Night Shift

This is one of our favorite videos at Oily Stuff. We like the music, but we like the message too; that the oilfield never sleeps. It goes around the clock, seven days a week, rain or shine.

Life for stripper well operators in America is slowly being lost; older generations that grew up learning how to do everything, single handed, from generating the prospect to leasing the land, drilling and completing all aspects of the well, getting it into the tanks, then managing that well for ensuing decades... are dying and younger generations have no interest in it. Its hard labor, takes big nuts and can often be stressful.

In the past decade the cost to drill and complete stripper wells has more than doubled and because of shale oil production in the US and leveraged oversupply, the price of oil is now very volatile. Its hard work staying out of debt and providing job security to good men and women when you have no idea what the price of your product will be from one month to the next. I've done it for over 40 years and I am proud of it. And tired. Some of the people I have working for me have been with me the entire time. We're family.

Don't scoff at stripper well operators from the comfort of your drilling monitors, or off your 40 foot rig floors; we're tough. And the 750,000 BOPD or so of domestic oil production stripper well operators provide our country (declining at less than 4% annually!) is nothing to sneeze at. And if you ever need to know if a well, slew of wells, field, trend or play works economically, ask a stripper well operator. Every dollar counts and there is no lying about whether you are profitable or not.

In the early part of this video please take note of the derrick man on the racking board before the rig starts pulling drill pipe out of the hole. He is doing a little jig. He doesn't know the drone is behind him; he is simply...happy.