Morning Report - Day 1

The Morning Report with AK Andy - March 8th 2014 ~ 18:00 (UTC +1)

Good Afternoon! Perhaps I should call this the afternoon or evening report given the time I am sitting down to writing this today. Goodness, I need improvement before I have even started. 

Yesterday, the 7th, was a fairly productive day at work. I took care of various odds and ends that I needed to attend to. I tried to make some progress on getting my residency card for EQG in the afternoon, but the work day ended with loading out the tools for the upcoming job. It was a good day at the base and the time flew by quickly.  

Typically I have quiet evenings at the hotel when I am onshore. Last night however was not such a night. A colleague from work invited me to join him in going to a party at the U.S. Embassy here in EQG. I had never been to the new embassy here and took up the invitation readily. Ah, U.S. soil.

Morning Reports to Follow

The Idea: While home on last days off, I was doing some cleaning and came across a kind of journal from one of my university field sessions. Every morning we were to write a morning report and turn it in. It could be as simple as a one word summary of the previous day or as detailed as you liked. Reading through the 2 week journal of my Massadona field session thoughts and events was rather entertaining. I then decided to do something similar during this next hitch. So, tomorrow morning I will write a quick post, and hopefully do the same for the upcoming weeks. If anything, I will look back on this string of post years from now and be reminded of where I was/am and hopefully take something away from it. A snapshot in time.

Travel day(s): To briefly do an entry for my getting here,

Some nights

    Once upon a time, a devout man of faith was lost on a road late at night. The way was dark and he had taken a wrong turn on his travel. The man found himself wandering lost on unknown road looking for an inn or farm house as shelter for the night. Around a bend in the road he came across an army garrison. The night watchmen, holding up his torch, called out to the shadowy figure of the lost man on the road, "Who are you? What are you doing here?" The man stopped, stunned at the questions. The watchman called out again, "Who are you? What are you doing here?" The devout man responded this time, "How much do you get paid to stand here to keep watch?" The watchman, truly surprised by this question posed to him, answered in a confused query, "Why do you ask that?" The lost man said, "I will pay you what you make now to stand outside my door and ask me those two questions every morning when I walk out my door."

Who are you? What are you doing here? Or conversely, who am I? What am I doing here?

The two stories & new eyes

What is a spiritual experience?

How do you recognize it happening? Do you realize it while you are in the experience, after, both, or it depends?

Is it a quick moment or revelation, a long lasting impression?

In any case, you are by necessity a changed or affect person because of it. You are not who you were before the experience. Would you agree?

What are the signs of a spiritual encounter? What is this sense of awe, wonder, or joy which you know is so overwhelming and powerful that you feel so full and yet so aware of your smallness?
How do you respond to it? How does it change your daily life?
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These have been questions about the good spiritual experiences...

Book in Review: ReJesus

ReJesus - by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost 

Beware of encountering the Jesus of the scriptures. He will call you to give all of you, every aspect of your life: work, family, thoughts, leisure, sexuality, religion, morality, material possessions, everything. He calls you to live a life as His disciple which is no small undertaking. – My own reflections from encounters with Jesus.

 FYI: I have not written a book review since high school, but I decided that it would be a fun habit to pick up after reading an interesting and inspiring book. It will be my attempt to summarize what I have just read, and internalize the content. If the topic is something you find interesting,

It is the simple things

Rig Day 37:

We finished drilling the well! This last section of well did not come without a fight but shortly after 6am Friday morning we finally got to the target measured depth shortly over 5 weeks after starting the well. We should have finished the well a week ago, but due to delays on the rig we didn't start tripping back to the bottom of the well until Friday. Once down there we encountered problems with the bit and had to pull out of hole (POOH) to swap bits and components of the BHA. We tripped in hole (TIH) and began drilling again, but very slowly. Not to long after starting for the second time one of my tools stops working, fails, and we have to POOH - again. We get the BHA and the bit back to surface, swap out tools for a third time and TIH. To give you an idea of how frustrating this is, it takes a full day to bring the bit back to surface, change the tools in the BHA, and go back down to start drilling. C'est la vie. We have reached the depth we want and are now taking some test of the formation pressure and other awesome parameters such as fluid mobility (mD/cp) and other petroleum stuff. After that we will circulate a lot of drilling fluid (mud) to clean the hole from all the rock cuttings that may still be in the bore hole.

- Some clarification for my non petroleum industry family and friends - Oil is not found in vast underground lakes or caverns. Oil and gas occupy the pore space in-between the grains of sedimentary rock. Rock that was deposited by other means than volcanic lava  Let us take sandstone for example. Sandstone is made up of many many much smaller particles of sand fused or 'cemented' together. Imagine a room full of basketballs, baseballs, and golf balls all mixed together. There is air space around the balls as they cannot lay flat on top of each other. This is what the formation porosity is like in simple terms.
Permeability is the area that the fluid around these balls can flow through. If you have a room full of just volleyballs, there would be a lot more area for fluid to flow through than if you filled the room with golf balls. Rock is the same way only the balls are really tiny.
Crude oil also varies a lot from one reservoir to another. Brent crude oil of the North sea is different from the crude oil of West Texas and so on. Some oils are more viscous, like thick molasses, while others are less and more like runny maple syrup. Know the viscosity of the oil is essential to knowing how much oil you can recover.
Now, about the fluid in these pores that is trying to flow around the grains (the balls in the room). In the subsurface it will generally be water, oil, and gas. As the rocks are buried deeper and deeper the fluid likewise increases in pressure. Imagine you are in a deep swimming pool diving to the bottom. As you dive deeper, your ears experience more pressure the deeper you go. Essentially, the same thing happens here but sometimes the pressure can be higher or lower than what you would expect. This is important to know for recovering oil and gas from a well.

Okay, enough of that. I could keep going, but I will do so when the it fits, or if you have questions about something. I can go way to much into technical details, just ask my family.

After knocking off of work around 6:30am I decided to go up on the heli-deck to walk around, enjoy the sunrise, and reflect on the last 5 weeks. It felt good to know that the well was done and that I would be going back to shore in the next few days. Originally I was going to be as soon as Sunday, but that flight got canceled so it will more than likely be Monday. I have developed some small little things and habits that I find enjoyment in and make the days out here pass with more ease. For example, whenever I have a midnight meal I usually have a cup of coffee and a sweet. In the mornings I go for a walk or a run 20 minutes after eating. After washing up from exercising, I study a chapter of scripture and listen to music. At work, we have a stash of crackers and peanut butter for when those of us on tour get the need to snack. A nice cup of tea, crackers smothered in peanut butter are great to keep you going until the next meal. Also, I love the fresh oranges out here! They are really good! And the pizza on Sunday is something to look forward to. ;) Oh, one of the directional drillers on this project enjoyed having a cigar occasionally, so whenever we finished a section of the well we would split a cigar as a way to mark the progress of the job. It is the simple little things both personal and communal that help keep you sane.

It is Easter weekend, but I have no days off. That is okay though. It will still be a good time none the less. In general, part of making a great holiday is ones attitude/perspective during its observance. The church has certainly taught this, and so much more, during the lenten season leading into this weekend. While I may not have fully observed the lenten period, I certainly continue to pray that God would humble me before Him.

I wish you, the reader, a blessed and joyous weekend in celebration of the victory over death found only in Jesus the Messiah, the Risen LORD!



 

The Spell of the Yukon through the Ages

It is an intense sensation, and emotion that I have felt before, but I haven't felt anything quite this strong and of this variety for I don't know how long. There is something coming from deep inside me, the desire for something not present. It is love, yearning, and an ache for a vast land oh so far away. For people and places familiar. I have known it as has any who has ventured from one location to another; sometimes more than others. As discussed with other travelers, you leave parts of yourself in places where you connect with people in community. Many times I find this sensation to be un-focused on any one place, but for all places where you have left part of your story.

Not this time. Feel the call of the jagged snow capped mountains tumbling down to the emerald clad shores of a deep green icy lake, still as glass reflecting the splendor to the enormous land and vivid sky. The salt scented air of the fjords and bays, with glaciers meeting waters edge. This is the feeling of homesickness. Yes, I am homesick for Alaska, and I had it in a terrible way yesterday. All I had to do was close my eyes and scenes of dancing northern lights, or midnight sun camp fires with family and friends fill my mind's eye. It is unlike any place I have been and I am proud to call it home. 

Growing up my family often read together. We would read many classics of English and American literature. One of our favorite poets is Robert Service (1/16/1874 - 9/11/1958). Even at an early age my sister and I knew whole passages of verse from his works pertaining to Alaska. Just say, "There are strange things done in the midnight sun," and you would start us off on reciting the entire poem. All 17 verses. Here is one of our favorites which I would like to share.

The Spell of the Yukon
 By Robert Service

I wanted the gold, and I sought it;
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy - I fought it;
I hurled my youth into a grave.
I wanted the gold, and I got it-
Came out with a fortune last fall-
Yet somehow life's not what I thought it,
And somehow the gold isn't all.

No, There's the land. (Have you seen it?)
It's the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it,
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it,
Some say it's a fine land to shun;
Maybe; but there's some as would trade it
For no land on earth - and I'm one.

You come to get rich (damned good reason);
You feel like an exile at first;
You hate it like hell for a season,
And then you are worse than the worst.
It grips you like some kinds of sinning,
It twists you from foe to a friend;
It seems it's been since the beginning,
It seems it will be to the end.

I've stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow
That's plumb-full of hush to the brim;
I've watched the big, husky sun wallow
In crimson and gold, and grow dim,
Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming,
And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop,
And I've thought that I surely was dreaming,
With the peace o' the world piled on top.

The summer-no sweeter was ever;
The sunshiny woods all a thrill;
The grayling aleap in the river,
The bighorn asleep on the hill.
The strong life that never knows harness;
The wilds where the caribou call;
The freshness, the freedom, the fairness
O God! How I'm stuck on it all.

The winter! The brightness that blinds you,
The white land locked tight as a drum,
The cold fear that follows and finds you,
The silence that bludgeons you dumb.
The snows that are older than history,
The woods where the weird shadows slant;
The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,
I've bade 'em goodbye, but I can't.

There's a land where the mountains are nameless,
And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons;
There are valleys unpeopled and still,
There's a land - Oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back - and I will.

They're making my money diminish;
I'm sick of the taste of champagne.
Thank God when I'm skinned to a finish
I'll pike to the Yukon again.
I'll fight-and you bet it's no sham-fight;
It's hell! - But I've been there before;
And it's better than this by a damn sight,
So me for the Yukon once more.

There's gold, and it's haunting and haunting;
It's luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting
So much as just finding the gold.
It's the great, big, broad land way up yonder,
It's the forests where silence has lease;
It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It's the stillness that fills me with peace.