Tuesday, March 25, 2014

(Wireline 4) Schlumberger Trainee Engineer.

This was the start of a 15 year career with Schlumberger and another 20 years using the knowledge gained during that time. 35 years in the oil exploration and production business.

Chuck Evans was to train me for six months. I followed him like a dog. Rode many mile to wells. Sat beside him for hours while he ran logs. We spent hours discussing well log operation and interpretation. There were some 25 different log tools to study. The main tool was the resistivity logging tool. A resistivity log was run on almost every well. It was so dominant that the term log was understood to mean a resistivity log.

Chuck Evans is on my list of the top 100 favorite people in my life. A nice guy and a good teacher. He was to advance far in Schlumberger. To District Manager, to Division Manager,  and to Executive Vice President of Schlumberger Limited (the international company). He was really successful. He was just a good old boy in those days.

Chuck and I were both smokers. Chuck rolled his own from Bull Durham tobacco. He would often bum a taylor made from me. In self defense I started rolling my own also. I got pretty good at it. A couple years later I could roll a cigarette while I drove the car with my elbows. At 60 miles an hour that sounds dangerous to me. How stupid I was. You could by a 24 pack carton of Bull Durham for a little over a dollar.



A Schlumberger crew was an engineer and two truck driver/winch operator/riggers. We were dispatched to wells 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. The oil company usually called in a standby notice a day or two before the expected time that they needed us. A stand by notice was filled out with well name, directions to the well, logs required, hole size, etc. The tool pusher would call when ready and give us  a several hours  final call.

The crew would meet at the shop and make sure all the required tools were loaded, and away we would go. When I was hired in 1951 there eight logging trucks and crews in the Bakersfield district. There was an "up list". This was the list showing the crew that was first out. This was based on the order that the trucks came in from jobs.

It was busy. There were many drilling rigs in our area. 25 at Elk Hills, 20 in the Cuyama Valley for instance, and other rigs scattered all over. I have seen a time when all the trucks left for jobs over just several hours. A crew could return from a job and be fifth or sixth up and be dispatched before they could go home. Normally there were a day or two between jobs.

Oil fields all over the southern San Joaquin Valley.


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