Some of you probably knew that I stopped going to school for a year and got a job as a roughneck on an offshore drilling rig. I've had a few people ask me about it, so I figured I would post a few pictures of the rig and a little info on what we did.
This is the rig I worked on. If you're wondering how we got up to the rig we used what's called a personnel basket, which is hooked up to the crane. The crane will raise and lower people from/to the boat and rig. You can see the basket hanging from the crane in this picture with four people on it.

This is a good picture from the crew boat that shows the whole rig and the platform that we were working over.

This is the picture of the drillfloor where I spent pretty much all my time. On the left you can see the break-out tongs, which were used to break the two tool joints loose. The torque on 5" drillpipe(which is what we are using here) is around 6000 pounds. When making a trip(pulling the whole drill pipe string out of the hole), you can throw the tongs well over 150 times in a day. You also pull and set the slips(the thing with three handles behind the drill pipe) every time you make/break a connection. Tripping pipe was my favorite thing to do. You were pretty much none stop for 12 hours.

These are just some various pictures on the rig.

Here is a picture of the derrick from the drillfloor. The derrick hand is the one who goes up to the derrick while tripping pipe and racks back or latches up a stand of pipe(a stand of pipe is around 93 feet, and is made up of three joints, which are around 30-32 feet each).

Various pictures from up in the derrick of the drill floor and the rig, and also a picture of the ladder you have to climb up to get to the derrick.

Here is what's called the monkey board, which is what the man in the derrick stands on when making a connection or racking a stand back. The rope/belt thing is called the belly rope. You put that around your waist so you can lean out and reach the elevators. You can also see the bucket to sit on when the times get slow.

These are the fingers where all the stands of pipe are stored. This is one set, and there's also another set on the other side of me. Around 115 stands of 5" drill pipe can be stored on this set of fingers, and something like 70 or 80 on the other.

One of the nice sunsets we get to see.

I've got more, but don't really feel like posting them now, and ya'll probably don't care to see them anyways, but oh well. Enjoy.

This post has been edited by blk96gt: 03/12/07 7:12pm

Wow! Thanks for sharing that with us.

It really brings back some memories for me. I worked as a roughneck after college. My rig was north of Odessa, Texas. Throwing the tongs was the most grueling work I've ever done. It didn't help that we were trying to drill as fast as we could and they were short handed. That meant I'd often work double-shifts which KILLED me!

We constantly were thinking about having to escape in an emergency (the first day I had on the job we had a man go down after a release of Hydrogen Sulfide gas) and yet people were always parking their damn trucks in front of our zip line.

I'm sure safety measures have improved dramatically since those days, but we often wondered how comfortable the off-shore guys felt about their emergency systems.

I'll never forget the feeling of being covered head to toe in that damn acidic drilling mud. That's a memory I prefer to forget! LOL!

Very nice pics, Blk.

Safety on our rig was #1. We got things done as fast as we could, but if it was a situation where it was do it fast, or do it safely, we would without a doubt do it safely. The hitch I was on hadn't had a recordable injury in almost two years. I was lucky and got on a rig with lots of great people. I had a real good driller, tool pusher, and OIM.

Things have changed a lot though, even in the past 10 years. Most newer (offshore) rigs have iron roughnecks and top drives. That means roughnecks have it easy when they have an iron roughneck, all they have to do is dope pipe. Heck, many of them even have auto racking systems now, so you don't even need a man in the derrick. The only neat thing we had was a top drive. That made it a hell of a lot easier making connections, reaming, and all that jazz, as the top drive could make a connection a whole stand at a time, which means we didn't have to use the mouse hole or the tongs(once we got enough weight on the string) when we made a connection. We still got to throw the tongs when tripping though, which was my favorite part. Actually, my favorite thing was tripping out the hole in the derrick. The best part would be when the driller would start hauling ass. If I remember right, the fastest we ever went was 115 stands in around 3 hours. I was wore out after that day.

And yes, the mud. I don't think there was a day that I did not have mud on me. Man I miss this shit.

Thanks. Here's a few more. These next few are of me going up to service the top drive in a riding belt. That was another fun thing to do. Swinging from one side of the derrick to the other was the best thing to do in a riding belt. Yeah, that's a tight fit in that fourth picture. That grease fitting was a bitch to get to.


The big blue thing with the cable coming out of it is draw works. That is what is used to raise and lower the block, which it turn will raise and lower the pipe. I have seen it with 350,000+ pounds on it before, so it can hold a decent amount of weight.

Here is one that shows how many rigs were around us. Well, it shows how many there are from the place I took the picture. If you look close you can see all the specs in the background.

I always thought this one was kind of neat. It's not really that clear, but I think the lights and the work boat look kind of neat.


This post has been edited by blk96gt: 03/13/07 1:21am

Sounds like a fun job.

do you go fishing on your break?

Hey Blk did you ever jump in the water from the top?
If not you are a - WIMP -


p.s Nice pictures

I'll guess you have a good wage there blk . In Norway the roughnecks/drill crew earn approximately 150.000$ a year. They work 2 weeks - then got 3 weeks off. How old is the rig you are working on? Looks like a Jack-up, but it seem pretty old..Am I right? (There is a lot of newbuilds coming your way...)

Wow, nice pics

Yeah I made pretty good money, much more than I would have right out of college with a computer science degree. The only downside was I had to work my ass off for it. We worked 12 hour days for two weeks and then had two weeks off.

The rig is an '82 Bethlehem jack-up. It was pretty old, but was also touted as one our companies cleanest and best maintained rigs. The roustabouts were always cleaning and painting.

I never did, but there were a bunch of people who would. One guy caught a six foot shark, and they used the crane to get it out of the water. We were tripping pipe, and the next thing you know the crane comes swinging around with a damn shark hanging from it.

Also, for those that don't know, we work in all weather conditions. It doesn't matter if the winds blowing 60 mph and it's pouring down rain, we keep working. About the only time they'll shut it down is if someone sees a water spout, or they know there's a hurricane coming, which in that case the rig will be shut down and evacuated.

I have an uncle that used to work offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. Never really knew what he did out there, but now I have a much better idea. Great pics and terrific accounts of the daily tasks involved!! Thank you, sir!!

Blk, how far offshore are the rigs?

so there are only men on these rigs. COUGHHOMOCOUGH

It all depends, we were a three hour boat right at one location(about 60 miles), and about one hour at another(about 20 miles). Some are 4-5 hour helicopter rides, and even some 6 hour boat rides. It just all depends on where the company that your working for wants you. I got one buddy who got a job over in Africa, and works 28 days on and 28 days off. Takes a plane to/from Africa once a month. So you could be anywhere they're drilling for oil/gas.