People ask me what we drill. I tell ’em, “Rocks and dirt.” When questioned about my expert geological terminology, I shrug and say, “If it’s hard, it’s rocks. If it’s soft, it’s dirt.”

We do see some interesting dirt and rocks. Drilling off the Aleutian Islands in the Bering Sea the volcanic history of the ocean floor flows across the shale shakers. Fish bones and seashells then abrasive lava and pumice then back to bones and seashells, layer after layer, alternating over and over hundreds of times, for thousands of feet. In the Gulf of Mexico, in what is called a continuous deposition basin, we’ve been known to hit cypress logs at surprising depths.

In the movie Hollywood made about the Deepwater Horizon, I hear they “played like” a dinosaur claw or tusk or whatever was circulated out of the hole. That’s a bunch of baloney. Though, I would be more inclined to believe that story than I would the one told to me about gold coming across the shakers. The specific gravity of gold is 19.3. In other words, gold weighs 8.33 pounds per gallon (weight of freshwater) X 19.3 = 160.7ppg.

Didn‘t happen.

An Indian man carrying a microscope arrived on my rig over in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia. I thought he was a doctor and he was: a rock doctor. His words, not mine. Paleontologist. I don’t think he could say it either. They look for the ’ocenes I call them—Pleistocene, Pliocene, Miocene, Oligocene, Eocene and Paleocene—and talk about nanoflora and nanofossils and throw around words like Catinaster and coalitus and discoaster and optima-optima and discuss stratigraphic tops and dips and on and on until it sounds they’re on the verge of the truly-obscene.

Our conversations are one-sided. I listen intently, nodding, lips pursed, doodling on a pad, and then when they’re done, I ask them to repeat everything they just said … in English.

 

I like to write. No. I love to write. I enjoy penning these blogs, but it seems like I struggle to stay current. Seems like yesterday when I posted the last one, but … My intent is to inform and cause others to wonder, to think about the why and how of the oilfield. Some times I stray from the subject, like after I watch the news and the many self-absorbed news complicators who are more likely to utter a four-letter word than the truth. Complicator is a new word I just invented, a noun: one who uses fifty words when three would suffice.

I’m always a wondering about people, about why they do what they do and what in the name of all-that’s-sensible were they thinking when they did it. Not the good things. I know where those come from. It’s the bad that causes me to pause, reflect and shake my head.

I try to refrain from making comments about other religions. Even after the fourteen years I spent in the Middle East, living as the infidel among the pious.

I recently heard a rumor about a British Airlines flight attendant who announced, “Ladies and gentlemen the captain has turned on the seatbelt sign indicating that we’ve begun our descent to land at King Fahad International Airport. Please raise your seatbacks and tray tables and set your watches back 2000 years.”

That caused a stir. She was detained, then booted from the kingdom, never to be allowed to enter again. When I heard about her comments, I thought Silly girl. You’re misinformed. 1500 years would have been far enough.

I still have the watch.

Have you ever looked at a globe or map that displays the forests and deserts of the world and wondered why the Middle East and North Africa is all desert?

Which country is surrounded by these Muslim nations?