Special Article: When The Lights Go Out

We are all aware of what comes at us when a rig loses power and also what it takes to get it back up and running but the less frequent it gets these days I think we should pass on our stories, after all stories are what makes us curious and interested.

I want to share one in particular when the lights went out on me.

Back in 1996 I was working as a Motorman on a Dreco slingshot rig for Nabors U.S.A out of Tyler, Texas. The rig was working for Marathon outside of College Station, natural gas multi laterals. I had been on this rig for 2 years and worked myself up from Floorhand to Motorman. The previous guy that was in the Motorman position was a good friend of mine that had decided to move on to greener pastures and I was bumped up to take his place.

I never minded working Motors, actually found it better when I could work inside the quiet of my own head and not in a group of people, everyone has their own opinion about things and at the time it was best for me to try and isolate my thoughts. After getting rigged up and drilling, seemed you could pass the days by working on pumps, painting and keeping all the gear running. It would be hard for me to say I enjoyed it but in its simplest form, I appreciated it.

This story happened during night tour, but my day to day routine was simple. While we were drilling, I would pack up my lunch from the crew trailer and head out around 17:00, drop by the Toolpusher’s shack to see if he needed anything taken care of after coming on tour, then I would head out to the generator house, chat with my relief. We always had the best handover, it lasted about 10 secs, long enough to say, “I had it, you got it, I’m out”, and he would be away about his walk to the crew trailer. I would check to make sure the engines was all synced up, run by each gen set to make sure that we weren’t blowing oil or fuel out of any of them and check the day tanks to make sure there was fuel readily available, dropped by the koomey unit to make sure it was all lined up and had hydraulic supply. I would then head up to the rig floor to catch up with the Driller.

Most of us had been together for some time, I had been the newest guy on the crew for years until my buddy quit and we brought on a new worm tong hand. Worm tong hand is a new guy that works the breakout tongs that are off driller side of the drawworks. This is the basic starting position for everyone that works on land rigs.

Matt was my Driller, he was from Laredo, Texas and at the top of his hard hat he was around 5’ and always had the biggest chew of tobacco in his mouth when he was talking to you. He was third generation on the brake, his Dad and Grandfather both rans rig until they couldn’t anymore, eventually both becoming Directional Drillers before they retired. Matt was also well on his way; he had already been a Directional Driller and came back to the rig when times slowed down.  Matt was fair, didn’t matter who you were you could always have a good laugh with him, and he appreciated a person that was worth his salt which is a common trait that most of us in this industry have.

After having a few words with Matt, I would cross the rig floor, go into the off side Driller’s doghouse, pass the Super Choke panel and step out onto the back porch. Normally around this time the sun is setting, I have mixed feelings about this part of the day… the sun setting is beautiful thing but during the summer months of July and August in Texas you couldn’t stand there and watch the sun go down, the heat would bake you but during the winter months there was always a cool breeze blowing across the back porch. Plus if you stood in one place long enough someone would be barking at you. I would look to my left and see the steam coming out of the mud pits and watching Danny run back and forth getting readings and measurements.

Danny was my Derrickhand, he was from Haynesville, Louisiana and just as country as a turnip, in fact I would even go a bit further and say he was as country as cornbread. You get the point… He had been working rigs for 10 years, he was ex Bayard and Driller Inc, he had been around the block a few times. Danny kept fresh planted vegetables in the back of his truck. If you have ever been overseas in a strange place, normally you don’t eat the vegetables, I thought the same thing about the back of Danny’s truck, it was a place I never imagined would have a bed of dirt, or fresh vegetables.

I stepped off the back porch and headed down the back stairs to the shakers, there would be steam coming out of the bell nipple and floating through the air across the mid-section of the stairs, I would just walk through it. Water based mud always gave off a specific smell when it was hot but you get used to the smells. Danny wore a set of safety glasses that had side shields, he always reminded me of Dexter from Dexter’s Laboratory on Cartoon Network.

We had been slow drilling for the last few days, making less than 6’ to 10’ an hour drilling in the chalk. I went passed the shakers and down the walkway across the top of the pits. Even during the summer months steam rolled out of the tops of the sand traps and instantly fogged your safety glasses, I would just slide them down a bit and look over them to see. Danny would appear out of the steam and he would immediately call me “worm”, although I had been promoted twice and been on the rig for a couple of years, he still called me worm, and once he said it he would smile from ear to ear because he knew he would get a reaction out of me. He didn’t stay with us in the crew trailer, he normally had a setup of his own somewhere, I never asked where, never wanted to know. We would catch up for a few minutes then I would be on my way.

We had been rigged up for a couple of weeks and all things were running alright, every now and then your typical swab would go, pump packing, and just doing your daily walk arounds checking on the gear. All seemed to be “Ticketyboo” as the old timers would call it, “Ticketyboo” is a British expression for everything is in good working order. There is some text about it being back from back in the 20’s while the British Army was in India about the term but for simplicity we will stay with this. Back in the 20’s… are we not in the 20’s again now… strange how time makes a full circle like that and we still use that term today.

For anyone that hasn’t worked on land rigs years ago, there seemed like no other paint code than “National – IE: Everything”. As you stay in this business longer you move on to different operations and much more complex paint specs but for this story we had 4 main colors, National Blue, National Gray, National Red and National Yellow. Blue was used on the mud pumps, mud pits, drawworks, driller’s shack, off driller’s shack, generator sheds, crew trailers, wind wall for the monkey board, pipe racks and when we wanted to get fancy with it, the sides of the suitcase. The suitcase was what all your service lines from your generators shacks ran through and went up to the rig floor via your grasshopper, the grasshopper was a cable tray that you assembled and handed off to the rig floor when you were rigging up. The suitcase and all of the decking except for the racking board on the rig floor were all painted gray. This rig design had the accumulator as a standalone unit at the end of the suitcase just in front of generator shed #3 and it was the only thing besides the BOPs that was red. The handrails, traveling block, kelly, crown cluster and top drive when we had it rigged up… yes, we picked up the top drive after the top hole sections because it was on rental and we laid it down at end of the well, were all painted yellow.

Now that you have the full paint scheme back to the story, I had just relieved Danny, he grabbed a sandwich out behind the mixing shed most of the days but today he headed over to his truck, let the tailgate down, hopped up on it and pulled out his pocket knife and was whittling on a piece of wood, Danny was a whittler…I fiddled about the mud pits, checking suction tank volumes and discharge tank volumes, check the mud weight a few times, I was always nervous relieving Danny as I knew how important this job was and had only pulled and run pipe for him, never had any formal training as far as mud systems go, yes, a bit uptight but weren’t we all at some stage?

Danny returned and I went about my business and mixed up a new gallon of National Blue and was planning on painting some of the suitcase sides and mudpump lines. As warm as it is in the Texas summer the dewpoint never really came around until the fall or the spring of each year, you could paint 24 hours most times of the year and it be setup the next day. This night was no exception.

I got stretched out on the ground next to the suitcase, the gallon of blue paint was sitting to my right and I was away painting away. As I was painting, with ear plugs in you could hear the drawworks squealing by as Matt would give her a bit of weight from time to time, mudpumps pumping along and the vibration coming through the actual suitcase into the paint brush each time I made a stoke with the it. All the sounds and feelings are normal, you get used to the smells and the sounds, second nature. It’s when one of these sounds change immediately is when things become exciting.

Matt hit the horn, it was time to make a hook, this means add another stand of drill pipe to the string to keep making more hole. I got up from the ground and looked up at the monkeyboard, Josh the lead tong hand had already gone up and got ready to pass Matt over another stick. I headed up to the floor. Patrick, the new worm tong hand, was checking his tongs out and getting ready. Matt was working the bit off bottom, normally pulled back up one single of drill pipe or 30’ then went back down to bottom. With a top drive on this was easy peasy, Matt would break out the top drive, hoist the top drive into the derrick, kick his elevators out and Josh would basically throw the pipe in there and walk away without even touching the elevators. Much the different when I started working the board but that’s another story. Matt got the new stand made up, he took the weight of the string and he got the pumps back on. He picked up the phone and called directional for a survey. I stopped in the Driller’s shack for a glass of water and headed back down the stairs. Just at the bottom of the stairs I could hear him working the string back to bottom.

I walked through the shadows of the substructure and resumed my position painting…

Suddenly I was covered by a blanket of black diesel smoke that had bellowed out of the exhaust of #2 as there was no wind that night, the cloud of smoke was like being in the middle of a burning building, #1 started drowning down and the lights begin to dim and then poof… in the dark we went. When a caterpillar 3512 starts taking too much load you can feel the compression in your chest if you are close to it and the sound was like a freight train coming to a grinding halt.

Total… dead… silence…

A million things immediately went through my mind, I had no flashlight on me but knew I needed to get to the generator shed ASAP. I could hear Matt hollering for me from the back porch of the rig floor as I bolted into the generator shed. There was an emergency light just to the left of the entrance, I felt around and grabbed it, cut it on and immediately went to the day tanks. Dragged the cover off #2 and it was bone dry. Danny came in right behind me, we had plenty of reserve air so we got #1 and #3 up and running in just a couple of seconds, #3 was a bit sluggish so I primed the injectors, got it idling, went inside the SCR house and threw it online. Got the power back on and we quickly recovered. You can imagine all 5’ of Matt standing there waiting, just made a connection, no power, bit on bottom, stuck pipe comes to mind immediately.

I checked the cable tags on the day tank pump #2 and went back to the SCR room to check and see if something was wrong with the breaker. Everything was in remote, looked fine so I continued looking for the suspect. Went around to where all the lines come in from the suitcase and fed into the SCR house, began tracking down the cable number. I heard the Toolpusher’s voice behind me

“Boy what the hell did you do?”

This was Donnie, one of the best guys I have ever had the pleasure of working with.

Donnie was from Winnsboro, Louisiana, a bit further north east from where I was originally from. I knew the place well, drove through there and stopped multiple times on the way to GA when I was working a previous job before joining the oilfield. Donnie was about 5’ 5” or so and he always had a set of daytime and nighttime coveralls. Kind of like badge of honor, the nighttime coveralls were sleeveless and probably close to 20 years old. They were Noble drilling coveralls, rig 641 had been a previous Noble rig and Nabors purchased 47 of the rigs from them in early ‘96. He had a white V-neck t shirt on under the sleeveless coveralls and a gold chain with a drill bit that hung around his neck 24/7. He also had a set of false teeth that he occasionally left out in moments of turmoil as he was headed out of the Toolpusher’s shack. He wore black wire rim glasses and would get straight into you at the drop of a hat once he got squared away and knew what the issue was.

Sweat was dripping off my nose

I said to him “Hell I don’t know Donnie, I’m trying to find out what the issue is now”

 “Good, Matt is off bottom, ain’t stuck”, he then started laughing

Donnie only laughed when things were funny to him, he wasn’t one of those nervous laughers, you know the kind of person that has to keep themselves entertained in the face of sheer defeat, he wasn’t that kind of guy.

I said “What is it?”

“You know how I found you?”

I said “Probably from the sweat trail I have been leaving behind me”

“No, turn around and look”

I stopped fiddling with the cables and turned around to see National Blue size 13 red wing footprints all over the National Gray suitcase. During the process of making my way from the ground position to the suitcase I stepped right into the bucket of National Blue paint and never checked up. I retraced each one of my steps, from the suitcase, flashlight, daytank, engine 3, SCR house, day tank pump 2, the footprints started to dim by the time I made it to the end of the SCR house where we were both currently standing.

He said “When you get finished finding out what was wrong with #2, paint this mess please”

I didn’t even answer him back, he turned and walked away, mullet in full swing behind him headed back to the house to finish his nap.

I eventually tracked down the issue, earlier that day my relief had brought #2 online, we had been running #1 and #3 for most of the well, to share some hours they took #3 offline and brought on #2. The day tank #2 pump had never been hooked up to the SCR house, we ran the day tank out of diesel and the pump never kicked back on to fill up the tank because it was never connected on rig up.

This is just a lesson, when rigging up make sure you function test all of your equipment, never take things for granted, keep a flashlight on you at all times, I carry one in my bag all over the world with me after that one event and for god sakes move the paint bucket out of the way before you head off into the wild National Blue yonder.

Written By Greg Williams

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Greg Williams is the Founder of Rig Lynx, an oil and gas social network where he works with bridging communication gaps and connecting people of the same craft every day.

You can contact Greg for other information about this article or just to have a chat by downloading Rig Lynx on your iOS or Android device and connecting with him today!

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