Posted on 12/26/2023 12:39:24 PM PST by Hojczyk
WILLISTON, North Dakota—In an eight-trailer mancamp tucked into a frosted fold of rolling prairie above an ice-laced lake, Chord Energy’s derrick hands, roughnecks, and roustabouts are ready for Christmas.
For them, it’ll be another Monday, another 12-hour shift, another day of drilling two miles deep and three miles wide below the 3-acre Patterson 806 rig, where fracked shale oil is siphoned into surface wells to the ceaseless cadence of pumpjacks—their mallet-nosed horse heads hammering air on snow-spotted slopes shared with grazing Black Angus cattle.
“I’ve been out here for the last four Thanksgivings, Christmases, and New Year’s,” said Dallas Moore, 38, a father of three from Casper, Wyoming, who on Dec. 21 was on day 32 of a 44-day stint at Patterson 806, about 15 miles east of Williston in North Dakota’s Bakken Play.
The Bakken rigs each employ around 150 with an average of 50 working directly on-site, according to the North Dakota Division of Oil & Gas.
While most of the 35,000 field and technical support professionals will enjoy Christmas at home, there is no holiday pause for the 15,000 rig hands, who will be manning wind-whipped derricks, ice-encrusted catwalks, and well platforms buried in snow drifts—although it was a mild fall—scattered across a dozen western North Dakota counties.
(Excerpt) Read more at theepochtimes.com ...
Pay is good but it is a tough life I know many who are in that line of work
I was in 1979-1980, but we didn’t have light 12 hour days, we had 18 hour days 6 days a week. Sounds like have gone soft in the work department. I will say this though, spend a year or so working on a rig and you will NEVER work hard again, because there is no comparison.
Remember, girls work 40 hours a week...
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Young man’s work. One I know worked as a roughneck for 5-6 years and banked enough cash to start his own business and get married after. He says it was like being in the military but with less danger and a lot more money.
My company paid me double overtime on holidays...excepy for Nabor’s, ( spit ) cheap bassturds
35 years in the oilfields..drilling rigs...production hoists..such a wonderful life i have led
I was “oilfield trash” for 18 years, see my tagline. I do not miss the drilling rigs. I dearly miss the people I worked with, some died. It is a young mans game. “Oilfield Trash” is what we would call each other in jest. An outsider was not allowed to call us that.
The oilfield went into a severe decline in 1983. I no longer had any marketable skills and went back to school again and became a pharmacist. March of 1980 the Alexander Kieland went down in a North Sea Storm. 113 good men went down with it. I knew some of them. I was on a different rig in the North Sea. That was a bad day, a very bad day.
Places I worked: Gulf of Mexico, Venezuela, English and Norwegian sectors North Sea, Ireland, Biscay Bay France, Egypt, Oman, Bolivia, and lastly Nigeria.
This old man misses the glory days, the money (about $1500 a day in todays money) the insane people we worked with, and we did party hard when we go to land. I miss it.
I survived the 1980 oil & gas down turn but many of my friends did not. I worked in the gas part of the oil field for a company called Arkansas Louisiana Gas Company, Arkla for short. I retired 6 years ago I miss the field but not all the new BS that comes with it. FR’s and crap like that. I was fine with 100% cotton but the FR took it to far hot as hell...lol
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