I want you to join me in giving a round of applause to the manufacturers that provide everything from the rig you use at the jobsite to the tooling that goes in the hole.
Some years ago I had a job as a drilling foreman for a large contractor. Sometimes when we would bid a job, they would ask me to go look at the location to see what we needed.
Readers, you will have to forgive me, for I am going to take a short detour from my series of columns about clamp-on pitlesses. I recently had occasion to pull a pump that I had installed years ago and, not having a pump hoist available, did it the way we used to do it.
The failure of a critical pump in a mining operation means unplanned and extremely expensive downtime, which can escalate into hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue in just a few hours’ time.
It’s a beautiful day for drilling! That’s the message from thousands of drilling crews each time they head to a new jobsite. Fighting back against a turbulent economy with a shiny new contract in your pocket is a big part of our industry’s new reality.