No more looking at paper maps or driving long distances to check wells. No longer does someone have to guess what is going on down the hole or manually determine what each phase of a well costs. In this advanced age of technology, energy companies cannot operate efficiently (or at all) without the latest advances […]
Pipe Dreams
As production increases in the Permian Basin, there is a second-stage challenge to the push to ensure success in the crude oil boom in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico: takeaway capacity. Producers need to get their crude oil to refiners at the highest possible price with the least expensive transportation costs. Tulsa-based Magellan […]
Major Revival
Oil booms. There was one in the 1950s and another in the late 1970s. People flocked to the towns in West Texas and southeast New Mexico. Companies were started and large ones expanded. Schools, housing, shopping all grew. People worked hard, played hard, and spent a lot of money. These were followed by that […]
Veteran Players
This great nation of ours celebrates Veterans Day this month. On Monday the 12th, federal employees will have a day off from work in recognition of this occasion. (The “legal,” traditional date is the 11th, a Sunday this year.) Whether we are relieved of work or not on that day, we all ought be relieved, […]
Fishing: An Industry, and an Art
The business of “fishing” a well bore requires skill, technology—both new and tried-and-true—and a mechanical aptitude as well. Like everything else, this trade keeps changing, too. Fish: Anything left in a wellbore. Fishing: To attempt to retrieve a fish from a wellbore. The Oilfield Glossary compiled by Schlumberger explains a complicated industry process in a […]
Heat Wave
OSHA-mandated flame retardant clothing (FRC) is an apparel trend that hasn’t caught fire—not among the hands who must wear it even during scorching summertime heat—but help is on the way. Take a typical summer day in West Texas when the thermometer hits a high of 100 degrees (and sometimes higher) and where shade trees are […]
Making Music in the Mud Biz
Not Yet Through Mud is his metier. Music is his mainstay. Ken Goldsmith, mud dawg that he is, takes Mudsmith Ltd. into melodic new waters. Welcome to the world of Ken-isms, “green initiatives,” customer service, and “floating slabs.” It’s all here… in Mudland. Well, the song’s for you if you’re not yet through at […]
Quietly Making Noise
Down that Blue Highway by Jesse Mullins It’s a “three calendar” cafe here in Snyder, this place on 25th called Dee’s, where oilfield hands are getting an early lunch, where a guy can have chorizo-and-potato burritos and wash them down with a Sidral Mundet. And no, that’s not hooch—that’s a bottled soft drink. Snyder. Hometown […]
Pull! ~ Clay Shoot Pit Challenge
They Came Out Smoking It was Napoleon who said that “an army travels on its stomach.” If the army that descended on Windwalker Farms ever were pressed into duty on the field of battle, not only would it be formidable—with 300 under arms, and a high incidence of marksmen—but it’d be well-fed, too, with a […]
The Booming Business of Worker Accommodations
Living Large, Temporary Style It goes by a number of names: temporary housing, workforce housing, “man camps,” lodges, worker accommodations—but by whatever name, these developments are making an impact in the Permian, as they have in all booming oil and gas plays. ODESSA—It’s quiet here in the dining hall of Goliath Industries’ pristine, barely completed […]
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