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Mike
Moderator
Registered: 01/09/09
Posts: 62
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| #1 |
I think everyone but me thought I was nuts when I went out on my own to start then, Camco Engineering Company. I had no capital, an agreement to rent a mud logging trailer, and a beat up Toyota pick-up truck. It was mid 1998. Things were slow. Natural gas prices were very low. The rig count was falling and I really didn't give a damn.
What I did have going for me was youth, blind ambition, and a belief that I could somehow do mudlogging better than it was currently being done.
NOT ROCKET SCIENCE
I began calling on oil companies. I called ... and called ... and called. It was a couple months before I landed my first job near Hallettsville, Texas. It was supposed to be a five or six day well, but I took it. I was hungry. The young geologist who gave me the job was barely out of school. He told me that he'd give me a shot on this well. It was a shallow well, and he said, "It's not rocket science."
RIGGING UP
Since I didn't have a vehicle that would move the rented mudlogging unit from Corpus Christi to Hallettsville, I paid the owner to spot it for me on location. The rig-up took me about six hours. It seems that everything that could have gone wrong did. The main thing was that I wasn't familiar with the equipment. I have never used a set of Tooke instruments. I tried everything I knew to get the gas detector working before I finally called the owner of the unit. It was at that time I learned that in a Tooke gas detector there is a circuit card that is prone to vibrate loose during transport. I plugged in the circuit card and the gas detector started working. I was relieved. I had everything else rigged up and ready to go so I began logging almost immediately after rigging up.
WELL LASTED 54 DAYS
The five to six day job that I had originally taken ended up lasting quite a bit longer; Fifty-four days to be exact. The rig kept breaking down. It was one thing after another. The biggest thing was the intermediate casing job. They could not get a good pressure test and ended up having to squeeze several times. By the time the well was over I had made friends with the geologist and the company man. All reports were in on time every day, all samples were caught on time, and the equipment was maintained in good working order throughout the well. I followed that rig with that particular company well after well, for almost a year. I got to know the roughnecks who I would hang out with at Sammy's Bar in Hallettsville, Texas from time to time. We would also go to a place right outside of Hallettsville called "People's Tradition." Oh yea, how could I ever forget the Lazy J in Speaks.
SAMMY'S BAR
Back in those days, I spent quite a bit of time at Sammy's bar. It was a nice place and I felt right at home. Sammy charged a little bit more than most of the local bars for beer, but his place was nice. All of the oilfield people would show up there and didn't seem to mind paying for the atmosphere. Sammy was a retired toolpusher and could talk to the roughnecks and other oilfield hands in their unique language. You could always find Sammy on the domino table playing domino's. I have played a few games with him myself. He won most of the time.
LUCKY POOL GAME AT SAMMY'S
One night I was shooting pool at Sammy's Bar with a man who owned a safety company. He mentioned that a lot of work was about to begin in Luling, Texas and that I should give Vintage Petroleum a call. I did and I got the work.
LULING
We started working outside of Luling near a small community called Stairtown (pronounced Star-town). The locals knew you were from out of town if you pronounced it the way it sounded. It was during this time, around late 1999 that I moved from Hallettsville, Texas to La Marque, Texas (Galveston County). I actually moved to a trailer park and was living in a mud logging unit until I purchased a small house on the corner of Main and Irene in La Marque. For all practical purposes, I lived at the Coachway Inn in Luling on and off for the next couple years.
FAIRFIELD AND THE FORD
About the time I started working in Luling, things started moving pretty quickly for us. We also got a contract to work in Freestone county, around the town of Fairfield, Texas. I still had that old beat up Ford. I guess one of my most embarrassing moments (and there have been a few), was pulling up on that first job in Freestone county. I was backing that logging unit up to where it was supposed to be spotted, and my truck died right there on location, with the trailer still attached to it. We had to spot the unit with a forklift, and change the started on location. I called my Dad, who lived about 70 miles away. He and my uncle rounded up an alternator for me and we changed it right there on location. Actually, my uncle and my lead mudlogger (name withheld unless I get permission) changed it, if I remember correctly. That was the primary reason that I made a huge mistake and bought a Chevrolet dually. That's another story for later though.
To be continued:
__________________
Mike Cunningham Jr.
Geospect Instruments
http://www.geospect.com |
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