What is your background?

In 2006, I jumped on an opportunity to work for Halliburton as a field engineer in the wireline and perforating service product line. The only similarity to my major, which in Nuclear Engineering, is that I would be using neutron and gamma radiation. I moved from Rolla, Missouri to Bakersfield, California not knowing much about the area nor my future job. My goal was to work internationally.

It was a baptism by fire, where I had to learn the oil industry, oil services industry, and the details of wireline engineering. In less that 6 months, I can boast that I received the equivalent of a master’s degree level of education needed to perform my new job. I learned not only geology but also the important petrophysical properties needed to gather and produce reliable data. As for the hardware side, I mastered the theories and operational requirements for the tools that I would send down the recently drilled hole to ultimately tell the customer if they had oil, natural gas, or nothing.

Later, I competed the remaining classes online needed for my degree. My next challenge was to learn the other part of wireline operations which is perforating. This is on the productions side of the oil industry. These wells are already cased which means that the borehole is lined with steel and cement. Perforating is where special explosives are used to poke holes the casing to let the hydrocarbons flow. In addition to perforating, there are other production services performed for maintenance or to enhance older wells.

In 2010, I accepted a transfer to Woodland, California to work at a small facility. There I learned the extra skills needed to work in more isolated areas. In smaller camps there are less support personnel, so everyone has to help people from other departments including the management staff.

Finally in 2012, an opportunity to work in Mtwara, Tanzania opened up and I sprang in to action to joint that project. Drawing from my expertise gained in California, I was able to drive that project to success. However, there were more skills that I needed to gain to improve my operational efficiency. One was actually taking a hydrocarbon sample from the freshly drilled well. But a very special technique called focused sampling which was not standard at the time was needed to take clean and accurate samples. The other skill was called pipe recovery. This is when drill pipe becomes stuck, it was my task to free the drill pipe using many different methods.

Over the course of this project, I in addition to Tanzania, worked in Pemba, Mozambique, and Windhoek, Namibia. My other challenge was to continually improve my team’s operational efficiency. An example of this was using develop an unusual method called duel rig-up where both sets of the draw works was used to speed up the run times.

In 2015, I joined a project in the Falkland Islands. The job was mobilized from Aberdeen, Scotland and all the tools and equipment needed to be check and verified there before it could be deployed. Upon my arrival, I immediately set up and organized a system to meet the tight deadline. Once in the Falklands, the logistics company that was hired was very disorganized but despite this obstacle, I was able to set up the base and quickly prepare the equipment for the coming job.

Yet also in 2015, the oil prices crashed and the scope of this project was scientifically reduced. I was able to do a few projects in the North Sea before my inevitable separation from Halliburton.

Now that I have a family, I want to stay near them. I decided to take on my biggest challenge yet, make a career change in Tokyo, Japan. This is no simple effort and in fact over the next 5 years, I have faced my difficulties and have not had any recent success to show for my efforts. It is very difficult write about it.

Recently, I returned working with Shintaro Ogura at Gogakudo. I worked with him previously in 2018. The idea was there but it was just not ready and because of other circumstances, I had to leave. This time around, there is a new team in place, and we have an exciting method for teaching. But like everyone, we are all fighting the uncertainty of the 2020 pandemic. I am confident with this team in place that we will success in growing this venture!