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 in the oilfield, single handed, from generating the prospect to leasing the land, drilling and completing all aspects of the well, getting production into the tanks, then managing that well for ensuing decades... are dying and younger generations have no interest in learning the trade. Its hard labor, takes big nuts and can often be very stressful. Everyone now days likes big rig lights and the romance of 100 BPM frac's.

In the past decade the cost to drill and complete stripper wells in America has more than doubled because of the shale oil phenomena and leveraged oversupply of shale oil has made the price of oil very volatile. For stripper well operators 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. I am exhausted from it. Some of the people I have working for me have been with me the entire time. We're family. They too are tired of price volatility. BUT, we can handle the mud just fine, thank you very much!

So, don't scoff at stripper well operators from the comfort of your drilling monitors, or looking down 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 by the way, if you ever need to know if a well, slew of wells, field, trend or play works economically... ask a stripper well operator. We have to make every dollar count and there is no use lying to yourself, or others, about whether you are profitable or not. The check book never lies.

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