subject: 2 Ways You Could Drill Yourself Into A Better Future [print this page] There is nothing as astoundingly Freudian as oil exploration. Environmentalists like to use the phrase "oil drilling" because it polls better in Gallup surveys, but the moniker obscures the advances in modern petroleum technologies and reduces it to a demeaning mental image in which a hillbilly takes a rock pick to granite. Geologists might do that, but drillers are nowhere as primitive as they are.
A driller is actually a manager of sorts, a team leader in charge of the entire well drilling process. You will be managing the personnel as well as the technical operation itself. It can be surprisingly easy at times, since automation technologies now allow a mechanical driller to run the break and bore a hole all by itself.
*So there's nothing for you to do? Far from being a marginally redundant button-pusher (not to be confused with the tool pusher, who is an integral part of a drill crew), a driller has to read between the lines, so to speak. Gauges are easy to read, but oftentimes a well will give off other subtle signs such as gases and fluid gushing out at barely subsonic speed and enormous pressure. You need to take everything into consideration before embarking on corrective measures. There is a lot at stake here: unless adequately subdued, wells have a tendency to run amok.
*No Time To Lose: Have you got steady nerves, or do you buckle under pressure? In an offshore oil platform, decisions cannot be held off for even a minute. This is one of the reasons you will be working within a delicately designed hierarchy that is almost military in its ruthless efficiency. (That, and the fact that you have dozens if not hundreds of men huddled together in a tiny spot.) You simply cannot afford to hesitate.
When you operate tonnes of automatic drilling machinery, you will eventually come to establish a symbiotic relationship with it. (If this sounds a bit sci-fi, ask any air traffic controller and they will tell you about their unspeakable bond with the termini.) An anomaly in your readings might need to be adjusted within seconds in the worst circumstances.
Of course, most of the time things aren't as bad as we make it out to be. Planning for each drill is done beforehand, and on a longer and more relaxed scale, in days if not weeks, so you'll be informed by your colleagues well in advance what to expect.
So plough ahead, so to speak, and give it a go on an offshore oil platform. Unlike land-based oil rigs, deposits are unlikely to run out any time soon, Peak Oil theorists be damned. All you need is a calm disposition that does not flinch at any challenges flung at your direction, and you will be prepared for a career as a driller in no time at all.
