The truTv show Black Gold details real life experiences of roughnecks on a West Texas oil rig. The safety on the rig is far from what most rig owners would tolerate, including having a camera crew on the rig floor. The constant bickering amongst the crew is a safety hazard in itself and the lack of help to "break out" a worm (new guy) is far from typical. The crew's constant partying before a work day is not a typical occurrence as it is dangerous enough to work the rig floor stone sober, let alone hung over.
While I believe the series is highly tilted and edited for drama by the TV producers, it does give a representation of life in "the oil patch." For me, it brings back many memories of when I was working my way through school as a student at Eastern Illinois University. I roughnecked on rigs in southern Illinois and south central Indiana for a couple of summers. In fact, I credit those days as a roughneck as being the key to my career in the investment business. Let me explain.
I was expected to pay the bulk of my way through college, either through work or getting scholarships. I was also working through a rotator cuff injury, but wanted to play professional baseball and school was not the most important thing in my life, at the time. The scholarship portion was easy coming out of high school, but much harder as I settled into college life. In those days I went from a serious high school student to a not-so-serious college student and getting additional scholarships became difficult. Thus, work became the more important part of my funding operation and pay in the oil patch was good compared to other alternatives I had at the time.
As there is on Black Gold, hazing was part of my indoctrination on the rig. In particular, being a "college boy" the crew knew I would be leaving for school after the summer. Consequently, I was a bigger target. Working "morning tower," from 11 PM to 7 AM, I was given all the jobs that meant staying awake all night while others were allowed to catch a catnap on slow shifts. One evening, the driller told me I could catch a nap, so I eagerly laid down on a hard metal bench in the doghouse (the place used to change clothes, store personal belongings, etc). Sound asleep, the next thing I knew someone yelled it was time to "make a trip." I jumped up and was immediately pulled back and slammed into metal as the crew had tied my pants to the ceiling and wall with wire. Another time, I was told to look behind me where I saw a rag someone had slipped in my pants and set on fire. Such is life for a worm! Anyone who went through a college fraternity initiation hazing knows a bit about those things.
"Throwing chain" (see picture) is part of what the floorhand does when "tripping pipe" i.e. wrapping a chain in a series of loops around the bottom pipe, attaching a new pipe, throwing the chain from the bottom pipe to the new top pipe while the driller uses the drillworks to pull the chain. That causes the new pipe to act like a spool and connects them. You have to keep the correct tension on the chain after you "throw" it so it can be drawn back by the driller to screw the pipes together. If you are holding the chain too loose or too tight, it can be dangerous both for the person throwing and the person working the tongs that are used to do the final tightening. If you have a driller who is in a hurry, you run the risk of having the chain jerked, which could pull you with it.
My epiphany moment came when I was throwing chain for a driller who was more concerned with time, or "making hole," than safety. When the driller jerked the chain, my glove came off with it and was ensnared between the chain and pipe. Fortunately, my fingers stayed intact, but I thought some of them were gone. Talk about career planning motivation! As I was counting the digits on my hands, I realized that if my baseball career was over (which it basically was), I wanted to "sit on my behind for a living!" I realized that I had gotten what I needed--the motivation to use my brain, instead of my body, in life.
In other words, as EIU President Bill Perry reminded me over the weekend, The Rolling Stones sang, "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, well you might just find, that you get what you need."
Today, because of the many fingers and hands lost over the years, OSHA rules have replaced throwing chain on most rigs with a mechanical spinning device called a Kelly spinner to do the work, although Black Gold's Big Dog 28 still uses the chain. Who knows, had the Kelly spinner been used back in 1969, I might be working on a rig today instead of writing a business blog! Of course, as time played out, maybe the real epiphany should have been that I would be better off trying to own the rig versus working on it.
Have you had an epiphany moment about your career?
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