My Interesting Moment of the Week

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

Oil and natural gas simply do not rise out of the ground. Most times it is trapped in rock formations that have to be fractured with chemicals and high pressure. This "frac'ing" is what I do for Halliburton.

During the beginning of a job this week we were doing our regular prime-up/testing. To get our chemicals, sand and high pressure down-hole we use a series of trucks with massive Detroit Deisel engines that can push obscene amounts of pressure. The computers on board can be set to "kickout" if the PSI rises above a set level. Our standard operating PSI is 5000 with a 5500 PSI kickout. The pipes we use are rated to 10,000 PSI; albeit they are joined by hammering the wings together with 8 lbs. sledgehammers...so they're only worth what you "put" into them.

While pressuring up one of our new guys glazed over when his PSI shot up and didn't know what to do. Fortunately the supervisor in the control van saw the spike and--very calmly--got someone else to take the truck off-line.

The PSI had gone to 14,900.

Worse care scenarios:

A) we could have punched a hole past the formation we were frac'ing and hit something unexpected like a gas pocket. Ever see 6700 feet of iron come shooting out of the earth in 31 foot lengths hundreds of feet into the air only to rain down wherever they see fit?

I haven't.

Don't want to either.

B) the rigging could have come apart giving us the pressurized equivalent of a 100 foot pipe bomb.




So, how was your week?

[Chris_]

My week was a little better than that, though I missed on the PB numbers again. 

I guess there is a good reason why we typically promote the competent to positions of increased responsibility. Too bad that doesn't happen in corporate America, in fact, often it is quite the opposite.

So, did they decide the team needed some R&R, is that why you are online today? 

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

nah

I'm online b/c I have Guard Duty this weekend and if I went with the team this morning I'd miss first formation this evening.

[NHSparky]

Can't complain.  Had my intelligence insulted in a global warming thread because I'm "not safe" and that I didn't know the meaning of the word "average" according to lib logic.

Sitting on the edge, wondering whether we're going into refueling outage early because the NRC wants us to over some welds that have degraded worse than expected on other plants, namely around the pressurizer, etc.

And SB--yeah, I used to live in Farmington, NM.  Speak ill of Halliburton there and you're liable to get your ass kicked.  At least that's how it was back in the day.  At least the guys in the oil patch knew what side of their bread was buttered.  Haven't had a 50 percent excursion past rupture pressure on anything lately, tho.

Just a few electrical faults here and there...

[asdf2231]

Oil and natural gas simply do not rise out of the ground. Most times it is trapped in rock formations that have to be fractured with chemicals and high pressure. This "frac'ing" is what I do for Halliburton.

During the beginning of a job this week we were doing our regular prime-up/testing. To get our chemicals, sand and high pressure down-hole we use a series of trucks with massive Detroit Deisel engines that can push obscene amounts of pressure. The computers on board can be set to "kickout" if the PSI rises above a set level. Our standard operating PSI is 5000 with a 5500 PSI kickout. The pipes we use are rated to 10,000 PSI; albeit they are joined by hammering the wings together with 8 lbs. sledgehammers...so they're only worth what you "put" into them.

While pressuring up one of our new guys glazed over when his PSI shot up and didn't know what to do. Fortunately the supervisor in the control van saw the spike and--very calmly--got someone else to take the truck off-line.

The PSI had gone to 14,900.

Worse care scenarios:

A) we could have punched a hole past the formation we were frac'ing and hit something unexpected like a gas pocket. Ever see 6700 feet of iron come shooting out of the earth in 31 foot lengths hundreds of feet into the air only to rain down wherever they see fit?

I haven't.

Don't want to either.

B) the rigging could have come apart giving us the pressurized equivalent of a 100 foot pipe bomb.




So, how was your week?

I made cookies.

[DixieBelle]

I had a dear friend tell me that Al Gore is right and that we're going to need to "do some hard things" in the near future to "level the playing field". That made my PSI go up!