, and after sorting out the daily geological report, traipsed bleary-eyed along to the DSV. The second he saw me, he said "you must be wondering what happened to Schlumberger" (to be read with a strong Texan accent).
Turns out their lorry broke down twice, and they had to wait for a replacement to come out from basecamp, which takes hours. The drivers were really tired and went to sleep. So they all only turned up at 11:30, which luckily for them was just in time as the drillers here had been a bit delayed.
After all that, the logging job actually went fine, although they lost communication with the logging tool for 15 minutes and had to shut down all the power in the logging unit.
The engineer was a different one again, Fabio from Brazil, and he was also very friendly and helpful. Everytime I do a logging job with these guys I feel I have learnt a lot.
It took a while to get the results through because of SLB logistics issues so I only got to bed at 1 am...yesterday I got up really early again to interpret the log data. I caught a couple of hours' sleep in the afternoon and again went to bed at 1am. This morning up at 6am...with the surprise of another Russian log in the next well, which I hadn't planned for. However, I am all packed and ready to go, and all the work is finished.
Exhausted but happy!

People

I realise I have been bandying names around and it must all be getting a little confusing. Normally, there are 4 geologists doing their 28 days, then 4 more as their back-to-backs (B2B). Recently though there have been quite a few changes, with one Lead Geologist moving to a different office and a wellsite geologist leaving. So the one leaving had to be replaced, and Alexey Zolotarev replaced the Lead Geologist. Furthermore, Sergey had child, but it was premature and he had to go home to look after his wife and the baby so that messed up the shifts.

So here goes:

Geologists:
Sasha-B2B-Vasily
Sergey-B2B-Slava
Radik-B2B-Maxim
Florence-B2B-Stijn

Technicians:
Andrey-B2B-Vavan/Valodyia/a million other short names-why are there so many for Vladimir?
Sasha-B2B-vacant

Lead Geos:
Alexey-B2B-Sergey (both my friends from G180)

Team Leaders:
Gilles-B2B-CJ

-28 Deg C

Another record temperature this morning!

After waiting around for the reservoir for almost 3 days -delayed due to varying problems- we finally reached it at 1:30am yesterday morning. We had to stop again at 3:50am due to what is called a wash-out. Basically this is when a stand of drill pipes has a hole in it and the mud being pumped down escapes through the hole. This causes the pressure to drop under the hole and is problem that needs to be fixed immediately.

The new DSV, Slava, who arrived on Wednesday, has been very helpful and friendly. His daughter lives in Wales and he is very fluent in English-albeit with a really strong Deep South accent!! I had been warned of this but the Russian/Texan blend is rather difficult to imagine beforehand...he left Russia in 1992 and worked in the US for 9 years and the cap permanently screwed to his head really gives the game away ;-). Listening to him talk is just hilarious and a lot of the Russkis seem to find it very amusing too. Anyway, he knows I like to see how everything works and gave me a couple of photos of a broken pipe which caused a wash-out, which you can see here.

This well is a bit of an epic. Although in areas like the Caspian, wells can take a year and a half to drill, because of problems like high amounts of H2S and high pressures, wells here take an average of 10 days, with a record last week of 7.2 days. However, we are now on day 13 and still going.
The reservoir section followed the overall pattern of going wrong; when we finally reached the part where I needed samples, the mudloggers' computer stopped working properly. The problem was that the computer stopped showing the lag time, which is the time between when the drill bit reaches a depth, and when cuttings from that depth actually reach surface. Vavan had to keep trying to work it out himself, when he wasn't running to and fro the shale shakers.

So with a useless computer, an unhappy technician and no sleep at 4 am, I can't say I was too thrilled to hear about the wash-out, which made us loose 3 important samples. After describing all the samples so far, I went to sleep for an hour or so while Vavan kept an eye on operations. When I got up to do the morning report, he went to bed. I walked over to wake him up 3 hours later, came back and waited. Nothing. Phoned him on the mobile CB/phone. Waited again. Now anyone who knows me might realise that my natural impatience tends to be exacerbated when tired...so I marched over to the caravan and after 5 mins of loud banging on his door managed to wake him up again. He made it in the nick of time.

When we reached a certain formation, I had to make sure that the total depth of the well was still going to be the same-this can change because of the angle of the well. This is one of the more important responsibilites we have, simply because of the costs and mess involved if we get it wrong (too much=overspend on drilling; not enough=miss the bottom of the oil!) I had to do this for the first time at 3:30am, and luckily it was fine.

The rest of the day I spent inputing all the information gathered into Winlog and sending it on to various people. I went to bed at 9 happy in the knowledge that the CBL logging run planned for 3am was now going to be at 9am :-)

I have now just finished that; it involves logging the cemented section of the well, and is done by a Russian company as it is quite a basic op and they are a lot cheaper than SLB. Here is a picture of the lorry/unit-you can't see the wireline yet (cable they hook the tools onto) as it is lying on the decking but when taut it goes in a line from the back of their unit to about halfway up the rig. This is the same set-up as with SLB.

At midnight I will be doing a standard PEX run with SLB...good thing I got some sleep last night!

Russian music and films

I have been listening to a bit of Russian music courtesy of my Russian friends here, especially Vavan-the-technician, who actually studied music. He plays the piano and the accordion, so we have a lot to talk about...he has given me some of the music he plays and I showed him my accordion online.

The other day we watched a James-Bond type film, Russian style, called Chasing the Piranha. I actually enjoyed it a lot and understood quite a bit, with translation for the more complex bits provided by Vavan. I would say I understood about 50% on my own, which probably doesn't say much for the script ;-)

The music in it is pretty good, there is a traditional Siberian music track which is used in the film and which has been remixed as the main soundtrack (track 1). The Siberian music is really strange and gets some getting used to, but I am now fully hooked.

Temperature update

here's a little update to my original graph-as you can see it's almost winter here...

I would love a Thermocron BTW Sarah, if there is still one going...nicer than my little Excel-job here.

On that topic-come all the way to Siberia and still can't escape the dreaded spreadies!

Snow :-)

After a whole week of beautiful clear skies it is now snowing again. Over the last few days I had noticed that the snow had actually worn off the ground, rather than turned into slippery ice., just as if it were dust. Interesting effect. Here is a photo of what my work unit looks like on a day like today-mine is the white one with the stripes/SPD logo; the white&blue one is Petroservices, and anything red is Halliburton/Sperry Sun

On Wednesday afternoon, about an hour after responding to UR's post about safety glasses, I went to learn to catch samples at the shale-shaker. For this, you need your full safety kit-luckily I managed to fit the glasses over mine, although going into the building was a bit of a problem due to double-steaming-up. Unfortunately I do not have any photos of me catching the samples as the camera's battery decided to give in just then.

As I was all kitted out safely I decided to go take a look at the drill floor while they were actually drilling, which was rather fun. They just clipped on another piece of drill pipe when I was there, and then started drilling-really interesting to see the pipe going down into the hole! The motor is very high up towards the top of the rig as this is top-down drilling, and slides down as it drills.

I recognised the driller from the canteen and he seemed pretty pleased that I wanted to see how it all worked. Later at dinner-time, I also noticed friendl(ier) body language from the drilling table!

Tractors

Last night I went over to pad 26 with Radik, as they were going to log an 80 degree well (this is really high angle-normally 45-50 degrees) and for that they were going to use a tool called a tractor. Now these things usually have wheels but this one had little legs, which effectively crawl along the hole! Here is a close-up of the "legs".

There were loads of people at the site and it turned into a bit of a driller-paparazzi moment where everyone there was competing for the best pic to send back to the poor people at base who weren't lucky enough to witness this momentous event.




We brought Sasha some cakes and biscuits from Deutag canteen-he got very excited, I don't think the SSK kitchens are treating him so well...

It was a reunion of sorts as we have all been stuck on our rigs this week on our own with Vavan the technician bouncing around in the only car that works (more or less). So we took some pics before the cameras froze up and refused to work:
















and a final one of me being freezing after spending 1/2 hour @ -24 Deg C looking at what, effectively, is a metal rod with a few quirky bits stuck on:

Boots again

So there you have it. They are really heavy and I have had to practise walking in them but I still like them-the perfect solution to my permanently cold feet. Although the ladies on camp seem to think I am wearing men's shoes (all in Russian of course but that's what I think I gathered!)

The point being??

Here is a picture I took through the window; they were washing out the casing just outside my caravan:

Moonboots

I have acquired a pair of moonboots :-)




They are very large and very warm and I look like a driller-except for the fact that I don't wear overalls, and the boots are shiny clean.




Anyway, they will protect my feet better than the "cute" little brown boots which are not much use below -25. Now it's just like sticking your feet into two pillows :-)




So I decided to nip outside to take some photos of me wearing them while it was still light. I am rather cold now as I ended up walking around talking loads of pics...except of myself. So next time for the boots. But here are some more of the wellsite and surroundings. The trees show what surrounds us...everywhere.











Glad this came out...the kind of lovely things
I see every day at sunset/sunrise
(assuming the sun shows itself)











Ooh and I couldn't resist the romantic
rig pic...

Milton Friedman RIP

I have only just caught up with some articles and emails and found out that Milton Friedman died on Thursday.
His books have been an inspiration...and his ideas certainly have made a huge difference in this world.
Check out this link...
And read this book!

Small world

Something I forgot to mention about Sergey-the-geologist.
We were talking about where we are from etc and he started typing the name of his town into the computer to show me a webcam of it. When he had got to "Sara" I exclaimed "Not Saratov?!"
He was rather surprised! Of course then I told him when I had been there and why...and guess what...he did his thesis with my contact at the geo institute, Yuri Pisarenko! On the Pricaspian!

So he will pass on my best regards to Pisarenko and we had planned to take a photo of the geos from pad 26 to show him but that'll have to be some other time.

Note to self: remember to be blase about these situations-happens all the time, etc etc ;-)

-26 Deg C

That's it, I have gone past my record of -23 Deg C

I have been finding out a few rules about this kind of cold:

1. Do not think that because you are not feeling cold halfway to the work unit, that it is OK to stop and start looking at the rig
2. Always keep your mouth closed and breathe through your nose
3. When hiding your face in the top of your coat, do not breathe out through your mouth as the steam on your glasses will instantly freeze
4. Do not eat chillies as they make your nose run with freezing consequences
5. Do not forget to put your gloves on before going outside, especially when holding a piece of cake for later, and
6. Wearing 2 pairs of socks does not look weird, even if the outer ones have little pockets on them

Apart from that the scenery is beautiful as the pine trees are frosty and look amazing in the pink sunrise. There are no clouds in the sky which is lovely but somehow it gets colder during the day?!

Happy Birthday Florian!

Hope the winter barbecue goes well...hope you have the clear skies I have - but maybe not the temperature...

Temperature

It is -19 Deg outside and I needed to talk about this.
So now I have.
Brrrrrrrr!
When I got up this morning it was cooler than usual in my room. When I went outside I was glad for the gloves that I have finally remembered to start wearing, and felt the cold through my 2 trouser layers. When I went into the canteen and my work unit I could feel the cold radiating (does cold radiate???) off my jacket and hardhat. My eyes started stinging a little and I was wondering why my cheeks were feeling so cold -was it the light wind?- when I noticed that the Russians were wearing under-hats that covered the sides of their faces. So then I checked the thermometer.

K5

Yesterday was my first day on my own, back here on pad 5. We are currently drilling the last conductor section. Of course, everything went wrong in the morning: no DSV report (his computer had crashed), no mudlogger computer (crashed), the deviation data was OK but the mudlog data was wrong and it messed up my Winlog-and I thought it was me. To cut a long story short, I got the report out at 11 instead of 9. In the meantime it emerged that there has been a problem since about 7am, when we lost circulation. This is the process whereby “mud”is pumped down while drilling and bits of drilled rock come back up. They tried to restart it but it didn’t work, so they are trying to pull the bit out of the hole, which is difficult without circulation-they are getting stuck on the formations on the way up and are having to pull really hard.

That is still the status at the moment, where we are progressing by about 20m every 3 hours (and there I was getting used to really fast drilling speeds…) so I have made sure all my stuff is up-to-date and I have some free time now (strange concept!).
I can tell that all my inboxes are going to be really well organised after today…and I can do some Russian too JThis respite has given me a chance to “chat”with the mudloggers (they only speak Russian-I am getting very good at this nonverbal communication thing ;-) and with the Sperry Sun guys, as well as the DSV when he is not running around pulling out handfuls of hair. All good for when we finally get to the reservoir sections ahead-there are 4 coming up, let’s see how many we can do in 2 weeks!

Here are a couple of pics of the canteen:

All-night logging

I drove back to K26 at 9.30 in atrocious weather conditions (it had started snowing and my wipers still didn’t work-visibilty: 2m. It took me 1 hour to do 13 km. I almost turned back after 10mins but decided not to as a) I don’t like to give up and b) I couldn’t see the edges of the road to do a 3-point turn. The worst was really when the wind blew all the powder snow onto my windscreen…)
This was to be a PEX and also XPT job so it was Marc’s crew again. PEX was fast with no problems, XPT was shorter (only 10 pressure points instead of 30) and we were better organised than last time, thanks to Gilles’ feedback last time and Sergey’s presence. Sergey and Sasha were pretty tired as they hadn’t been able to catch a nap but I was feeling fine and again really enjoyed going up to the drill floor to look at the tool.
It was quite a long night but busy and I managed to stay awake fine-unlike Sergey who at one stage was falling asleep whilst reading out values for me to type up ;-)

This time I had some Petit Ecolier biscuits with me so I gave some to Marc, who got rather excited (SLB tend to eat smash out of a plastic pot) and also to Pierre the DSV (another Frenchie-haven’t seen so many for ages!)

When we got back to the unit at the end of the job, tired but happy, we switched on the kettle…and then the phone rang. This is never a good sign, because it is usually Alexey, instructing. But this time it was Gilles and he was really annoyed! Apparently we hadn’t sent all the data we should have (but we hadn’t been told) and he was worried the decision to finish the job had been taken too early. At the time we were rather annoyed, tired and did not understand the problem. Having slept on it though, a $35,000 job really does need to be done properly and there had been some miscommunication along the way. Anyway, Tuesday morning was pretty awful as we were scrambling to input more data, convert units, make excel charts-you can imagine what that was like with no sleep. Marc joined us for a cuppa and ended up spending 2 hours in excel and some time on the phone to Gilles trying to calm him down.

Finally the spreadie was sent and we went to CPF for Sasha’s licence (yes, still) and when we got back I gathered all my stuff and drove back to pad 5, with Sergey next to me and Sasha behind, as Sergey wanted to make sure I stayed awake (as his eyelids drooped…) while driving.
I thought I would read till dinner then sleep but I had a nap for an hour before dinner, ate then went straight back to bed, and really had to make myself get up in the morning for breakfast! I then read a bit (my first chance to relax) had a shower etc.

At this stage I lost my car, because Sasha the technician was going off shift and needed a lift to pad 7 and his B2B (back-to-back)’s car was broken so they took mine. After lunch Sergey and Sahsa picked me up and we went down to base camp as it was Sergey’s end-of-shift. Apparently he had stayed up till 2am typing up a handover that got lost due to computer crash-I can just imagine. In short, Sergey was more than ready to go home!
We caught up with Gilles, fed back on the day before, which was useful now that some of us had slept! I am now working with Alexey to make sure some of his instructions are clearer.

K7 to K26

Back here with Radik we waited for the reservoir section to be drilled, took and described cuttings (I’m starting to be a pro at this ;-) then waited for SLB to arrive-I went to bed at 8 and Radik picked me up at 12.30am! We did a standard PEX job, with a different crew; the engineer is a Russian girl, Irina, and is definitely less friendly and communicative than Marc. She has had attitude problems and warnings before, but she was OK with us.

We finished the job around 7 am and Radik went to bed (he hadn’t had time to sleep the night before) while I had a sleep in the work unit waiting for SLB results-never mind the beeping batteries and mudloggers computer, I was out like a light! At lunch I woke up Radik and we signed off the logging job. We then went to the CPF and Sergey and Sasha kidnapped me ;-)
The next day I started working with them in pad 26, as it was Sergey’s last few days and he wanted to make sure Sash and I new all the basics. We had a fun few days-Sergey sat me down and made me learn my Russian vocab, and I taught him some English back (although his was quite good already). We went through the motions-reservoir section was planned overnight but actually was delayed due to wash-outs in the drillpipe (this is when a piece of the formation comes off the edges of the hole). So I went to bed at 7pm with the CB and my mobile switched on, ready to go when they called me, and woke up at 7am! (although I kept dreaming I heard the phone ring) Again, we did cuttings etc then I went back that afternoon to get some sleep-I got about 3 hours before they phoned me to say SLB had arrived.
Here is a photo I found on the computer of someone taking a sample from the shale shaker (the technicians do it for us):

Long time no post

Sorry about that- I have been rushed off my feet, and then there was no network for about 15 hours. But now I have time to kill so here is a bit of an update. I will recap to when we left pad 54/rig1, if I can remember that is! Time is a rather alien concept at the moment-I only know the date thanks to our daily reports but I have no idea of what time of the day it is or what day of the week!

Moving to pad 5

After we left pad 54, we went by the CPF to try and get driving licences and give back bedding and towels from 54. We then went on to pad 5 (which is a Deutag-operated rig; 2 of the rigs are Deutag (German Co.) and 2 are SSK (Russian CO.) and met up with Sergey Ryzhkov, an experienced and very friendly geologist, who was going crazy trying to manage 3 wells at once.
We settled into the caravan where someone had made the bed! (there were dirty sheets when we arrived in 54, and we had to drive all the way to the CPF to get some clean ones). This bed has a proper quilt cover that fits! And for the dievushka (that’s me) there’s even a matching set of sheet, pillowcase and quilt cover. The second nice surprise was that the caravan had been cleaned and has been every day since. We also had water in there-me happy!
We then went for dinner, and this is when I realised that the stodge I had been eating at 54 really was not nice. Here the meals are very nice, and you can help yourself to salads (real ones, with vegetables an’ everyfink, out of large salad bowl, not just a desert-spoonful in a little plastic container), fruit and pastries. The only thing the Deutag rigs don’t have is a “shop”in the canteen so basically chocolate and biscuits are rare currency.
Which is why it’s a good idea to be friends with the Sperry Sun guys (drillers). (They gave me 5 bars of chocolate yesterday!! But I digress).
Anyway, Sergey allocated jobs to us-it appears that all the rigs were drilling production (reservoir) sections at the same time. So I was assigned to work on pad 7, which is pretty close to pad 5, with Radik. Radik was supposed to be in K54 but the well has had problems. The casing, which is the metal shaft they put down the well so that it doesn’t fall in (after we have done logging), got stuck and they couldn’t get it out. Since then they have had to detonate something down there to break it off so they could pull it back out and go down and try to clean out what was left. The hole is totally messed up though so they are having to sidetrack now, which is basically going down part of the existing hole and drilling out sideways trying to go through the same formations. What a mess.