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...