Magoo in the Middle: September 2011

I've decided the oilfield is quite ridiculous in terms of its efficiency. For how fast things move, there's still a tremendous amount of down time as well. I was told to get my things prepared to go offshore for the first time a couple weeks ago, and when I got to our base near the port and the airport, we were told the job was cancelled. Back to Khobar. Shit, there's not room in the SUV because I wasn't booked for a return trip! So alas, I was stuck in a city called Khafji for a couple days awaiting orders. I was lucky enough to be booked into a nice hotel with super fast internet and comfortable beds. I then learned that the job was not cancelled, and that I needed to get all my offshore passes and laptop passes in order and take the boat on a 7 hour trip out to the middle of the Persian Gulf. Sadly, my helicopter experience would have to wait. However, I ended up going to a rig right on the shared maritime border of Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. There were even military cruisers patrolling the waters!

Anyway, I got about 4 hours of sleep on the boat and woke up to a beautiful sunrise on the Gulf. I sat outside and watched until the massive rig began to appear over the horizon. It was just like the ones I'd seen on tv, although not quite as huge as the one from Armageddon or Transocean's Horizon that blew up and sank in the Gulf of Mexico last year. As we pulled up to the rig, it still looked pretty intimidating. I saw they began to lower the small man-basket that they would use to pick me and my bags up from the boat and onto the platform. It was a really fun little ride because you actually stand on the lower rim and hold on from the outside of the netting, rather than on the inside. I got up to the deck and naturally the rig guys were giving me a hard time because they could tell I'd never done that before. That type of lifting is actually outlawed in a lot of places around the world, where the chopper is the only way to get to the rig, so I feel lucky that sometimes in Saudi, anything goes! After a quick safety meeting, I managed to walk around in circles trying to find my room and the mess hall. I met up with our supervisor and found out we would be stand-by because they needed to do some additional testing and flaring.

The accomodations on the rig were pretty nice. They had a small theater room with an HD big screen tv and LA-Z-Boys. They remarkably had wireless internet connection in the mess hall and the theater room. They had fresh fruit and bread everyday. Apparently they had a workout facility, but I swear I tore the place apart looking for it and came up empty. Being offshore felt a lot like a combination of cruise ship and aircraft carrier. I had to duck a couple times to get from room to room and every door is sealed, similar to submarines. They also had strict rules about photography, but I managed to sneak a few in with the Blackberry. After about a day, I got quite bored, considering once you've read all the news and facebook, there's just not a lot to do offshore if you're not working. I did cave to a newfound guilty pleasure of mine and actually watched the first Twilight movie. Ya, it was awesome, not gonna lie. Thank God after 3 days we finally got orders to rig down our equipment and head out. Unfortunately, the only way off the rig was via the boat and the first boat's cargo area was full, so the rest of the crew got on that first boat and left me behind with our equipment. So a day later, I loaded our equipment on the next boat and shipped out back to Khafji.

Since that first stint offshore, I've gone back to our rigless operations, where I've continued to learn and have also been forced to be more assertive everyday. The supervisors have given me more responsibilities and the expectations continue to grow every week. And most of it is really just coordinating all the crews, all the third-parties we use, and keeping in contact with our office and our client to update everyone on job progress. I found out that soon I'll be going back to where I spent most of my 'pre-school,' a place called Manifa where we have some of our biggest jobs. I know our first job is in a well 31,000 feet deep, which I'm told is the deepest that Coiled Tubing has been run. Ever. Should be a tremendous challenge, and hopefully I'll 'break out' as a stand-alone engineer there. Either way, I'll be sure to keep you all informed!

Ma'salama!