I was asked to give a talk at the celebration of 150 years of the American oil and gas industry at the Museum of Natural History here in Houston. The request was for personal observations and reminiscences about the industry and its history. Having been raised in the industry and having worked in it for more than 40 years allows me to give a first hand view of a bit less than half of the history of the industry. That’s when you know you are old.
I have two dilemmas here. Who and what to talk about and how much should be censored for content and language. The second part was pretty easy. Over half of the possible material should be censored for content and language. So, for instance, I cannot recount the day my son used a string of blue oilfield language to comment on a car that pulled out in front of us. He was four at the time. Nor can I tell the tale of the time he was banned from the school bus (a church school, to boot) for using a similar string of foul language to respond to a girl on the bus who was irritating him. Nor can I recount the countless urgings of my wife to clean up my language when I returned from offshore. But, many of you can imagine.
I also cannot discuss the European Union meeting on oil and gas that I attended. The hotel was in the middle of the red light district of Brussels and the window shopping was fascinating. I know I can’t speak of this because I once wrote a column about it, and the editor refused to even consider publishing it. I can’t discuss the numerous tasteless pranks we pulled on our co-workers. Come to think of it, I can’t discuss some of my favorite co-workers, especially those that perished on the job or in transit.
And I can’t retell my own brushes with the grim reaper, especially the one in which I secured my driver’s license in my zippered jump suit pocket to ensure (hopefully) that the body could be identified after a long time in the water.
I can’t mention the numerous safety violations that took place intentionally or otherwise. No talking of washing clothes and hands in casing head gasoline. No talking of turned over pickup trucks. No talking of launching a heater treater over a fence. Nope, I can’t mention any of that. Not a mention of throwing a dead rattlesnake at a particularly jumpy fellow employee who responded by violently jerking the wheel of the truck in which we were riding, resulting in the free form launch of the trailer we were towing and the removal of various and sundry equipment including a gas metering loop and several telephone line poles. I surely can’t mention the time I set off a 10-gauge shell in a fluid level gun against my leg.
There must be no mention of engineering snafus either. Not a whisper of the time we sent a new FPSO offshore and into a storm a bit too hastily to get it out of the yard after an embarrassing project over run only to have a few valuable pieces of kit fall off in the storm. No recounting of the time we failed to factor in the age of a pumping unit and kicked up the rpms. No description of the way the various parts were spread out over the pasture after the unit flung itself apart at the increased speed. Not a hint of discussion about the time I disobeyed a boss’s order and retrieved a particularly stubborn fish only be told that the same boss had written off the string and instituted insurance claims.
Looks like it will be a fairly short talk.
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