Oil Well From Hell - Part 1

As a geologist, I “sat” many wells during my stint with Cities Service Oil Company. Sitting a well included staying on or near a location during its drilling, usually in a small trailer. The well site work was noisy, often dangerous but usually boring. One of the last wells that I sat was anything but boring and it caused me to think about another line of work.

It was the dead of winter in Harper County, Kansas, twelve feet of snow on the ground. I had a motel room in nearby Anthony where I would go to shower and take an occasional nap. Drilling an oil well is a 24-7 operation that continues without pause until the intended total depth is reached.

The wildcat well was running low (a geologic expression that usually portends bad news) and we had just penetrated the top ten feet of the Viola Dolomite, one of the zones we had thought might be productive. I saw some oil staining in the samples and had a slight “kick” on the gas detector so I called for a drill stem test to evaluate the zone, even though no one had much hope left for the well.

A drill stem test is simply a tool attached to the drill pipe. It is lowered to the formation to be tested. It is a little like putting your finger on the end of a straw and then sticking it into a glass of water. When you remove your finger, the straw fills with water. A DST is a little more complicated than that, but you get the picture.

A complete DST includes pulling the drill pipe, attaching the DST tool and then running it back in the hole. Once the packers are set, the tool is open and shut for a prescribed period to see if anything flows to the surface (e.g. oil, gas or water). After picking the packer seats, I left the location and went to my motel room for a much-needed rest.

A DST can take many hours, so that night I had a good rest. I returned to the location to observe as they opened the tool for the first time. We were running “low” and not looking very good, and I expected to see nothing more than a possible puff of natural gas. What I actually saw came as an almost complete shock.

CONTINUED TOMORROW

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