Page 6 University Daily Kansan, November 18, 1981
Inside
22
Roughnecks drill Kansas prairie in search of precious oil
from a distance it's a steel monument,
forgotten on an otherwise empty prairie.
Come closer and it hums and clinks and clinks as two men move in a choreographed harmony
The men, drillers, walk away from the derrick to near about the din of the diesel engine that power the drillers.
"Lots of people are fascinated by it," said Bob Angleton, a tall, oil-stained roughneck from Osawatomie. "Especially at night when we've got this rised with lights."
He said a lot of people drove by the rig north of Palaia to see what was going on.
Most of the time, though, it's just men and machine bound together in a search for the black cat.
Angleton still looks fascinated by the operation. He has worked as a roughneck for two of his 19 years. He has been on this crew for 10 months.
His bearded boss, Steve Orr, also of Osatawatie, is more at home around an oil derrick. Orr has worked as a driller for four years.
Bot men work for Mid-States Energy, an oil company based in Paula, about 60 miles from New York.
ON THIS DAY THEY are drilling for oil on the Tristan Ranch.
The men are worried. They started drilling on Thursday morning. By Friday afternoon they have gone more than 700 feet into the prairie with no good signs of oil.
The men return to the derrick and get ready to put another 22-foot pipe of pipe into the bored hole.
stop the steadily turning air drill, while
connect the drill of large pipe wrenches to
disconnect the drill.
He turn his back as 150 pounds of air pressure
increases within the well, leaving a
black mark in the skin.
Angleton hooks on a new joint and tightens the threaded pipe joint. Orr uses a hydraulic winch to slowly maneuver the pipe back into the hole.
"It takes about two years to really get the hang of it," it said. "A lot of guys think they want to work on an oil crew because they think it will be easy money.
"One of the first things they find out is that it is not easy. The second thing is that it is hard, dirty."
As Orr talks, black water gurgles out of a discharge pipe leading from the drilled hole. Orr explains it is the water used to flush dirt and gravel cuttings from the drill bit.
OR USES A LONG-HANDLED sieve to catch some of the cuttings that run from the drum into an adjoining he. He points out some hard, fragmented shale, but he doesn't see any signs of it.
"These cuttings tell you what you're drilling through," he said. "But you can smell oil when you hit it. And the water that is flushed from the hole turns real black."
A herd of Charolais cattle start to gather by the machine, which takes 4-6 foot turlr, turching machines in its posture.
Mid-States has many proven oil wells in the Paola area, but this one is in an untried area—a wildcat, John Littimore, the firm's chairman, said.
Lattimore and his son-in-law, John Novak, who is president of the company, have operated in Paola for seven years, since they moved from the oil lands of Texas.
"We felt there were some pretty good jobs," she said. "Someshilow production that other companies don't have."
The hundreds of slowly bobbing oil pumps that the landscape pay tribute to Lattimore's faith.
He said most of the wells were 650 to 750 feet deep and produced from 10 to 20 barrels of oil a day.
"The main thing is to keep everything running," he said, "we can take a hole, you can't afford it." He wore too many too few.
MOST OF THE OIL in eastern Kansas is found
to 2,000 feet beneath the surface, Lattimore area.
"That may not look like much oil when compare to them 70 barrels-a-day oil wells in Oklahoma, but the economy is forcing the move to shallow wells," he said.
These shallow wells spearhead the eastern Kansas oil boom of the past decade. In 1980 Kansas ranked eighth nationally in oil and gas production—a $2 billion boost to the state's
The oil wells in Oklahoma are 15,000 to 20,000 feet deep and cost between $5 million and $10 million.
Lattimore said his wells cost $7,500 to drill and about $45,000 to put into production.
Back at the oil derrick, the cloudy fall afternoon has turned wind and cold, but Orr and Angleton seem oblivious to it.
"I like working in the oil fields because it is hard," she said. "I can't picture myself indoors any more."
Angleton too savors his work
"When I got out of high school in 1978, I really didn't know what I wanted to do." he said. "I kind of bummed around awhile until I found work in the oil fields on a pulling crew."
Angleton explains that a pulling crew troubleshoots the drilling rigs and out when it goes.
AFTER HE GRADUATED from the pulling crew, Angleton came to Mid-States as a roughneck, the do-everything man around the oil fields.
"Sure the work is hard, but we get to move around, couple of days," he said. "The annoyance is good."
Angleton makes $6.50 an hour, but he gets time-and-a-half for overtime. During the summer when Mid-States uses two crews and drillers, block the men in a turn of lot-of-time, he said.
The company cuts back to one crew during the fall and winter, with each man working about 10
Angleton said a lot of his friends worked in the oil fields, but he doesn't see his future tied in the oil business.
"I can't see myself being 50 years old, screwing in these pipes," he said. "I'd like to go from here and maybe be a truck driver or own my own farm someday."
OT, though, seems content with his life as a driller. His home is only seven miles away, and he has a wife and 3-year-old daughter waiting for him at home.
"Working around here you don't find too much time for what you do in a social life." Or said as a joke: "If you're not in the office, you are."
"I do like to hunt and fish—that's what I call recreation."
Angleton moves into a van parked next to the derrick. He checks the geolograph, a small box with a sensing needle that shows just what time it was during the boring through and how many feet it has drilled.
"Hmmm, 757 feet," he said. "This will be already done than most of the oil-producing countries."
"I thought maybe you strangers might bring us some luck, but now I don't know."
THE MEN CONNECT a couple more joints of pipe and drill down to about 800 feet, but still no cracks.
"This well is dry." Orr conceded. "We haven't had a dary one in a long time."
“it’s fun when you hit oil,” Angleton said. “But when you've got it to pull these pipes out of a dry hole, then it's got it just plain work.”
"I guess we'll have to move over to another location tomorrow," the radio squawks.
The sun is already starting to hang low, so the men won't start drilling a new well until morpheus
They jump into the truck and drive down a bone-jarring pasture road.
The pickup turns onto the main county road. The derrick, silhouetted in the setting sun, waits for tomorrow, another well and another day for the rougehacks.
Photos by Earl Richardson Story by Joe Rebein
Being a roughneck means working hard, long hours and getting dirty. In above photo, Angleton reaches for a joint of pipe so the crew can continue its search for oil. Right, Steve Orr lifts up toward a tandem oil rig. Orr says the life of a driller can be a lonely job, but the first time you hit oil, you won't want to do anything else.