Weekday
The weekly feature page of the University Daily Kansan
May 3,1978
The drone of Steele Griffie A-1 rig disturbs the peaceful silence of the gentle rolling hills of northeastern Kansas as its diesel engine chugs at a monotonous pace in the quest of the rich black crude.
HAVENVILLE—The call goes out that the kelly is down. Half-eaten sandwiches are stuffed into faces; hardthats are slapped on heads; and the roughnecks go to work.
The roughnecks are the workers on a wildcat oil drilling derrick in northeastern Kansas, and the kelly is the main drilling machine that must be raised every time the well goes 30 feet deeper.
the drilling is stopped. The roughneck bullies a heavy cast iron clamp on one side of the pipe connection, then wraps a log chain around the other side of the connection. A bridge engine jerks the chain and the connection.
The kelly, which is hosted by cables from the top of the 96-foot derrick, is then swung over and connected to a new section of pipe waiting in a storage pit called the derrick. The water is raised up the derrick until the pipe connections match.
The clamps are reapplied to the swinging pipe, the engine is the own into reverse and the chain screws the
Manhandling a heavy cast iron stamp. Gary Polzin makes a section change that sends the drill deeper into the metal.
connection tight. A big hose is reopened and forces water under 800 pounds of pressure down the pipes and the drilling begins again.
The four-man crew, called a tourer, can pull a kelly and change the pipe in minutes. This leaves the rough-neck time for other activities, such as eating, talking or horseplay.
in no sepia.
He was tiring and monotonous, doing the same thing over and over again," Hurdy Sopack, a
career journalist, wrote in 1963.
Sopoci and Chuck Chism, Junior Leech and driller Gary Pugh work an eight-hour shift that starts at 7 a.m. other two crews run the drilling throughout the afternoon and night. The oil well operates 24 hours a day.
The roughnecks work for the B and N Drilling Co. of Great Bend, which dose the drilling for City Services.
There are also other maintenance jobs that occupy the roundnecks' time between the kelly pulldings.
One of those jobs is adding minerals to the water that is nummed down the drilling shaft.
Another job is collecting samples from the drill cutting out of the ground. The mud is dried on a propane stove and put in small canvas bags for inspection.
The roughnecks also check the well and pump motors, monitoring the various gauges that show how much pressure is being applied to the bit and how fast the drilling is going.
However, when everything seems to be going smoothly and the kelly is not ready to be changed, the action centers on the dooghe. The dooghe is a standpoint on a semitransposed to the drilling platform.
One end of the doghouse looks like a toolshold. Wrenches and screwdrivers are hanging on the wall and a small table charts the well's progress. A machine marks each foot of the well and the drilling time.
On the other end of the doghouse are a refrigerator, coffee pot, water cooler and benches on which the roughnecks relax. Here the crew sits munching potato chips and eating mostly, mostly about cars, citizens band radios and women.
"a roughneck wouldn't bullshit you none," Chissum said, "no more than he could get away with."
Besides the roughnecks, several other people are connected with the drilling of the oil well. One of these
A log chain is wrapped around one side of the connection. One quick jerk completes a crucial operation of the section change.
Collins watches over the drilling operation, checks cutting samples and ensures that the company's wells are wals' 2% to the water.
Collins said this well is more of a wilful well than accurate; it is being drilled so far from any existing well.
"This well has got about as good a chance of hitting as any wildcat," Collins said, "but there usually only one out of ten chances of hitting oil on a wildcat anyway."
Collins said the Nemaha county area had been探险 for oil drilling during World War II but that there was not enough profit to take the risk on drilling oil. However, current price of oil makes the risk worth
City Service has mapped out other wells in the area around the well it is drilling now, but Collins said the company would wait to see whether this well had oil before starting new wells.
A consulting geologist is employed to check whether oil and other minerals are being uncovered.
of other materials are used.
Gary Shaffer, geologist at the well, said he mainly
checked the cutting samples in a microscope to see
whether oil was present.
"You can't get much sleep on this job because you want to know what's going on down there all the time," she said.
Shaffer said.
The only way for a geologist to tell whether the well actually has hit oil was to take a core sampling, Shaffer said.
Getting a core sample requires the roughnecks to pull the entire pipe from the well and stand sections of
pipe in racks 60 feet high on the derrick. The smashing bit is removed and replaces by a diamond-edge hollow bit to get a sample. This operation takes about $2^{1/2}$ hours.
The geologist then examines the core sampling to see whether it contains oil.
If oil is beneath the surface, the roughnecks look for another well to drill. If no oil is found, then the dull roar of the diesel engines continue to break the quiet of the rolling wheatland.
The roughnecks continue to change the kelly and to search for the black crude.
The "doghouse" for the rig provides dry shelter for driver Gary Pugh, Pugh, along with the other roughnecks, eight eight-hour shifts, 7 days a week.
Story by Dirck Steimel
Photos by Eli Reichman