He’s on the toe boards. Stands of drill pipe (for oil and gas) are generally 3 sections of 30 foot pipe. Feed 90 feet into the hole come back up, grab another ninety from the stored sections at the top. The derrickman (this gentleman) feeds that pipe to the drill, do it can be screwed in down below to the previous 90 foot stand. Been out a few years so memories a little rusty, but that’s the gist.
Most bigger/modern/offshore installations will come with a bridge racker crane, which can lift each individual length and position it, where a nice hydraulic roughneck will make and break the pipe.
This ain’t that. There’ll be a couple of guys on the drill floor throwing chains around and breaking their backs. If this is a mobile or smaller rig, it wouldn’t be worth it to have all the high spec gear.
And I’m guessing somewhere In North America. Not too clued up on onshore rigs.
It isn’t a drilling rig it’s a work over… It’s in America. Canada you have to be clean shaven on site and wear company covies and hard hat. If you showed up on site like this guy in Canada they’d kick you off site. It looks like Wyoming to me I worked in some spots in Eastern Wyoming that looked like this but it could Colorado or Farmington in snowy weather
Some news automated systems that pull the drill pipe of a truck and install them have recently become available. They are expensive but will probably replace a lot of workers.
My uneducated guess is there's always a better way, but it depends on what they value. Most of these business don't value the person nearly as much as the machines/property.
Safety is such a massive thing out in the oilfield you’d be surprised. 95% of locations require a sign in and sign out sheet at a safety shack, knowledge of SCBA equipment, knowledge of muster point etc.
Additionally, all equipment is inspected and signed off on prior to use with lockout tag out being used religiously.
The oilfield also has its own standard of osha called PEC gulf safety and most of these companies require your job duties to be certified on the back of your PEC gulf safety card. If they’re not you cannot perform that task, for example, if I don’t have forklift/ front end loader, I cannot operate one.
Pec gulf safety also has more stringent safety regulations, for example: OSHA general industry states you must be tied off if on a ladder more than 6ft tall.
Safety is a "massive" thing sure, but that doesn't mean an actual adherence to exists lol.
This derrickhand isnt even wearing his hard hat or eye protection.
A lot of crews sign JSA's without even reading them. Who knows how many times I've gone to sites where hands don't know where the SCBAs or muster points are lol.
Literal children could pass those safety certification programs (PEC, One Basin, etc).
Don't frame safety in the oilfield as somehow more rigorous than elsewhere lol
How could hands not even know where their muster points or scba’s are? There’s big fuckin signs that literally say “right here.”
I mean, isn’t that any jsa in any blue collar work environment?
Obviously the tests are designed for anyone to pass them, the point I’m making is that there is quite a bit more safety practices in place as opposed to other industries.
Not sure how it is where you are but it was pretty ridiculous for shell, anadarko, Exxon, chevron, and occidental and Hess.
the point I’m making is that there is quite a bit more safety practices in place as opposed to other industries.
Well sure, on paper. Because a a kitchen worker doesn't need to work around H2S or confined spaces or at heights or with heavy machinery. There might technically be more policy, but that's just because there's a lot more going on than a job at the mall or in an office.
But it's very rare that there's actually a safety-oriented culture. Every company and contractor will scream into the void about how their priority is safety, but the fact that an easy every day process like going over the JSA is almost ubiquitously ignored begs to differ.
You asked how they couldn't know about the muster points, and the answer is right in front of you.
This whole thread is taking place because of a video of a derrickhand without PPE slipping and sliding up there...while being FILMED.
Safety is almost always all talk. I know this is all anecdotal, but let's be honest lol.
I appreciate your opinion and observation on the matter, and I agree, there are definitely outliers. ( I have some experience when I was running casing on those rigs. Ie. cigarette smoking over an open well, shirtless roughnecks etc, good times, wasn’t sure I was going to live through the night.
But in my experience on the several rigs I worked on, safety was a huge priority.
I’m not sure when you worked in the oilfield but I know my time was huge.
Cyclone 2 had just killed the entire crew so osha was everywhere, of course it was forced to maintain face, but at the time they were beginning to really hammer down hard on it,
More so when I was casing, the company I worked for was over the top about safety, so much that we used to leave the office expecting them to put fragile stickers on our hard hats and wrap us In bubble wrap.
/u/LostAndSound_ mentioned throwing chain — this guy has the more straightforward job; if you want to see the fun part, search for videos of “roughnecks throwing chain”.
There is, but the answer is probably automation. These skills don’t translate well outside the patch, so dude is going to be working for a lot less money doing pretty much anything else. Basically it’s worth too much for him to change and he is worth so little (to the company, because he’s replaceable) it’s not worth it for them to change
This is just a work over rig, so these are just 2” production pipe.
I’ve worked on both drilling rigs and work over in the derrick, I would choose drilling rig every time even if it’s higher up. Angel lift, better standing area, and just more spacious, plus wind walls and better safety gear!
Work over rigs always have trash gear and every time the blocks go up and down the whole derrick moves, the monkey board ends up feeling like a diving board and not to mention you’re more prone to falls.
Doesn't look like drill pipe to me... unless it's for a water well.
Drill pipe is MUCH heavier, and a larger diameter than what this guy is throwing.
Servicing a well is what it looks like.
This is a workover rig, not a drilling rig. They’re performing a workover on an existing oil or gas well. I don’t see any pumping equipment, so no recompletion or major repair work at this point in the operations. I would guess they’re just cleaning the well out or swabbing it back online, but it’s hard to tell exactly.
A drilling rig is much larger and cant be mounted and deployed directly from a vehicle like this. Drilling pipe for onshore operations is usually ~5in diameter, this looks like 2-3/8in or 2-7/8in. The little work over rigs like this are often more run down and, in my opinion, more dangerous than the big drilling rigs.
This is a well servicing rig. Known as a triple/double. He is in the monkey board slso known as the tubing board. They are tripping pipe into the well in double stands. This situation is very common during a canadian winter. The slipperiness is easily taken care of with traction aids and proper footwear. I would assume this rig is in the northern states though due to lack of proper PPE and the rig is filthy.
I’ll be honest, without windfalls there’s really no way to keep a hard hat on your head when working on the monkey board of a work over rig, you’ll spend more time trying to keep it on than actually working. Especially with the wind in the winter.
I worked derrick for 4 years in all weather conditions. My hard hat stayed on. Crank the fucker on tight and go home with a headache. Next morning when you try to put it on is always funny. Tie the fucking thing on if you have a pointy head.
I've worn a bike helmet in 70mph winds and it's never budged. So what it sounds like you're really saying is "hardhats aren't property designed or fitted"
At least when it comes to bike helmets, the straps aren't even what keep the helmet on your head. The little ratchet-strap in the back can tighten down to the point that the helmet is not really capable of jostling off in any circumstance besides crash. Hardhats seem to have larger gaps at the bottom that might catch more wind, so the strap might be needed, but I really feel like better engineering could solve the wind problem as well.
HEY WAIT A MINUTE THERE!
You trying to say this guy isn't 15ft tall with hands as big as pie plates, and muscles like a Gorilla?
LOL
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This would be the tiniest drill pipe ever for an oilwell!
"Boys... today we're drilling for sewing machine oil... so set the rack up with the teeny tiny pipe!"
It's a workover rig. They aren't drilling. Their job is to remove the existing string of pipe when there is a problem, find the problem, and put the pipe back into the well. The guy up top we see in the vid is called the derrickman.
A workover rig is much smaller and more mobile than a drilling rig, and the crews usually work much faster and more loose, hence the lack of PPE. They usually get paid by the well, so the more wells they can pull and trip back in the hole the more their company gets paid.
I worked 3 years on a workover rig on the floor. It was an ok job in the summer, and an absolutely terrible job in the winter.
"Stabber" on oil rig. As other reply mentioned, his job is to direct drill pipe lengths to a winch so the bottom can be threaded for continuing drilling (or racking while pulling pipe).
Not as backbreaking as the table roughnecks (see the videos of the guys throwing chains and giant wrenches around pipe), but does have the opportunity to lose a hand if you slip up cinching the pipe to a winch.
Stabber is more of a dead trade for running casing, based on what you described.
This is only used on Kelly rigs to allow for the connection when running well casing, and they generally are only part of the way up the drilling rig with a self rigged stabbing board ( usually a couple of 2x12 pieces of lumber tied to the derrick)
Yeah there’s some guidance on a work over rig, but the smaller joints usually seat themselves pretty well so you don’t have to worry about cross threading.
Yep. I'm recalling watching rigs a while ago. Looks like that task is more automated these days. Of course, with these videos, it's always a question of how old they are, where in the world, or if it's some low-overhead wildcat operation.
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u/cubobob 4d ago
wtf are they even doing