North Slope Livin'

So I thought I'd create a blog post that summarized my travels and life/work up here on the North Slope for folks that are interested.

Quick summary about the North Slope - drilling for oil has been going on up here since the late 1960's.  The oil is moved from the wells to the masses by the Alaska Pipeline, which is pretty incredible in itself.  Production was at its highest in the 70's and 80's and has been on the decline ever since, however the fields up here are still producing ~600,000 barrels of oil per day.  Hence the continual need for development and personnel up here to work (... like me).

Travel - Alaska Airlines has several flights daily from Anchorage (and possibly Fairbanks), and BP/Conoco Phillips own two planes that make several flights a day as well.  I took the Alaska Airlines flight up, and it was a smooth ride surprisingly, considering my flight had been canceled the day before due to "severe" weather.  We landed in Deadhorse, the small town/airport that is the launching point for all the oil activity on the North Slope.  As soon as I stepped off the plane, I felt the cold.  It was only a few degrees below zero, however I was wearing jeans and two sweatshirts.  Even inside waiting for my bags, I was shivering.  Once with baggage, I boarded a small bus (sort of like an airport shuttle bus) that drove me to where I was going, the ENI Spy Island drillsite:

This is the island during the fall - the sea is frozen right now, and the rig is accessible only by ice roads.

The ride was a little over two hours, mostly on a bumpy road with a 45 mph speed limit.  Once we got to the rig, the only access right now is by ice roads, which are basically buffed strips on the frozen ocean that cars and trucks can drive on.  It's definitely a little spooky, although the ice was probably several meters thick.

The Rig - Once we got to the island (about 8 other guys in the bus with me), we offloaded into the "camp," which is a long, skinny three story dorm-style building.  You check in at the front desk/security, and are given a room and a locker.  They try to keep the place sterling clean, so if you're wearing work boots, you have to put on these little blue surgical booties to walk around inside.  I got my room assignment, and headed up to drop off my bags and get some dinner in the cafeteria (the food I'll describe later).  After checking back in with security, they revealed that for me to even step foot outside of the camp building, I had to go through yet another safety orientation.  Apparently liability is sort of an important issue with oil/drilling companies.  Since the safety guy had already gone to bed (it was about 8PM by now), I got to sit around camp for 12 hours until he woke up.

Fast forward through eating a bunch, watching TV, and playing WoW, I finally had my 20 minute safety orientation and walked outside to the mudlogging unit to see how things looked.  And well, they looked just like a mudlogging unit:

I met my immediate co-workers Kori-Jo and Leigh-Ann, hung for a minute in the unit, and then went back to camp to get to sleep, so I could be well rested for my first official day of work later that evening.

As fate would have it, I arrived at the rig just in time to not see any drilling for over two weeks.  After a night or two going over Sperry's proprietary drilling/mudlogging software with Leigh-Ann, they had to move the rig over to prepare for a workover (a clean-out or repair of a previously drilled well).  So we were stuck back at camp for two days while they moved the rig.  Which brings me next to...

Camp Life - The camp building is three stories high, and probably ~150 meters long.  It can house 130 people and features a weight room, recreation room, cafeteria, offices, bedrooms, bathrooms, commissary and locker rooms.  Everyone is assigned a bedroom and a locker.  The rooms are exactly like college dorm rooms - two beds, a dresser and a small desk.  There's even a 30 inch TV above the doorway.  In fact, there are TV's everywhere in the camp.  One in each bedroom, one in each workout room, a huge one in the cafeteria and rec room.  I've probably watched more TV in the last two weeks than I have in the last two years, easily.

There are bathrooms just down the hall which are always very clean thanks to housekeeping.  Fresh towels every day, sheet changes whenever you want - it's sort of like a hotel I guess.  The water pressure in the shower is even pretty good.

The recreation room has an enormous TV, a small crappy computer for public use, and a pool table.  I spent most of my rig-move time in here on my computer doing this and that while simultaneously watching crappy movies on TV.  There are two workout rooms, one with a multi-purpose weight machine and free weights, and another with two treadmills and a stair-master.  I am forcing myself to use both these rooms daily, even if just for a little bit...

Food - The cafeteria downstairs is the biggest room in camp.  The enormous TV in there is always on - channels that seem to be common are the Sportsman channel, which shows dudes hunting animals (awesome to watch while eating); the History channel, which always seems to be playing that damn "Pawn Stars" show (which I have come to despise); and then some news channel of sorts, but surprisingly never Fox News...

For food, hot meals are served from 11 to 1 and 5 to 7.  The food quality is hit or miss - they serve a lot of fish, which is consistent, but the salad bar is terrible and there are almost zero choices for healthy vegetables. Usually lots of meat like ham and chicken are served, and there is never a shortage of thick bacon strips.  Rice, beans, pasta, and occasionally quinoa seem to be consistently available as well, though they have that weird elementary school cafeteria taste.

Away from the main food line are two huge coolers that have sandwiches, fruit, juices, hard boiled eggs, V8 (which I drink a lot of), cakes/brownies, yogurt and leftovers.  Beside that is plenty of coffee and huge bowls full of different flavors of creamer.  Besides this are a bunch of stands filled with granola bars, chips, and cereal, and finally another cooler containing ice cream bars and Drumsticks.

The battle so far has been to not balloon in weight with all this available food.  I've been eating only cereal and yogurt in the morning, a medium sized lunch (which is usually leftovers from dinner), and breakfast for dinner (bacon, eggs, grits, fruit).

A typical day has me up at 4:45 PM to shower, then head down for breakfast, catch up on news/facebook, then suit up and head out to the mudlogging unit.  If things are slow in the unit, I'll come back to camp for lunch.  After work, I eat dinner, go for a run or lift weights, then retire to my room to watch some TV or mess around on the computer before I should be asleep by 8:30 AM.

The Weather - This section is for you dad.  Right now, the weather is ranging from about -30 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit.  Windchill, which is the perceived colder temperature (usually on exposed skin), can cause it to feel up to -50 or colder.  Halliburton has provided me with coveralls and a winter parka:

   

Full winter gear with face-mask while playing dress-up at the hotel in Anchorage.  Note the green helmet, which denotes me as a trainee or "worm."

This gear keeps me warm on my walk from camp to the mudlogging unit.  On the coldest day I've had so far,  the -45 windchill caused immediate ice-cream headache and burning skin after just being outside for three minutes.  Any time you walk outside, you can feel your nose hairs and eyebrows freezing in the air.  Luckily, we're never outside for long.

The North Slope is basically a desert climate, as it rarely snows or even rains.  There are plenty of snow drifts around, but they apparently develop from pre-existing snow just blowing around in the wind.  You can spit up in the air when it's cold enough, and it will be frozen by the time it hits the ground.

A look in any direction from the drilling island will look something like this:

Frozen ocean and snow.  Note the truck driving on the ice road, and a drilling rig off in the distance.

It's a pretty radical sight to behold.  I saw a fox the other morning that was running across the sea-ice, and apparently there are tons of polar bears around as the season warms up a bit.  Can't wait to see me a polar bear!


Well for the most part, that is a summary of my past two weeks.  I'm sure I'll have more stories once I spend some more time up here.  I'm planning on making a little GoPro walk-around video of the rig and camp, which might give people a cool insight on what life is like up here.  Hope I wasn't too long winded...

Here are a few more random pics:

The Trans-Alaska pipeline from the plane.  It stretches pretty much across the entire state.

The drilling rig - Doyon 15.  Walking to the unit.

A cold and desolate place.  Prepare your men General Veers (thanks Grant).  Another note - landing in the plane was crazy, since there are no points of reference, and all you can see is white snow and ice, you can't really tell how high off the ground you are.  It's a pretty bizarre sensation.  Once you get close enough to Deadhorse, you realize that you've been flying much lower than you thought...