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.
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.
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!
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!
1 comment:
quelle couleur la boue ? à quand le permis temps sec ?
P& M
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