Working On An Oil Rig

Housing in Fort Mac is fucking expensive. Seriously, you buy a house if it is available… there’s not much to choose from.

Here’s a good intro to the industry itself, but the pay is mentioned only briefly:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/20/60minutes/main1225184.shtml

The city is actually a lot nicer than I thought it would be, but it is literally in the middle of nowhere.

[quote]Alex630 wrote:
Does anybody know what it’s like (pay, lifestyle etc) doing construction in a place like Fort McMurray?[/quote]

The pay is really good. If you have a heartbeat and a pair of work boots, you will get a good job. I have heard of companies sending an employees out to gas stations to try and recruit people.

There are a couple of downsides though. The cost of living is unbelievable considering where you are living. Expect to pay $400,000 for a regular 3 Bdrm home. Rent is crazy too. Plus you are stuck basically in the middle of nowhere.

Fort St. John and Fort Nelson (BC) are similar towns. We did it for five years and my husband worked in the oil and gas service industry. The problem is not finding work, but ever getting time off. It is seen as an almost absurd request since these companies are so short on employees. A friend of ours who is still up there is 24, has a millwright ticket, and made $280,000 last year. But he only got a handful of days off.

I ve never worked on a rig , however I ve had friends that have .From what I heard , a visable minority of the workers are high 24 / 7 . As a result many have been hurt.
I m sure management drug tests and has inspections .However if their is a will their is a way.

OFF TOPIC
If your looking for easy money and you have a university degree , teaching english in asia is really easy.
U dont need ot have a teaching degree , just a degree.

[quote]JPBear wrote:
Alex630 wrote:
Does anybody know what it’s like (pay, lifestyle etc) doing construction in a place like Fort McMurray?

The pay is really good. If you have a heartbeat and a pair of work boots, you will get a good job. I have heard of companies sending an employees out to gas stations to try and recruit people.

There are a couple of downsides though. The cost of living is unbelievable considering where you are living. Expect to pay $400,000 for a regular 3 Bdrm home. Rent is crazy too. Plus you are stuck basically in the middle of nowhere.

Fort St. John and Fort Nelson (BC) are similar towns. We did it for five years and my husband worked in the oil and gas service industry. The problem is not finding work, but ever getting time off. It is seen as an almost absurd request since these companies are so short on employees. A friend of ours who is still up there is 24, has a millwright ticket, and made $280,000 last year. But he only got a handful of days off.
[/quote]

Wow, I had no idea the job situation was like that. Maybe I’ll head up there for the summer. And since I’m from Vancouver, $400,000 doesn’t sound so bad :wink:

A friend of mine was a diver on rigs several years back. He went to one of the big commercial dive schools, which allowed him to specialize in dive medicine. This extra qualification gave him(according to him) a pretty sweet job where he rarely dove, and his main job was medical support, running the compression chambers and such. He talked like it was easy work, but that is him talking, I have no experience in that field.

Its really hard to get a job on a rig here in Atlantic Canada because there are a so many people competeing for the jobs. If your a Newfoundlander you have a lot better chance because the Newfie’s work so damm hard. If you do get an offshore job and live in Newfoundland you’ll have a pretty good life.

[quote]wesstangl wrote:
OFF TOPIC
If your looking for easy money and you have a university degree , teaching english in asia is really easy.
U dont need ot have a teaching degree , just a degree.[/quote]

Coincidentally, I am studying to be an English teacher.

Here’s a blow out from one of my rigs in Turkemenistan. It blew like this for a minute or so every 10 minutes.

Bullpup

here is what the drill floor looked like after the well quit blowing

Bullpup

I was an mwd on a rig which is the Exec side of the oil buisness at 22 years old making about 7 g’s a month. It was a boring job and I worked 12 hours a day sitting at a computer doing literally nothing. Company truck blah blah blah anyways it sucked so I quit and I will never work a job that consumes my whole life like most jobs in the oil buisness do. I would rather work as a peddler on the street becuase money could equal happiness but, not when I have to give up all my time to earn it.

A lot of the guys in the buisness have problems with keeping a wife or girlfriend too because they are gone so long that the wives end up screwing around behind their back or leaving them. Good luck working your ass off as for me I am playing the stock market now which isn’t a safe bet but, I get to spend a lot of time doing what I want to do now.

Cool pictures.

Call me weird but I love everything about oil and gas extraction. The whole industry fascinates me.

I was working in W TX on a drilling crew when we showed up for work graveyard shift. Our task that night was to finish nippling up the BOP. While I was balancing on a creaky seal over a nasty cellar the light plant sputtered and went quiet. You couldnt see you hand right in front of your face. I was frozen still afraid of a mis-step and a nasty fall in to the cellar.

We never got along with the other crews on that rig. Always arguing about one crew tearing down a mud pump but not quite ever getting it back together before relief time. One night we showed up expecting a easy night with a slow moving kelly. And ended up tripping 8000 ft. of pipe to find a drill bit plugged with a work glove.

slightly off topic:
I work for a Drilling and Blasting company in New England right now. Could the kind of experience im getting there translate into work like this? (I should have a mass/new hampshire blasting lisence in about a year)