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: