Necessary Roughness

I had an opportunity to help someone in the field who was using our software, so I took it. It was a remarkably pleasant day. The software fix took about five minutes, but I stayed most of the afternoon to be sure the Service Supervisor was comfortable using our software. Oh, and there was that opportunity to take pictures.

I had also hoped to include audio of the sound of money being made, but I didn’t get to record the sound of the pumps priming up. The rest of the job is less distinctive.

We performed a Cement Production Casing job on this rig about 1½ hours south and east of Woodland, near Rio Vista, CA. We cemented 7000′ of 5½” pipe in the ground.

3″ steel pipe, called “iron”, was laid up to the red cementing head on top of the pipe. The head contained “plugs” which were pumped to clean the inside of the pipe at appropriate times.

	Two bulk cement trucks and one pump truck performed this job. The bulk trucks were daisy-chained to deliver dry cement to the “Elite” pump truck.
	Prior to pumping the cement, a surfactant was mixed in the open-air tanks and pumped downhole. During the cementing job it can get a little dusty and hard to breathe.
	The job was controlled from the top of the pump truck. Real-time charts were generated and dry cement samples were taken to document service quality.

Hearing and eye protection were required, as well as hard hats and coveralls. A safety meeting was held prior to the job to go over the procedure and to warn everyone to stay off of the rig floor during the job. During the job the pressure peaked at 1200 psi.