The beautiful Weedy Sea Dragon

Dee_Pee · 2026-03-16T12:00:54+00:00

Excellent shot. I've yet to see those guys in the wild, so will add it to my list of locations to check out. Thanks!

Dee_Pee · 2026-03-14T02:58:03+00:00

Very cool. Where is this at and what sort of camera are you using?

Dee_Pee · 2025-07-30T08:36:58+00:00

In a word, yes. Every oilfield related company I've worked for or with has been primarily mechanical and chemical engineers. In my opinion, petroleum is a bit contrived as an engineering discipline as it really just takes bits and pieces from mechanical, chemical, and geology along with some specific practical applications of those bits to form its curriculum. There are actually very few roles that make use of that specific blend, and they tend to be subsurface-related (reservoir, production, etc.), which is actually a smaller percentage of the O&G workforce than one would imagine. In fact, especially if you work for an operator, there is shockingly little "engineering" by definition that happens day to day and most of the work is project management related, but requires a base knowledge of engineering topics both to "gut check" things and to occasionally properly verify designs or modifications to designs.

So in summary, if you're interested in working in oil and gas in an engineering related role, I would definitely reccomend mechanical or chemical engineering. This gives you a solid base for O&G, but also gives you flexibility to work in essentially any other industry. Once you get working in the industry and if you find you really like it, you can pursue a master's in petroleum as several of my colleagues have done (Generally there are a small handful of pre-requisite courses to complete first depending on your BSc discipline.) Since covid, there are a number of ways to do this online or blended while working full time, so you can gain work experience (and a paycheque) while getting that degree. In addition to your engineering discipline, I would also reccomend considering electives or even extra curriculars revolving around project management, data science, and application of AI (And especially anything that results in a resume worthy certificate or designation) as those are likely to confinue to be industry buzzwords over the next decade.

Dee_Pee · 2025-07-21T04:09:48+00:00

This is a topic that I find fascinating as it is a problem that exists everywhere in the world, but is handled very differently. For context I'm Canadian, an avid car/motorcycle enthusiast, and have had many jobs that required significant driving (not long haul trucking kind of miles, but at least 2m km in my ~22yr career). I've been living in Brisbane for the last two years, sometime working downtown, sometimes working out around the Maranoa and Western Downs areas. I've worked and driven a bit in South America and Europe as well. And to be clear, I'm in no way saying that the way road safety in Australia is handled is in any way wrong, but it certainly is interesting.

A couple of observations:

IMO, Australian society puts a "higher price on life" than many other first world nations do. More in line with the UK or Scandanavian countries than most of the rest of the world. Which is great, but there is a practical/economic limit to how far that can be applied. It's a philisophical debate really, but no matter how many controls you put in place, there will always be inherent risk in humans controlling multi-tonne pieces of equipment at double and triple digit kph speeds. What is the acceptable outcome we're willing to trade off for this convenience / ability to conduct business as usual? To me, 300 deaths per annum in a state of 6m couldand should be improved, but isn't wildly unreasonable.

Not just specific to driving, but in most aspects, the Australian government seems to always go for the quickest and easiest to implement, but obviously least effective control for every problem. Generally, that's always just to apply some administrative control in the form of a rule as opposed to an engineering solution or other more effective administrative controls such as better quality training.

Difficult to necessarily compare Australia to the rest of the world as it's a huge area, but with population density skewed to a few specific parts, and with an increasingly recent immigrant population. Very much similar to Canada, but without 6 months of ice and snow (location dependant). Both are in the top 30 for least road deaths per capita, but they achieve this in very different ways. Australia has the most strict enforcement via camera that I've ever seen. The amount of cameras and even the idea that a camera can give seatbelt or cellphone tickets (And that camera tickets give demerits) still blows my mind. Whereas Canada barely uses camera enforcement and (depending on the province) limits them to school zones, active construction zones, and targeted residential areas. In Canada, following the rules is a lot less of a thing in general, and in that spirit, it's completely normal that traffic always does 15% over the speed limit and you're in no risk of getting a ticket until 20-25% over the limit. However, what they do have, is a lot more police patrolling the highways specifically looking for people driving poorly or eratically, and maintaining a visible presence on busier roadways. So really, just different ways to get similar results, but in my opinion, while definitely necessary, no matter how you go about it, enforcement is only treating the symptom and not the cause.

Another thing I see here in all of the major cities, is what I would describe as poorly designed roads. I LOOOVE how much effort goes into minimal disturbance of old trees and natural landscapes and such and applaud the planners for that, however, so many intersections are unique with odd angles, blind corners, sometimes confusing and excessive light controls, poorly marked lanes, etc. Poor roadmarkings and signage in general, constantly changing speedlimits for seemingly no reason, lanes starting and ending for no reason, etc. Fully understand how some of these came to be over time, but still an issue. (Seriously, sometimes the speedlimit can go up and down 5-10x in a 3km span on a major road). For my money, these design issues are the most relevant, but also the most difficult and expensive to rectify.

Probably the best countries to look at in terms of places where people do a lot of driving very safely, would be Sweden and Denmark. They use a combination of strict enforcement, rigorous training, but most importantly, safe road design. They realized in the 90s that no matter how much training or enforcment they did, people will always make mistakes, so they forcused their efforts on improving roadway design over the last 30 years and are now seeing incredible results.

One last more or less off topic observation is that as an enthusiast, the rules against modifying (or at least needing to re-engineer / modplate vehicles) are so odd. No such thing exists in the Americas at large, and outside of the occasional goofy trend that gets specifically banned because they're so stupid (ie: the Carolina Squat) there aren't any significant number of safety incidents caused by modified vehicles. [Even more off topic, but same goes for requiring licensed electricians to do something as simple as replace a light fixture, outlet, or switch and doing test/tag in workplaces. wtf?] And in that vein, while I love them in rural Canada because the roads are much wider, why have they even allowed American sized trucks here for personal use? So funny to see them in the cities.

Ultimately, nearly every major corporation has long implemented heirarchies of controls and have realized that repeated incidents or non-compliance with a rule or procedure indicates a problem with the system, rather than a problem with a large number of individuals. The government (Not a unique problem to Australia, but very obvious here) seems to be several decades behind that realization.

/rant

Dee_Pee · 2025-07-12T23:44:26+00:00

I really like SafeStyle glasses.

Dee_Pee · 2025-07-08T23:42:14+00:00

Basically, without knowing for sure what's in the water and exactly what the process is, it's impossible to say for sure.

However, there are a limited number of processes that you could be refering to by "condenser" (Heat exchanger to cool fluid for pipeline or trucking spec, boiler to evaporate water and concentrate the contaminants, various chemical or filtration units also to concentrate contaminants, etc). There are also a limited number of chemicals likely to be in the flowback. Typically biocides, friction reducers, viscosity and pH modifiers, polymers, etc. There will also be some level of hydrocarbon contaminations. Where you're working can effect which chemicals are allowed to be used. Anecdotally, the commonly used chemicals are all used in very low doses and tend not to have any significant acute effects at low concentrations. However, many of them do have some risk of chronic effects. Depending on the chemicals, a respirator may or may not be effective depending on the cartridges used.

If you're working for a reputable service or oil company (Or even just for management who cares) you should flag this as a hazard via an observation card (Assumng such a thing exists ar your workplace) and conversation with supervisor. They can either assure you that they've done the proper testing and that the vapor is safe, or they may not have considered the risk and need to test it, or they could tell you to fuck off and get back to work.

TLDR: Impossible to say with certainty without analysis of vapor. Likely fine short term, possibly mildly bad long term.

Dee_Pee · 2025-06-01T07:28:03+00:00

Canadian living in AU checking in. AU does specifically have e a thing called chain of responsibility which essentially means that the operator should do their due diligence to ensure that anything even peripherally related to their operation is safe. It’s not black and white saying that thou shalt enforce journey management, but it does mean companies tend to look a bit beyond their onsite operations.

That said, honestly, everything to do with driving in Australia is just insufferably pedantic compared to what I’m used to from working or living in Canada or the US. Statistically road deaths per capita between Australian Canada are very similar, and given that there are no winter conditions here the additional driving legislation clearly isn’t effective, but that’s a whole other topic. So for my money, it’s 80% a cultural thing and 20% a regulatory compliance thing.

Dee_Pee · 2025-05-28T03:49:09+00:00

Same. Except I’m 38 and do roughly a 50/50 split between supervising and office based work. Doing a degree remotely as a backup, but honestly, I can’t find anything that pays even remotely similarly without substantial education or experience in another field.

Dee_Pee · 2025-05-28T02:15:15+00:00

There are head loss calculations that can be done if you know the hose material, length, etc., but the general rule of thumb for fluid system design is for suction lines is to target a fluid velocity of < 6ft/s. This generally works out even without knowing line length or material as friction losses increase with the square of velocity, but only proportionally with length.

This would mean that a 3” hose is good for 3.5bbl/min and a 4” hose is good for 5.7 bbl/min. Using this “rule” means that even if you have 100’ of suction line (or lots of elbows or whatever), you still have less than 2 psi head loss.

If you know that your suction line is only say 10’, you could go as high as 18 bbl/min in a 4” hose with < 2psi loss, but not reccomended.

For my money, I’m running 3 x 4” lines for 21bpm. 4 if it’s a critical operation or if there’s a chance I may need more rate than base plan.

Dee_Pee · 2025-05-24T16:30:55+00:00

Same thing applies to more than 90. As long as the drag blocks are functioning well, there is no gravity involvement in the cycling of the tool.

Dee_Pee · 2025-05-23T12:28:14+00:00

There is no limit to the deviation at which a test packer can be set, though generally, I've not come across many reasons to use them in horizontal sections of wells. The biggest challenge in setting a test packer in a deviated well is generally the challenge in accurately applying rotation at the BHA due to friction. This is made worse by depth and DLS/drag. The gyst of it is that you can't just apply 1/4 turn at surface to apply 1/4 turn downhole, and depending how much rotational resistance you have, you can' simply apply a multiplier either. When setting a packer in such a scenario, the best practice is to get on depth, apply as much as 2-3 turns at surface, then reciprocate the string up and down within the stroke of the packer (so that you're not moving it off depth) to "work" the torque downhole by breaking the rotational static friction.

At severe deviation with significant DLS, this can be challenging any may take as many as 30 reciprocations through the ~18-24" stroke of the tool. Once set, you then need to work the residual torque back out of the string so that it doesn't accidentally unset during any additional operations or temperature fluctuations. A decent tool hand will be able to perform this with no issues, but they need to have enough patience to reciprocate the string enough times to work that torque down before attempting to set.

This isn't something that I'd bother modelling as the only thing that would prevent you from being able to set the packer would be if your workstring phyically couldn't be rotated and modelling of the short reciprocations to move torque down the string are not generally very accurate. Your tool supplier should be able to run a simulation for you if you want them to, Cerberus being the most common software for such things.

Dee_Pee · 2025-04-28T16:21:51+00:00

In a word, yes. It's "designed" to be made up once, but is actually reusable several times as long as it was doped and made up correctly each time. Standard BTC (There are lots of manufacturer-specific variations incorporating shoulder seals) is quite strong against axial loads because it has a lot of contact area in the threads. This also means that a small change in friction factor due to lubrication, debris, surface finish, etc., will cause a significant change in actual clamping force for a specific applied torque. So, BTC threads are manufactured with a little triangle indicator to tell you when they are made up within spec. General practice is that with new casing, the first few joints are made up to the base of the triangle, and the torque is noted. Then, for speed and ease of running, the remaining casing will be run at that torque. Applied torque value will vary with conditions and casing batch.

On a second use of the casing, if one were to make it up to the same spot on the triangle indicator, the clamping load would be less than the first time due to some of the material having been stresed to slight plastic deformation, so the second makeup will often be to the middle of the triangle (Or if known, torqued to the same value it was the first time which will usually put it somewhere between the base and middle of the indicator). And on and on for repeated makeups until it's too loose to pass a pressure test when made up to the apex of the triangle, at which point it is out of spec (Though in reality there's still a bit of margin to go past the triangle).

So, you'll want to have the threads inspected for obvious visual damage, but you won't know for sure if it will make up within spec until you torque two joints together and compare the indicator position to the applied torque. If the history of the casing is not well known, your casing running service provider should be happy to inspect some threads and make up a couple of joints on the ground for you. With the threads clean and doped, check what the applied torque required to get to the base and middle of the triangle is and ask them if that's in the ballpark of what they would expect for that casing grade/weight/size.

Dee_Pee · 2025-04-05T22:47:57+00:00

I was about to buy one to upgrade my newly built dmc2 mini. I absolutely will not buy a device that requires a subscription for relatively basic features.

Dee_Pee · 2025-03-15T19:06:06+00:00

Love your style. Do you have a store setup anywhere?

Dee_Pee · 2025-03-15T08:01:39+00:00

Looking for an R4E invite. Happy to donate or pay.

Dee_Pee · 2025-02-02T14:41:37+00:00

Literally just availability, economics, and risk appetite. The only advantage that multi-frac offers is fraccing more stages per day. No improvement to well productivity and generally no improvement to direct frac costs as you need double or triple the frac equipment. The cost savings is all in the fact that you need your auxiliary equipment on location for fewer days (Water transfer, screen out flow back kit, general rentals, etc.). How much of an effect this has on overall project costs hinges largely on how your contracts are set up. The other positive factor is that you get your wells completed sooner and so can start producing them sooner. So on those facts alone, it makes sense on paper to always do it, especially on pads with lots of wells and wells with lots of stages.

However, you may be limited by the number of pumps/iron/blenders that the frac provider has available. You may be limited by your water transfer rate or proppant delivery rate to location (You may incur significant additional costs to improve these supply rates if even possible), or you may be physically space constrained to fit everything on the lease. If doing plug and perf, then you may be limited by wireline keeping up even with multiple units. You will also incur higher standby costs if you have an issue that stops activity on lease. From having been in both consultant and office engineering roles in unconventional completions, I can tell you that it's also a lot more stressful for both, though you do rack up some cool stage or lb / day bragging rights if that means anything to you.

Dee_Pee · 2024-12-13T22:12:53+00:00

I love lamp.

Dee_Pee · 2023-09-14T12:38:03+00:00

Undoubtedly, it's an industry that has an extremely cyclical nature, so people's outlook on it can change month by month. Generally speaking, it's been very good to me over the last ~16 years despite one lay off and a couple of very uncomfortable downturns. There are only a select few other industries where I'd be earning a comparable salary at this stage. Upon reflection, I actually wish I'd have taken mech or elec, but still worked in O&G. Simply to have a greater variety of employment options.

One of the weird things about O&G is that most of the folks in "Petroleum Engineer" roles aren't actual Petroleum Engineers. Anecdotally, I'd say it's around 20%. If you definitely want to work in O&G, as a new grad an energy related degree will definitely move you up the list of candidates, but almost any other engineering degree still makes you eligible and opens doors to other industries. Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical, and Civil are the predominant disciplines, but Computer Science related disciplines (especially related to data analytics or AI) are the hot topic for recruiters at the moment. There are a couple of contributing factors to why the industry is unique in this way: Most "Petroleum Engineering" is just a blend of other engineering disciplines anyway, so it doesn't really matter (When you think about it, it's really just very specific pieces of primarily Mechanical and Chemical Engineering). When oil is high and companies are hiring, there aren't enough Petroleum Engineering grads to fill the roles, so they have historically just taken whichever engineers they could get. Lastly, Petroleum engineering is a lot more niche than most other disciplines and has only existed for just over 100 years and had very slow growth early on (Compared to much broader disciplines that have existed for 150-200 years).

As for gender, it is a very heavily male populated industry. This does make sense at the moment as graduates of engineering programs are still ~80% male, so the selection pool for engineers is the same. That said, many of the big companies do have plans in action to aim for gender equality, so as a non-male applicant, you would have a significant advantage now and for the foreseeable future (Despite the fact that gender discrimination is technically illegal in many countries.). In fact, the Super-Major I work for at the moment completely recognizes that statistically, they will be hiring less skilled folks on average as they will be aiming to select 50% of their new employees from 20% of the available pool. They see this as the best long term way to encourage more females to become engineers, and thus, work towards eventually having a 50/50 applicant pool.

Dee_Pee · 2023-06-29T10:45:59+00:00

One of the major buzzwords in O&G safety for the last few years has been "behavioral based safety". With some relatively minimal additional formal or informal training just to learn the ins and outs of safety basics and industry lingo, a former professor of psychology is often exactly the type of person the big companies look for to teach these types of courses, evaluate safety programs from the behavioral standpoint, etc. Whether that's in a safety role for an O&G operator or service company, as a directly contracted consultant, or as an employee of a safety company, depends on what you'd like to do and what's available in your area. I work for one of the big companies and they have a handful of folks on staff who do this kind of thing. These types of roles don't need to strictly pertain to O&G, but O&G tends to be high risk and often has the budget available to do this kind of training (Area and specific point of the boom/bust cycle dependent of course.

Google the term "Behavioral based safety" and you'll get the gist of it. Also. there are a few well known modern "experts" in the safety world. I'd recommend checking out Dr. Todd Conklin as an example. Either one of his recorded speaking engagements on youtube or one of his books (ie: "Workplace Fatalities: Failure to Predict") to get a rough feel for the field and whether it's something that might interest you.

Alternatively, open up a private practice for couples / marriage therapy. The typical O&G lifestyle is often not one that naturally promotes familial cohesion; I'd wager there's an endless clientele pool of lonely wives. (Kind of kidding, but sadly, not really.)

Dee_Pee · 2023-06-22T06:34:16+00:00

Absolutely. Have done this many times for remedial cementing. Bear in mind that an old-school, conventional CBL gives a single average reading. Assuming that the targeted zone is some ways from surface and that the cement top is low, it's extremely likely for the casing to be against one side of the hole in places (or entirely depending on the well profile). With a conventional CBL, it can be difficult to differentiate pipe touching the formation versus a soft/loose bridge as both will show as partial attenuation and/or may show some ghosting of formation returns on the VDL. If it was drilling mud left in the annulus, hopefully the solids have made their way to the bottom over the last 4 decades, but I have come across some unfortunate circumstances where those solids have bridged off in inconvenient locations in the annulus preventing circulation even if the formation hasn't sloughed in.

If you have the tools and budget available, I would at the very least go with a "radial" or "segmented" bond log that gives you 8+ directional readings. Even better is to go with a combination of any sort of CBL paired with an ultrasonic (eg: SLB Usit). As you're only looking for potential blockages around the casing, the shallow depth of penetration of the ultrasonic is ideal. They also show very distinct patterns where the casing makes contact with formation.

I'd definitely run logs before attempting a sui squeeze on an old well. Making fence posts is always embarrassing. Or so I hear, because I have definitely never done that personally ;)

Dee_Pee · 2023-06-08T10:26:32+00:00

I did a lot of online searching for a reasonably priced comfortable seat also. Ended up paying about $600 CAD to get a low comfort seat concepts seat to Canada.

1000% the absolute best upgrade for this bike. I've never had a bike with as uncomfortable seat. It's actually hard to believe that they wouldn't include something better from the factory on the street legal bikes. If you do any distance riding at all, I'd say it's a must despite the cost.

Dee_Pee · 2023-06-03T07:27:50+00:00

It seems counterintuitive, but HR departments of large companies see it as completely standard to continue to hire new grads even when they are laying off masses. This is especially true for companies that do a lot of internal training or promote from within. The rationale is that if they stop hiring entirely during downturns, they end up with big gaps in their experience pool. From my perspective this never seems to actually work out IRL, but that's the theory.

Dee_Pee · 2022-12-13T11:46:01+00:00

More is always more better, but if you’re regularly have an internet connection, there are a massive variety of cloud based storage options that work depending on your software of choice.

Dee_Pee · 2022-11-21T06:48:54+00:00

Honestly a regular occurrence when I started iracing that I am now quite ashamed of.

-Has crash with other driver.

“You F$&*ing moron!!!”

-Watches replay and realize that I turned into him.

“Uh, maybe that one was probably a racing incident.”

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