Summer is gone, temperatures are dropping, and we can reset the thermostat. Before you know it, the temperatures will drop to a tolerable level. There are no more hot weather conditions causing heat issues. Now is the time to prepare for winter. Remember that proper planning prevents poor performance. That also applies to safety. It […]
Do Safety Guys Ever Really Retire (or do they just fade away)?
Welcome! Let me start off by saying that the title is just a rhetorical question. If you ask any safety person, they may say they have retired. Then if you do a small job around the house with them you will experience the fact that they do not retire. In that sense, they’re like the […]
Water and Its Ways
For decades oil and gas producers had a great luxury—they could cheaply dispose of produced water in saltwater disposal wells (SWDs) near the production wells. But the old saying about going to the well once too often is becoming more and more real in the SWD space, necessitating some big changes, with potentially much higher […]
Lamentations of a Safety Professional
Greetings and salutations! We will be talking about the internal woes of most safety professionals at some point in their career. For those unaware of the story of my introduction as a safety professional in the oilfield, I will give you a brief background. Some may retort, “If you are in safety, you are not […]
The Luck of a Safety Guy!
Some of the most commonly heard phrases in the oilfield when describing accidents are references to some sort of luck. Luck is defined as success or failure, apparently brought by chance rather than through one’s own actions. Regardless, whether it is good luck or bad luck (or, as some claim, it may be “no luck […]
Survivor Guilt?
As I have alluded to before, I’ve seen and heard of some horrible accidents. I’ve delivered death messages and even experienced one delivered to myself and my family. Such traumatic moments summon to mind related terms—PTSD, often associated with military action, being one of these. Unfortunately we, in our industry, encounter this issue more frequently […]
Value the Rules of Safety
Welcome again to the wonderful world of safety. I noticed everyone immediately went first of all to the table of contents to look up this month’s page number for “Safety”—said no one ever, except another safety person. That’s okay. We are used to it, no umbrage taken. If you ask the general public, “Why do […]
Props to our Industry!
The idea of “props,” as expressed in the headline, is not a reference to proppant—something much utilized in our industry—though proppant is indeed necessary and could even qualify as something “current,” No, the reference here is to the indomitable spirit of our industry—a spirit that deserve props, or accolades. For a wide span of years […]
Voting: Now is the Time
It is indeed nice to write for this publication, in the sense of being able to have literary freedom in terms of discussing safety. While the government continues in its overreach to control everything, safety included, we still fortunately have freedom of speech. Our freedom of speech can be seen as a parallel to the […]
Too Much, Too Fast?
“Go to the ant,” suggested King Solomon, because even without a company man, the ant “stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.” Retired veteran oilman Mike Shellman admits that he is a contrarian when it comes to how fast and hard to push production from new wells. And he avoids shale […]
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