I wrote this in 1997 and it was published by Hart. Pretty cool, uh? Notice, please, the word shale never came up once. Nobody would even think about publishing something like this now days.
The price of oil back in 1997 was wandering around $18.50 per barrel, I was running two workover rigs all the time and drilled 43 wells that year; I was never home and exhausted, constantly. If I got to leave a location in South Texas, day or night, I would literally wake up in my driveway not knowing how in the hell I even got there.
I don't have to work quite like that anymore, thankfully, but it's still not easy. Drilling, completion and operating costs are all going up and because of shale oil, prices are very unstable. It's hard to make a plan, a budget; everybody, it seems, is always wanting to make oil extraction more costly, and less profitable. The TRRC, or the EPA is always after me, like I have a big target on my back. A fella has to maintain a sense of humor about it, trust me.
I am fortunate to have worked in the era I did, doing the work I loved, the way I wanted to do it. On my own; honorably. It's been a helluva journey.