Monday, February 20, 2006

I Hate Working Days


One more day shift to go. Getting up at 3:30 AM just kills me. You're suppose to go to bed at 3:30, not get up. Today was suppose to be a holiday so nobody would bother me, but the foreman was around because we had to have a well crew in to finish a job from last week.

NewsMax has a story on what happened to the WMD's that didn't exist here.

Gonna be hard staying up to watch 24 tonight, Missed last week when the kid canceled my VCR recording so he could watch something (emotionions ran high for a bit), so like everything else I've got to try to catch up.

And continue to support our ally Denmark.

6 comments:

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ said...

What's going on in down town L.A? See:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ooze21feb21,0,5594636.story?coll=la-home-headlines

I've heard of "secondary recovery" but St. James Oil Co. will be in big trouble if the Wilshire district disappears:o)
How many stripper wells are now producing in downtown and what gravity is the crude 9+-?

former oil man
calrefugee@gmail.com

SoCalOilMan said...

We haven't completely tracked down what's happened. We'll be logging the suspected well over the next couple of days to see what's going on down there.

Of course the media has got 3/4 of the facts wrong, but that's never stoppped them before. It's seems to be only formation water and adobe mud coming up, no oil.

As for the old stripper wells in the downtown area, I was Field Supervisor and then Operations Manager for the old Manley Oil Co. We were bought out about 7 years ago and the new owners ran us dry financially, so all the wells were just abandonded or shut down.

The old wells were around 19 gavity and the site I work now is 38 gavity

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ said...

Wow, 38 gravity is great crude. Who is currently buying it? In my later years in the Wilmington/Torrance fields I sold a lot of crude for $3.50/bbl. I also abandoned lots of wells in the Torrance field that could produce 3-4 barrels/day. They were marginal in 1963 but could be operated now except for the enviro nazis. I worked for CONOCO when they brought in a well on the MGM lot in Culver City in 1959. It came in at 200bbl/day but petered out fast for lack of gas. Is that field still producing? I always take media stuff with copious amounts of salt.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

SoCalOilMan said...

My old company was like a middle man. We owned ten wells and had twenty or so customers that owned from one well to 8 wells. The field average per well was 2 BPD.

We would handle tank gauging, maintenance, transport of oil to our separation facility, clean the oil to a water cut of less than 3% and arrange the trucking to the old Unocal (now Conoco) Wilmington facility. We did this for a percent of the production.

When the market collapsed, we'd get $6/bbl. and it would be rough, but the old owners had been in oil for 100 years and had a good war chest to get through the lows.

Under the people that bought us, all profit went to support the bosses and to "temporarily fund" some project on another side of the company, so we were always broke.

The company imploded about 2 months before this price explosion.

As for the marginal wells in the city, we create work for the rig crew we have (Pool-now Nabors), because there is such demand if we let them go, we may not get them back for needed work for months. The price is more than high enough to pay the reg fees and such that a 2 bbl/day well can do $40K a year, so there is money in restarting.

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ said...

Glad to hear there is an up side to the recent through-the-roof crude price. My family at one time (1960) had two pulling units working and I operated one for a while before the raghead crude drove prices through the cellar. I was able to get through college by pumping a string of wells for independent owners but finally had to seek honest employment with the L.A. County Sheriff's Dept. I don't miss those wet stripping jobs with the 9 gravity crude running down the crack of by butt. Good luck! By the way, as I graduated from Cal State Long Beach (1964) as a devoute marxist and now am "just to the right of Atilla the Hun" we seem to have made the same political journey.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

SoCalOilMan said...

Even with the high oil prices, I'm thinking about getting out of the People Republic of Kalifornia. The laws and regs just keep getting more restrictive so even at these prices it won't pay. One little mistake and you're gone.

I'm seriously thinking of moving to Texas. At least with their oil history, I figure it's got another 10 to 15 years to get to the level here and by that time I'll be ready to retire.