Occasionally, drillers tell me informative, sad and/or sometimes funny stories. This story recently was told to me by a driller from southern Virginia. The names will be withheld to protect those involved …
In the 1960s, our company, Cutter & Dad Drilling Co., was abandoning leaking oil wells near Chanute, Kan. We were contracted to remove the defective and leaking steel casing in some 400 wells for Brundred Oil Co. …
Sometime back, I was a geothermal site inspector for a college. My job was to oversee and document all the geothermal holes drilled, closed loops installed, grouting of the holes and the testing of the loops …
We had some real bad storms when we were living in southern Georgia. One storm knocked a baby squirrel out of the tree in front of our shop. The boys and myself wrapped him up in a towel and took him home …
I can say that I never lost a foot of drill stem or tools in the hole over my years of drilling. Many times, however, I should have left the tools in the hole due to the time, dollars and jobs lost recovering the tools.
Men usually don't like to ask directions or pay attention to their wives' directions. For those men, I say, “Get a GPS.” GPS is short for global positioning system. For those who haven't heard of a GPS, it's a worldwide radio-navigation system that was developed by the U.S. Department of Defense. It uses satellite signals to track the location or position of vehicles or vessels on earth.
