today you'll come with me to work today (altho i'm technically at the hotel now, we'll pretend you're on location with me as we go thru the pictures).
a few of you kiddos know i work for a company called HALLIBURTON.
Halliburton is in the energy business. and at the moment, business is good.
I'm a Service Supervisor for the crew i'm on. Basically i'm a big fucking babysitter for people who , half of which have no business being in this industry. They can barely be given the responsibility
of tying their shoes much less running million dollar equipment but meh...we gotta deal with who we get.
Anyhow
we'll start our walkthrough with a part of the location we call the "backyard"
the backyard is where the magic happens.
these large bins with 4 compartments each are called "mountain movers" each mover holds about 250k lbs of propant (or sand). Sand is the whole reason we Frac. Sand holds the formation open so when our job is done with the well a rig can come out and 'flow back' the sand making it easier to extract the natural gas.
this is a closer look at the 'T-belt' ... a large conveyer moves the sand that comes out of the mountain movers and carries it to the hopper on the blender. We'll touch base on the blender in a few moments.
as we walk past the movers and t-belt we get balls deep into the backyard. at the very back of the back yard are our frac tanks. most of them will hold fresh water to pump downhole. with the exception of 3 at the far end of these tanks (they'll be holding KCL) and the tank i'm closest to (FE acid). Acid is scary to put down hole kids....but we have to use it to help break down the formation better!
The red manifold you see in front of the tanks is called a "PIG". we use the pig to insure that all the frac tanks come down evenly as to prevent any air being sucked on by the blender. AIR IS THE ENEMY! AIR IS BAD!!!! it'll fuck up a frac spread quick.
*note - see the lazy retard with his back turned to me? he spotted me coming and hightailed it outta there...lazy fuck ass was smoking and chilling out back there while everyone else was working around the well head. (notice the only part dirty on 'em is his ass??)
next stop, the blender!
I loved working on this piece of equipment when i worked in the backyard...and until i became a supervisor, was probably my favorite place to be on the frac spread.
Magic happens here too! this is where all the various chemicals and sand get...well....blended! it has a massive 500gal tub on it...ports on the front and back for suction and discharge hoses...fresh water comes in and a mixture of sand and chemical to help that sand go down hole goes out.
this is the inside of the blender cab, the control board. and by the looks of it...the operator have been taking piss poor care of it.
during rain storms , sleet, hail, blazing sun and other types of shitty weather...this is the best place to be ...i enjoyed my time here.
this is the said tub where sand comes up the 12" screws and mixes with the chemies (note the hoses going into the tub at bottom of picture)
you can't see it but there are big paddles in the tub there the keeps it mixed up while we go down hole. (usually around 75 barrels a minute or 3150 gal)
this is the view from the blender over the pumps and the 'front yard' (area around the wellhead). Each pump has a suction hose, and discharge iron going to and from the pump. Mixture is sucked in via flulid end..and is pumped out thru the iron at pressure varying from 4000-20,000lbs of pressure. tho, 20k jobs are rare for us..most wells we work with are in the range of 8k to 13k lbs of pressure. The chemicals we pump down hole help reduce the friction of the well , without chemicals like FR-66, Lo-surf and other surfactants, fracking couldnt take place.
^^ the manifold in the middle of the 2 banks of pumps is called the "Missle" top of the missle is used for carrying the mixture TO the pumps, while the bottom of the missle is rated for higher pressure and carries the mixture to the well head and down hole. Each pump is capable of about 8 bbls per minute as well as having 2k hp. They're beasts.
and outside look of the bank of pumps. unfortunately we have to spray paint "SILVER" on our equipment because other crews like to thief our shit while it's in the field camp. (silver being the crew i'm on)
ahh...MORE MAGIC HAPPENS HERE! The Data Communications Van or "frac van" as everyone plainly calls it. This is where we monitor equipment and call the job from...i gotta say..i may pretend in front of alot of the hands that i dont like being in there and that i'd rather be outside with them doing maintenance running equipment etc....but...being in 65 degree AC as oppose to being around the equipment where it's upwards of 150 degrees (the iron gets hot as FUCK in the summer, not counting the heat of the engines etc etc) i ain't complaining :wink:
finally this is where i try to do my magic from. i monitor all equipment running, making sure everything..and i mean EVERYTHING is running accordingly and efficiently. wether it's making sure the RPM of the pumps are where they're supposed to be, the right amount of sand is going downhole or babysitting fucks that can't do their job ..i stay pretty hooked up...alll while having the company rep sitting behind me. i've come across my fair share of douche bag company men...and also come across some really cool fucks who just chill and let us do our job. for the most part, all the ex halliburton guys who have gone off to work for companies like Devon or Chesapeake are probably the best to work for..altho they know our little secrets..they let us do our thing.
Well kids...that's all for now...we've got a really cool job coming up where we frac with CO2! I'll be sure to take pics and add later.
here's a pic just for the hell of it..on our way to location last month...running from that 2.6 mile wide tornado...about a mile from where we were sitting was where those storm chasers died..
