Hello there Steemers!
How is life? I have been a little absent lately, mainly as I was focusing on my motorcycle license. I passed the test yesterday, so I am now allowed to hit the streets as a biker, finally :) Now I will have to find a pair of wheels though...
I did had a little fall as well a couple of days ago, while exercising on the motorcycle doing an obstacle course, resulting in some pain in my shoulder, which doesn't allow me to get the right drawing spirit (nor is it comfortable).
So I wanted to share with you a little story about my past life, when I was still employed in the Oilfield. With this I want to shed a bit of light on how life is in the quest for Oil & Gas.
A little more about my role in this quest. My segment is called Well Testing, and as the name suggest, our role is to test experimental wells. An experimental well is a well which they drilled, and they have little to no information of the Reservoir (a pocket of Oil and/or Gas deep in the ground) which they perforated.
In particular, my role was to be in charge of my downhole tools, mainly hydraulic-operated tools which get lowered in the well, allowing the well to flow its contents to surface, contents which my surface colleagues at surface would separate, analyze and determine how big the Reservoir is and ultimately, how much it is worth in $.
I mainly did off-shore jobs, in Europe and Northern Africa, sitting for at least a month in the middle of the sea. But on a few occasions I did some jobs on land as well, and in this case I will talk about a job which I found myself in the middle of Siberia,in winter and in spring, jumping from -55 deg C to +35 deg C!
picture during a well test, in which the contents which are produced normally gets burned.
My first trip to Russia was in late 2013, after three flights which brought me in a town in the middle of Siberia , I was then shipped of by a sort of tank in the middle of the frozen swamps, far away from civilized life. The only regular habitants of this area are wolfs and bears, which I both seen there!
Me sitting on one of the monuments of the little town
our little taxi :)
On arrival of the well site I started with preparing my tools, and the job in general in pretty harsh conditions. The temperature was around -25 deg C with sunlight dropping to stunningly cold temperatures like -55deg C in the night.
At day time, with no wind and with the sun shining I will tell you that it doesn't even feel that cold, because it is so incredibly dry. So dry and cold that you could see the structure of snowflakes with the naked eye and that these snowflakes would just simply deposit itself on you and fall to the ground when you shake them away.
The accommodations were as harsh as the weather, our sleeping caravans being very small to contain 8 guys with all their stuff, food being every day the same with big shortages on fresh fruit and vegetables, NO SHOWERS on my first trip, forcing us to get permission to be transported to the nearest town once a week to have multiple showers, and finally,... the worst toilet I have ever seen!
a snowstorm just passing with the sun breaking through it
Sorry for this picture, but I cant find the words to describe this shithole (literally) !
Despite the conditions, I enjoyed my work very much, meeting a lot of good, hard working guys, and made some new friendships. My first stay was for 7 weeks, and boy can I tell you that I was very happy to go home,... Perhaps the best part of working in the Oilfield (if the job was a success,... otherwise you could expect some big time ass chewing from your boss).
They flew me out in a rush, not allowing me to do any sightseeing in Moscow, but for that I just had to wait the end of my second trip.
The second trip was in spring, and that was perhaps the nicest one I had. The weather was still very cold the first weeks, but in a matter of days it jumped from -35 deg C to around the 0 point, making it very difficult to evaluate how thick you had to be dressed. This time they provided us with showers, and the toilets were upgraded as well, giving less of a whole in the ground impression (even if that still was the reality)... Unfortunately no improvements with the food though, to which I am, being Italian, pretty sensible to :)
my office ... the rig floor.
me and my hard hat :))
When it was time for me to go back home, after another 7 weeks, I was lucky enough to have two nights and a full day in Moscow before my flight would hit the clouds. So I went on foot to the heart of Moscow, the Red Square!
Lenin his mausoleum
an occasional selfie
the KGB HQ
I went back another two times, one in summer, which perhaps was the worst, and another last time in the winter.
The summer was, as mentioned, perhaps the worst. As the well site was in the middle of the swamps, to my surprise the summer in Siberia is pretty warm, somewhere around +35deg C! This means that the swamps would completely melt down, forcing us to walk through ankle-deep mud (even if they tried with sand and other buffers to mitigate this problem on the wellsite) and then the real nightmare: billions upon billions of MOSQUITOS!!!
I brought along a bottle of mosquito repellant for HORSES and even that didn't really stand a chance against these hoards of buggers!
I hope you found it interesting, if you want to know more and perhaps see how life is offshore please leave a comment!
Grazie
Milo
