Retrospective

This month for the benefit of our new readers over the past 15 years or so, to refresh the memories of older fans, and for a selfish reason, this month's column will be devoted to some favorite "instructive" stuff from years past. Hope you enjoy.

DHAs, The ultra-prestigious Dryhole Awards, commemorating memorable oilfield screwups we've noted over the years, were the brainchild of that notable Cajun oilfield hand and storyteller, Beauregard Uribe Laviolette LeBleu (Bull for short) of Cocodrie, Louisiana, and Paris, France. Bull got the idea for his first award back in November 1980, when a BIG U.S. oil company drilled a well into a South Louisiana salt dome and filled a salt mine therein with the entire liquid contents of one Lake Peigneur thereout, plus 10 alligators, nine muskrats, eight nutrias, seven cargo barges and two drilling rigs. No partridges in pear trees were reportedly involved. Other features of the incident included a blowout, a 40-acre crater, a very unhappy salt company that had people operating the mine (the fastest miners on earth) when the bit came through the ceiling, and two very surprised rig crews. Bull contends to this day that this DHA will be hard to top, ever. However, the following one comes close.

This one went to none other than the navy of the then Federal Republic of Germany. Its submarine S 176 got entangled with the lines of a semi-submersible "flotel" and then managed to get stuck 100 ft below the surface in the structure of an adjacent giant offshore platform in the Norwegian North Sea. After banging around for an hour or so, the sub extricated itself with no apparent serious damage to anybody or anything. The collision did scare the unshirted hell out of some 300 workers on the platform who thought all the shaking, rattling and rolling was caused by an earthquake, and promptly evacuated (the platform, we think). The effect on the 22-man sub crew was not recorded, but after being towed to port for inspection, none would reportedly re-enter the vessel until somebody cleaned it up.

Plainly put. This missive that a driller or toolpusher (we don't know which, except he must have had firing/hiring stroke) was left on a Forest Blackstock Drilling Co. rig working in West Texas back in 1956. It's a classic communication even if we did doctor the punch word a bit:

Despite a minor problem with spelling, you'll note that his message is brief, to the point and leaves absolutely no doubt in the minds of the recipients that they sure as hell had better follow his instructions.

Wonderful, indeed. The following is a reproduction of a handwritten mud report a driller on a company steam rig left for Magnolia Petroleum Co. engineer John Lowe, back in 1948.

Joe's not any relation we know of, but he could have done a pretty good job writing this page with his sharp pencil.

Timing. At a serious beer-drinking conclave of oilfield types a while back, a friend told of his grandpa's experience in drilling booms and busts of the '20s and '30s amazingly caused by ups and downs in oil prices. According to grandpa, timing was the key to making money under these uncertain conditions--"You have to get there right after the first wagonload of prostitutes gets to town (grandpa used a stronger term, but we didn't want to shock anybody), and out before the first load of sucker rods shows up." If only we'd listened...

Nobody's perfect. An avid oilpatch reader sent us the following by author unknown. It's an apt description of the political population inside the Beltway.

"Each one of us is a mixture of good and some perhaps not-so-good qualities. In considering our fellow man, we should remember his good qualities, and realize that his faults only prove he is, after all, a human being. We should refrain from making harsh judgements of a person just because he happens to be a dirty, rotten, no-good, SOB."

Timely story. LePoint, a French news magazine on the order of Time, Newsweek, etc., came up what must be the best headline ever written for an article on the world oil situation some 17 years ago and now. And one doesn't even have to be fluent in French to get the full impact of the message. The headline was "Petrole: l'overdose."

Attention getter. The accompanying illustration (touched up) is of an engraved marble memorial that appears on the wall of the second floor of an Oklahoma courthouse. Before everybody gets upset, excited, discombobulated or thinks Billy Jeff Clinton is involved somehow, we should carefully point out that poor Mr. Morton apparently passed away while the courthouse was under construction. At least, that's the story we got.

MBA. That's somebody who vigorously devotes 125% of his/her time to fixing something that ain't broke.

School story. Teacher to 4th grade class: "Boys and girls, today we are going to tell each other about our families. Albert T, what does your father do? He's a politician. He goes to work late and comes home early and makes a whole lot of money. Libby? He's a drilling contractor. He gets very dirty and hasn't made much money lately. George W? My father plays the piano in a house of ill repute and we're poor." Whereupon the teacher went on to other subjects, asking George W. to see her after class. Later: "George W., I know your father and he's an executive, dresses well and is in the oil business. Why'd you say he was a piano player etc.?" George W.: "I just didn't want anybody to know he worked for the Texaco."

Smart roughneck. Mr. Orville D. Chase in California sent us this story from back in the 1930s when he was working on a rig in Torrance field. "We had just gotten out of the hole and this weevil on the crew (Frenchy) picked up the sledgehammer. It slipped out of his hands and went down the hole. Charlie, the superintendent, was standing there by the driller and went out of his mind with anger, raving and screaming like a mashed cat. Old Frenchy said `Hell, Charlie, if it means that much to you, I'll buy you another one.' Needless to say, we all broke up. Charlie lost his mad, and Frenchy got to keep his job." They were both probably surprised.

Bragging rights. Long ago, one of our English friends sent us this old story about Winston Churchill that we thought worth repeating.

It seems that upon entering the Commons washroom one day, Churchill deliberately went to the opposite end of the urinal from Labor Party leader Clement Attlee, who asked. "Feeling a bit standoffish today, are we, Winston?"

"That's right," countered Churchill, "every time you see something big, you want to nationalize it."

Creeps. A 1989 PBS program on television ethics starred 60 Minutes Mike Wallace and ABC anchorman Peter Jennings. When the moderator asked the two what they would do if they found out an enemy force they were traveling with intended to ambush American troops, both agreed getting film of the action for the newscast would take precedent over warning the American troops. Every U.S. soldier should be instructed on this point so he can select an appropriate target when he spots some damn fool talking to a TV camera on the enemy side during an ambush.

Sign in Houston 1986 or '99 oilfield neighborhood: LOST DOG. Has three legs, blind in left eye, missing right ear, broken tail. Recently castrated. Answers to the name of Lucky.

Well, he won anyway. The following item is reproduced exactly from the British publication Punch. We would have been chicken not to repeat it here.

   Two local budgerigar breeders had a successful day at the Heart of
   Midlothian Show at the weekend. Robert Smith of Mossilee, Galashiels, took
   the prize for best in the show with a light green cock.

   B. Chisholm (Southern Reporter)

No doubt you knew a budgerigar is a small Australian parrot, but we thought we'd better refresh your memory.

Accuracy in media. Now you know who all those White House "spin doctors" are descended from:

Well put. One Heinrich Heine put ludicrous things such as this into perspective back in 1848. In referring to a new ambassador, Heinrich said "Ordinarily he is insane, but he has lucid moments when he is only stupid." Surely must have been one of Ozone's ancestors.

Headlines of note. "Trained seals do it deeper" was about a story in a Soviet newspaper concerning seals trained to dive to 2,000 ft and stay one hour, seeking out oil and gas reserves on the seabed. They can even take samples and photos. And we're still fooling with seismic, ROVs, etc.?

"Air travelers in Japan fall" was--thank goodness about a decline in passenger traffic over the New Year's holiday--not another disaster.

"A real gas" datelined Kassel, West Germany, from the staid Jakarta Post: "A student who tried to commit suicide by gassing himself failed when he lit a cigarette." That's it. There wasn't anything else.

"Committee wants to teach prostitutes new skills," from the Sydney Morning Herald, via Punch, will support no additional comment.

"Shafted lady" (Jakarta Post) was about a 75-year-old Polish lady who fell down an elevator shaft.

"Brief thief confounds campus" (Jakarta Post ditto) was about the theft of 91 panties and 19 bras from dryers in a girl's dorm at the University of New York at Buffalo. Campus security announced "We'll get to the bottom of this."

"Heart attack kills nudist camp voyeur" (Houston Chronicle) was about an English Peeping Tom found dead with his binoculars in his hand. Really. That's what it said.

No comment is due on these two classified ads from the Jakarta Post, either.

Measurement mess. Anybody in the oil business is familiar with the English system of measurement we all use every day, although the metricians continue to infringe. However, most are not aware of the origin of these units. According to the National Geographic, here's where it all came from:

An inch, it seems, was originally equal to the width of an ancient king's thumb, or three barleycorns laid end-to-end. A yard was the distance from the nose of King Henry 1 to his fingertips. A furlong, (for all you racing fans) was the length of the furrow a team of oxen could plow before they had to rest. A mile was 1,000 double steps of a Roman legionnaire. Sometime later, good Queen Bess decided it should equal eight furlongs. And finally, an acre was the area of land a yoke of oxen could plow in a day, including rest periods and all.

Remember all this good stuff when you run 28.875 barleycorn pipe to 432,000 barleycorns deep on a lease that took your yoke of oxen 640 days to plow. Too, it might help all you reservoir engineers to remember these definitions the next time you plug all those precise numbers taken to four decimals into your computer.

Fragrant forecasts, "Iran is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world..." (Jimmy Carter, 1977.) "The Ayatollah Khomeini will one day he viewed as some kind of saint..." (Carter's ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, in 1978.) "Oil will be priced at $100/bbl by 1985." (Generally, Wall Street, every bank in the world, all governments, OPEC and the entire petroleum industry, 1980.) Be interesting to compare later this year to present gloomy forecasts on oil prices.

Comes a time. After 29 years and three months, this is the final column by yours truly in World Oil. Needless to say, it's been a lot of fun spouting off to several overlapping generations of you all these years. We'll miss harassing Billy Jeff and his environmentally deranged sidekick, since they'll likely be even better--and more deserving--editorial targets until they're dunked in 2000. But what will be most missed are your calls, letters, faxes and now e-mails, even those from you liberal-type old grouches. And for those who didn't always get a reply to your kudo or castigation, my humble apology. Sometimes we never got to the bottom of the stack before we lost it. Hang in there and aim for $25 oil and $3.50 gas by summertime.

Adios amigos and may the force be with one and all.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Gulf Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group