prune picker

This is the blog of a prune picker. (Native born Californian) Retired oilfield. I am an old man. I blog a lot about my body and getting old. As I approach death life gets more interesting. More interesting is not good. I still drive. I attend sports, music, and civic events. I am writing my memoirs. I attend swim class three times a week. Some of my blogs might be interesting. A lot of my blogs are silly and trivial. None are very long.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

(Wireline 6) Graduate. I am a FJE or Field Junior Engineer.

When a trainee completed training some time around six months, he would be given an exam. The exams were oral. You stood in front of a blackboard and answered questions orally and with sketches. If you passed you were ranked as a Field Junior Engineer and started running logs. After another year or two you were given another exam. This exam was for qualification as a Field General Engineer. This exam was given in Houston. The exam took all day for you and three examiners. A typical question might require 30 minutes or more of talking to answer. The examiners would sit and listen you out. It was impressive. You had better know logging and log interpretation.

I remember flying home to California after taking the Field General exam. I was amazed that the President of the United States Schlumberger was on the plane. He sat in the next seat to me all the way home. His name was W G Gillingham. He was an Englishman with a jolly accent. He was a rotund man, balding. A nice guy. After he heard that I had just taken the Field General exam he asked me if I had passed. Occasionally someone would flunk the test and be sent home to study some more. I was so glad that I could tell him that I had passed the exam.

In June of 1951 Jacque Gallois appointed me the Engineer for Truck 321. On June 15, 1951 I ran my first log and earned my first bonus. Below is a print of a portion of that log. It was a standard Electrical Log with continuous readings for formation resistivity and a bore hole measurement called the SP (spontaneous potential). The log was on a Standard oil Company of California well drilled in the Tejon Hills oilfield.






2 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing. Being an oil field chap, waiting for the rest of your story.

    ReplyDelete

!-- Site Meter -->