It’s pretty amazing, the changes we see in the drilling industry every year. Just when we think we’ve got everything invented, something even better comes along.
I can remember drilling in very isolated places with no communication at all. If we ran into problems, we had to figure it out for ourselves or face a train wreck. This self-sufficiency led to an interesting trait among drillers — secretiveness. In the old days, a lot of guys figured that if they had to figure it out for themselves, they weren’t about to share it with anybody. This led to the invention of a lot of the tools and techniques that we all use today, but it also led to a lot of “re-inventing the wheel.” Many times, I’ve been to trade shows where a manufacturer would come out with a new tool and one driller after another would come by the booth and say, “I built one of those years ago. Worked pretty good …”