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Welcome to Energy 101 with Julie McLelland and Jacob Stiller. Join us on our mission to help raise the world's energy IQ.
0:00 Welcome to Energy 101, where we ask the dumb questions, so you don't have to. Today we have my sale. Diaz, she is head of BD at midnight marketing. She is the queen of a wire line and she
0:14 actually invented wire line.
0:17 But she is the first and maybe only female wire line influencer out there. So we're excited to ask all the questions about wire line. Awesome. Thanks for coming. Thank you guys for having me I may
0:29 be a little rusty on wire line because it's been probably like five, six years that I've been out of the field, but it's in my DNA. So well here, I got a great way to kick us off because, you
0:41 know, it's a wire. The wire line job is it all comes down to one piece of equipment, essentially. So I could just pull up a picture and we kind of just go from there. So I'll just put this on
0:54 screen. Yes. I believe this is a wire line truck, right? That's a wire line truck So I actually just shot this. Uh, a few weeks ago in Midland. So I'm so cool. It looked like AI. That's not
1:07 good. I thought it was a, I just looked so crisp. It's a, is it a big one? Um, like, is it a big wire line? No, that's a very normal. Oh, so well, actually what's funny is that you're like,
1:18 okay, wire line is a job and you it's like, okay, what is that? And then you look at a picture and you're like, I think I can understand already what it does. Right. So I love that. It's very
1:27 simple, but why don't you go ahead and break it down? Well, I love that by looking at it. You know what it does. Because when I first started and I googled it, I was like, I have no idea. Like,
1:36 just by looking at the cable, no clue what any of this was. So just before we get into our line to explain like what's on the screen. This doesn't, it's a wire line truck, but I would say
1:49 traditionally they look more like, I guess you could say like a garbage truck. That's exactly what Chad said, or someone said. Yeah, I mean, people used to be like, Oh, you drive the garbage
1:58 truck. You know, like, yeah, that's my office, actually. So as you see those little stairs that are kind of hidden behind that red thing, there's a door that you open, and then that's really
2:09 like a room. And there's two computers there, you would connect your laptop to it, and then there's a window, because you need to look at the rig, or like the frack pad of whatever you're gonna
2:19 be putting down whole. And then there's like a little joystick where you move the cable up and down as fast as you can, or slow. And so it's kind of an interesting thing, because that's where you
2:30 are for the perforating guys. It's more like 12-hour shifts for open hole, which we'll get into. I was like, you could be there for two weeks, and that's like your home for two weeks, or
2:43 depending how long the job was. you've got a microwave, a coffee maker, you need one of those. Basie. Basie, yes. A garbage, and then that's pretty much it. And then like two big,
2:57 comfortable chairs because your operator's gonna need to be moving the winch or you, and then somebody needs to be looking. Yeah, they gotta be gamer chairs. And then honestly, you would sleep
3:06 there too, so you would sleep on your chair, or sometimes it had a little bench and you would kind of just curl up at night and sleep in there. That's so funny Okay, I wouldn't actually go back to
3:15 like, when you first didn't know anything about Wireline, what was it like learning about it and how did you learn? And then take us through your first job that you ran. Okay, good. So when I
3:28 signed the offer letter, I still didn't really know what I was gonna do. I remember youtubing it and going on Google and other than that kind of image, or it was just an image of like the cable,
3:39 that's all there was. And so what's really nice with the service company that I, you know, worked with. straight out of college, they send you to training for three months. And for me, it was
3:49 in Abu Dhabi, it was in the Middle East, and it was a full training center and you trained every single day except for Sundays. And what it was, is they were really teaching you, um, like the
4:00 technology, they would go all the way into the electronics, how to fix the tool. If it would break, they would talk to you about the theory behind like how, you know, how the tool actually works,
4:10 the equations, it's really cool. Cause it was literally like going to school all over again. But very technical, just for these tools, the tools, there's multiple of them, which make up a tool
4:20 string and they would go like, you know, every few days, you would learn one tool and what it does and why a client would want it. And then also how to troubleshoot it, et cetera. And then you
4:29 would have these tests on fake wells where you would go out and they would pretend to be like a real client and they'd be really mean to you. And like really try to like prepare you for like when you
4:38 go out in the field and make you like mess up to see if you could take the pressure. Oh, you know, like real life thing. What's interesting is at the beginning, they would say like most people
4:48 fail this. Like, I think we were like 25 people and we ended like 12 people. So usually they like weave out people right at the beginning. It's like, if you can't handle these next three months,
4:58 you can't handle being a field engineer. And so I was very competitive on like, I'm not gonna get kicked out of this island. You know, like I'm gonna be here. I wanna win. And so that's pretty
5:09 much what you do. They would test you every few days, like multiple choice, et cetera. And then so by the time you graduated those three months, it was like, you know, the tools well enough.
5:18 So I think that's what's cool about that company and a lot of companies do this is you would never have learned this in the outside world or in school. So they kind of - Right, hands on. Yeah.
5:28 Some smaller companies, though, they really just throw you in the field and figure it out. We had nicely like three months of figuring it out with a teacher. That's nice. Okay, so run us through
5:38 your first job outside of learning. Yes, so three months later, I was sent to Alberta in Niskiou, and that was where my location was. And my first job was actually a pretty small job. It was
5:50 like a four-hour job. And you do shadowing with another engineer, so you don't go out and do like a well by yourself until you break out. So you have a green hat for the, I think I had a green hat
6:02 for like four-ish, five months. And then when you get a white hat, you have to go and do a - Like a legit green hard hat. Green hard hat until you
6:10 break out That's the term, you break out and you have a white hat. That first job was easy. I think what was interesting was everything they taught you in school was not at all how it actually
6:21 works out in the real world. Classic. Yeah, it was like, and you're the typical like new kid. You're like, Wait, we
6:28 were taught that - we're supposed to follow this checklist. You were supposed to do that way. You're not supposed to do that, yeah. But I didn't do that 'cause I knew that if you did that, you
6:36 would not be liked And so you just have to play dumb and be like. Even though you're an engineer and you went through this training, like these guys are way smarter than you. They've been here for
6:44 longer than you. Right. So for me, it was just like, wow, do they, do they actually think that, like, in the training center, they, people followed all these rules or do they know? But then,
6:53 you know, and so I would say complete opposite of like all the checklist, all the things that were like, we would get in big trouble in the school. If we did that, it was like, oh, we don't do
7:02 that here. You know, so I was like, okay. So you just kind of had to take the best of both worlds And then when you would go out on your own, then you could really make it yours. If I wanted to
7:11 follow more of the guidelines and I wanted to be a little bit more strict, they would respect that. But when you were with another engineer, it's like, it was our show to run. Yeah. So did you
7:19 run it the first one? Like where you kind of the, I don't know what you would call it, assistant to someone else who was like leading the job. How long did you do that for? So that was about five
7:28 months where you would every hitch, you would go with a different engineer and go out and how they did. And I think that was really cool too because everybody does it their own way and different. I
7:39 like the way they did this. I like the way they did that. So you kind of piece everybody's experience and then you make it your own when you go out. But for the beginning, they usually don't let
7:48 you touch the winch because that's that cable in the back. And if a back spool's terrible, it's a horrible job. You guys should put one out up there and I have a picture and a video of a back spool.
8:00 Is it common? It is, but it's when you're not paying attention to the winch because what happens is the cable needs to move perfectly round as it's going in or out and every row matters. The second
8:14 you skip a row, you have to stop, go back down and fix it from the start. Even if you skip a few, you're in
8:24 the truck with the little thing. You have to bring it down and back up. It's like playing - So what is the winch? What is the winch? It's just like a joystick. It's called the winch. Okay, okay,
8:31 okay. So you go up and then you go down. And even missing one flange, I'd be like, why are we, like, who cares? Like it's fine. And they're like, oh, no, like this matters. After pounds
8:40 and pounds and pounds of cable. And there it really matters. And so what happens is, let's say you're running in the hole and you're going pretty fast and it hits something downhill by accident.
8:49 And then it stops you, but you don't catch it 'cause you're talking on the phone. We were watching movies, whatever. It backs pools in the sense that the cable's going in, but you're not moving.
8:60 So it just piles up inside the hole And then you're kind of screwed because now you have a bunch of cable in the hole. And then when you're gonna come back in, the cable's removed itself from the
9:11 bottom because now it's like, it's just stuck. But the wheel continues. And then in order to fix that, that's multiple hours of trying to fix it. And when we had one of our really big ones,
9:23 which I'll show you the picture, it was freezing 'cause it was in Canada and it was like minus 40. And those guys were out there trying to fix and tape the cable to hold it together. And the tape
9:34 would just fall off 'cause it was so cold. And it was like, oof, you never think about a backspool until it happens to you. And then you're super crazy critical when it comes to whoever's running
9:43 the winch and want someone that's experienced. Yeah, 'cause you don't wanna be out there. No. That much longer. So what was it like running your first job alone where you're leading? It was very
9:53 stressful, mainly because the company that I worked for, and I'm sure all the big, like main four major service companies, they're extremely strict on anything that you would do, you're fired,
10:04 like we had like the 10 golden rules of wire line and it was like, you can't be off depth, you can't perforate off depth, you can't break the cable. If you break the cable, you're fired on the
10:13 spot. So that you can't lose those source 'cause we dealt with radiation. If you lost, it's like this tiny little thing. If you, and it happened, okay, around the world, where people would
10:23 just forget the source and it would just fall on a rig, but you could literally kill people because it's radiating and if it falls in the well. well-screwed because now there's radiation in your way.
10:34 I mean, we dealt with so many stressful points at 22, 23 years old that I'm like, I don't even know how they trusted young kids with this kind of stuff, you know? Yeah, because it's like
10:46 explosives. It's everything. It's like, every job that you did was like, could be a huge disaster, especially because a lot of us didn't know what we were doing, like we were young. So I would
10:58 say like my first job and even like my first year, I was a stress nut. Like I was always scared to get fired. Everything you did, you wanted to like double check everything. You were a little bit
11:07 crazy. I would, I remember like I would have nightmares about losing a source and being like, did I put it back in the shield? Oh no, you know, like you like psych yourself up on whether or not
11:18 you did the job correctly. Is it common for the wire line to break? It's not common, but it could happen very easily How can it happen? So,
11:28 usually how it's happened and I saw it a lot in the field is Usually you have to plan your wire line job really well before you go out to the well. And I'm talking about open hole. So for a lot of
11:39 people, they may know more like the perforating, which is very common in West Texas. Open hole, which is what I was doing is becoming less and less common just 'cause you don't need to log wells
11:49 anymore. They've got so much history. But what would happen then is we would need to measure like the depth of the well, what tool string you were gonna run, how heavy is it? And then you have
11:59 different cable strengths So you had to kind of calculate everything. And then you would put a thing called the weak point. And it's just like a little bar and you would put it in the top of your
12:08 head of your tool string, which is a top tool. It's called a head. And you would need to put the right weak point so that if you wanted to break loose out of the well, it would break the weak
12:19 point and not your cable. Okay. So a lot of times though, you don't calculate it correctly or you're like, what head is that? Well, it's the weak point. I think we're okay. Like you're just
12:29 whatever And so that happened a lot where - What's on the, what's, what, what weak points on that head again? Like we've done like so many jobs, we forget. And when we went in a well that wasn't
12:38 like that, the math didn't make sense. And so when you get stuck, which happens quite often, you just never know whenever you put something down whole, if you're going to get stuck or not. And
12:48 you would get stuck and you're like, oh, okay, I need to pull. So then you would have to count, you would have to call the management and say, we're stuck. You have to alert them right away and
12:56 let the client know right away. Cause the thing is this could become catastrophic cause then you have to fish, nobody wants to fish in a well. And so it was like, okay, you call your boss, you
13:04 say you're stuck. Then they start helping you out on calculating the weak point and how much tension can you pull on the cable without it breaking? Cause if it breaks, all of your tools down whole,
13:14 fall into the well and you've got radiation inside of them. So then now you've got radiation in your well and you can't get it unless you fish. And fishing is not always successful. So we're all
13:26 sweating cause this is the clients well millions and millions of dollars at stake. And so really you just calculated and that's how you would break a cable as if you calculate it wrong. And we're
13:37 like, okay, we're gonna try 5, 000 pounds according to the weak point, we're okay. And you pull and all of a sudden the truck goes like, or you're like, oh shit, like we're screwed. Like the
13:48 second that happened to me once, like the truck like balancing and we're like, okay, I'm fired. Like, yeah, yeah. So I got lucky with mine on why I didn't get fired, but yeah Let's get into
13:59 the actual tool. Like, I think we all understand that like, you're putting wire down a hole and there's something at the end of it you keep referring to as a tool. What are you actually doing
14:09 that's benefiting the entire project and what is, what stage is the wire line in? Like use cases. Yeah, like what are you doing? What is a tool? Why is there uranium in it? Yeah. Why is it
14:20 radioactive at least is what you said. Yes, yes. There's two radioactive. There's a gamma ray
14:27 on one tool on one tool.
14:30 there is uranium and then there's another one with a neutron pulser. There's a few of them actually. So really what it is is, so you've got the waterline cable and then you have a set of tools that
14:38 go in a well. That's all depicted by what the client wants. So the client may be looking for, I wanna check what the resistivity is. I wanna check the porosity. I wanna check the lithology of the
14:50 formation. I wanna check how big my hole is. So we had caliper. So it's really like an ingredient list of really what the client wanted to see down hole in the wall. So that's for open hole. Open
14:60 hole, yes. Yes, then I can get into a case hole. But for open hole,
15:05 it's really, what's the zone? What zone are we in? Where's the oil? Where's the water? Where's the gas? There's your blind, obviously, when you're drilling, or you kind of have an idea with
15:16 maybe like some geology maps and maybe some seismic, but you don't really know the depths. And so with wire line was you wanted to make sure that the drilling depth made sense 'cause we go all the
15:27 way down and we touch TD. And then we've read in our cable, let's say it's 10, 000 feet. And then the drillers said they drill like, I don't know, 9, 800 feet. We could be like wire lines
15:37 right because we've got cable that's straight all the way down versus pipe that moves and flexes. So A, they wanted to check their depth. They want to check the whole size and make sure also if
15:47 there's any wash outs, if there's any holes where the well goes up or down because they're going to need to case that. And then a lot of times we would wireline read that. Like we would have a
15:56 caliper So it's a tool that has a caliper, just like an arm. And so it would calculate how big the arm would move. Oh, as it's going up, it's going up, down big, interesting. And then it gives
16:06 us like a whole shape of the well. This is on the end of the wire, right? No, there's multiple. So you stack different tools. And this one was usually like in the middle somewhere, the one with
16:14 the arm. The bottom, bottom tool was usually, it's called a bottom nose because it needs to be able to hit and come back. It's just rubber. And then we usually had an induction tool that gives
16:24 you the resistivity of the tool. So if the wire, let's say the wire is like 2, 000 feet down, how many tools are connected at that point? It depends if the client wanted the full suite or if they
16:34 just wanted one tool. Like I had, I think one tool string I had on the through bit one was
16:42 like 180 feet. It's like 10 tools put together and each tool is probably the length of this table. And so you connect - Do you have to assemble them? We had to assemble them on the catwalk. So if
16:52 you wanna add a tool, let's say you're 5, 000 feet down No, you gotta come back to surface. How does it, it's coiling up though. How do you put a tool on it when it's coiled? Okay, so, so how
17:03 it works, so you've got the cable, right? Right. And then the very end of that is called the rope socket, which is the cable, like literally the metal pieces, like not the metal, but like the
17:12 wire coming out and it twists into a cable. So at the end, it's just like a bunch of strings, like the cables like this. Each of them have a socket that you plug into the head electrically. So
17:24 now you've got electricity kind of coming through the tool. And then this is called a head. And the head is white. The head is just like the top tool. It's just a metal piece. It's like this big.
17:34 It's like cylinder. And that has all like your brains. It's got like the the boards that pick up everything underneath it. Yeah. And so from there, you would connect one tool and then another
17:45 tool and you kind of have a like a wrench and you just you you plug one tool at a time on the catwalk. You set it all up on the rig and then the rig picks it up and you bring it down into the well
17:56 and then you put the head at the top. So now after your head, it's a piece of cable. And so as you're running the cable in your entire tool strings going downhill, does that make sense? Does that
18:05 answer your question? Yeah, I'm I was thinking of it way too simple in my head. But let's go further. I mean, not only are you attaching these tools to a wire, the wire isn't just a vehicle for
18:17 the tools. The wire itself is like super advanced and like Full of electronics, tech, telemetry is what we would call it, where it would be able to link up and down and send information through
18:28 the wire to your computer. Right. 'Cause we were monitoring every tool and then every tool had different measurements. So to your point on like, why would a client want induction? Well, 'cause
18:38 the induction tool gives you resistivity and it had like different resistivity rings at each line. What does that mean? What does that mean? So
18:45 what it is, it's
18:48 kind of interesting how all this works is it's very basic like science in a way where it's like to have different rings. So like the tools like this, and then the ring has X amount of resistivity,
18:60 like 1M, or like one resistivity is like how the - It resists. How it resists rocks. So every, like resistivity is different for water. It's different for shale. It's different for limestone.
19:15 It's different for gas. Okay, okay.
19:17 And so you're reading all these things and it's giving you the resistivity across the whole - So you can tell what it is. Yes, and then the software would then translate it and be like, Water, oh
19:28 no. Like it's just giving you a bunch of measurements and you know what that is. What it means, yeah. There's equations behind everything of what it is. Right, right. So there's resistivity,
19:38 there's porosity with the neutron tool. So the neutron tool pulsates that neutron, which is a radioactive source and it travels through the rock and it comes back. And whatever the tool reads,
19:51 it's like, oh, the neutron traveled XML and came back. It means that this rock was this porous, not porous. And so all of these data points are super useful for the client 'cause then they could
20:03 understand their well. That's why you log a well. 'Cause you've got a hole in the ground, but you don't know what's there. So that's why you would call waterline open hole was really giving you
20:12 like a map of your downhill well. That's interesting. I don't think I've ever like, I don't know what we talked about last episode we did with you, but I feel like I'm learning so much right now.
20:24 Yeah, so let's talk about the process more, or like the needs or whatever. Like, wire lines kind of an early stage thing, right? Yes. Is it actually technically part of EP, exploration and
20:34 production? Yes. Yes. So after I explain the process, I'll get into the wire line that I think a lot of people know, which is more the pump-down perforating side of the business, which is in
20:49 the heavy in the frack side. Right. Open hole and case hole was more right when never, they drill a fresh well. Let's say it's the intermediate or the top of the well or even the lateral before
21:01 they case it and cement it. And that's also something that wire line was helpful with is when we give them the volume of the well, depending on how many wash outs it has, they can calculate their
21:10 cement. So they would wait on me and then they would call cement and say, we need X amount of cement, 'Cause now I have the will. And so really, we are right at the drilling stage. We're right
21:19 at the beginning. There's still a big drilling rig when you come out and log the well. There's no casing, there is casing, but not the whole well hasn't been cased. 'Cause if you have casing that
21:29 we can't read the stuff that need to be touched, touching the formation of the wall. Yeah, so I mean, the really dumb it down, one of the first things you do is seismic, which is just basically
21:40 they're getting some kind of underground map, some industry does that And then they drill a hole. Call us. Literally like hole and dirt, like no casing, which is like cement or whatever. Then
21:54 y'all go in there and like essentially double check, right? Like, hey, let's double check the seismic and see if all these things add up. And is it kind of like that? Yep. And then eventually
22:05 like, why line does their job, they leave, but then they can come back for other uses, right? Like that picture I pulled up was at a fracking site, which is way after. So it's like, y'all have
22:13 multiple, reasons to visit a site and do essentially kind of the same thing. Yes, how it works in the industry though, is like if you do open hole wire line, you just do open hole wire line. You
22:24 would never see a wire line open hole truck with a crew come back and do fracking. 'Cause it's all different tools. It's different cable, the cable's different. So with open hole for the big like
22:34 high end tools, you need a Hepta cable, which means it needs seven conductors. Like it needs seven, it's so much heavy data of all those tools that it needs seven For a regular like perforating
22:45 log, it's called a Mona line because you just need one line. It's just like, shoot the gun, don't shoot the gun. There's not like a million stats coming in and out with all the data of the tools.
22:55 And so the cable is different. So you couldn't run it with a Hepta cable. And then also just when you're trained to run open hole, like you're just trained for that. It's kind of like in the cooks,
23:07 like you just are like the prep, you are the XYZ And so open hole wire line was in that first period. what you're talking about on the fracking side. So it's a different kind of wire line. It's
23:18 called case tool wire line or pump down perforating. It's a similar truck, different cable. And what it is is your tool string is really just a bunch of guns that you've put together with a little
23:29 bit of telemetry, a gamma ray. And they go off of the original logs to make sure that they're on depth. So there's a tool that they have called a gamma ray and then we have a gamma ray. And it's a
23:41 way for you to check your depths So we have like the same line that will show up down in the well, like from the actual nature. And then you kind of, you could be like, oh, we're like 10 feet off.
23:54 And then you check in because whenever you're perforating, you have to be on depth. Or else you're blowing a hole in the wrong spot. And then you may miss the zone, which would cost a lot of money.
24:05 And so on the case hole side, they have the same kind of rig up, but they're not on a drilling rig. So they wouldn't rig up on a catwalk.
24:13 Lubricants and kind of more pressure control equipment. We don't have to go through as much stuff because we're not on land like not on land But we're not on the ground. We're up on a rig
24:23 Yeah, they just shoot guns all day. Did you do both or did you only do open hole? I only did open hole But the reason I know a lot about the perforating side is because I was selling guns So when I
24:33 got out of the field, I was selling perforating guns to all the frack Castile guys. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. Um, and then so when you're out there running a job Is it the wire line crew who's
24:45 running all of it or do you all work with like the guys who actually work on the rig? No, so we are responsible for our own tools and everything The drilling rig helps us very minimal like opening
24:59 the well or closing the well or maybe if we need to use one of their Tugge, you know like connectors or just a little bit of that But I would say when you have a girl on location the rig hands
25:11 usually come and help the crew, so they're always really happy when you have a girl. They're like, yeah, the right guys are just going to help us because a lot of the tools are super heavy. Yeah.
25:19 And so normally on a wireline crew, you've got an engineer and two operators. Okay. And so usually they're like, it's very, very heavy stuff. And usually like the girls couldn't lift all of that.
25:30 So usually the guys would be like Hey,, do you guys need a hand? I know you're down one, you know, like, so they would get help. But other than that, they don't really get involved in anything
25:38 that they go to sleep They're like, okay, wire lines here, we can actually, yeah, they're so happy to see us because that means they don't have to work. Right. Right. Yeah. Let's you talked
25:47 about fishing earlier. Let's not gloss over it. Like that's like a crazy scenario that happens, I guess, often might be the word to use. But like, you're literally, you're dropping something
25:59 down 10, 000 feet, 20, 000 feet, you know, whatever, and you have to fix it or get it out. And I mean, you made it sound like it's like, Oh, it sucks and you have to fix it But like I've
26:10 heard it takes literally months.
26:15 Yeah. I hear it takes months, it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yes. Like maybe go in more detail about like how crazy of a situation that is. Yeah, so in the US and in Canada, the
26:24 field engineers don't have to fish themselves. In other parts of the world, I know that you also have to know how to fish. And then they send you out a bunch of tools and like just equipment to
26:36 fish. And then as the engineer, you also need to know how to run the show when it comes to that Thank God we didn't have to do that 'cause that's a very tough job. And I don't know how they make
26:45 like random people do it. I feel like you need to be a specialist in fishing. In the US, really the really good people was Weatherford. Like there were like, it was called Weatherford Fishing and
26:54 they would come out and fish. And really you have to help them with calculations. They need to know exactly what's down whole. And some of the important things too is like making sure that you knew
27:06 what the head was type of cable down with another go they're gonna thing is they're gonna do what because?
27:12 And what they wanted to do is, sorry, it's with the pipe. You go down with the pipe and it want pretty much what they wanted to do is like be able to hit that head and be able to like, grab it up
27:21 and bring it back up to surface. The thing is while you're going in there and messing around, you may not be grabbing it. And so it's very, it's days and days and days. It is, yeah. And then
27:31 also you may grab it and then it just falls and so. It's like the claw machine. Yeah, it's literally like the claw machine where you just never get it Like it's, or once you do, it may like just
27:42 fall back. The cool thing I would say about fishing is that the stress is kind of off of you as an engineer and you're like, okay, my buddy's here, he's gonna fish. He's the expert, I'll just be
27:54 here if you need, but like you no longer are that useful, if that makes any sense. So yeah, fishing could take. But you'll have to stay on location while they fish. We have to stay on the
28:01 fishing because it's our tools. And we are responsible for the sort, for the radiation and the sources. And when it comes back to surface, we need to rig down. So I think I did one fishing job
28:11 and it was about a month. So you're out there. I mean, what do you do? Like that's the whole - You just chill. That's the whole that y'all need to continue work. Yes. So you literally can't do
28:21 anything. Watch me, you can't do anything. You just have to stay there. You see like 100 rigs come, recruit changes. Like night shift, day shift, day shift. That's ridiculous. Can they even
28:33 do anything? They can't do anything. You can't do anything, you're like stuck Mind you, they have to help push the pipe in and out with the fishing guys up on the rig floor and they're like
28:43 talking on like the microphone. Yeah. Okay, up, down, down. This isn't quick. I mean, if it's 10, 000 feet down. You have to go all the way down. All the way down. All the way up. Yeah.
28:52 No. Send something else down, yeah. Do you not know if you got it until it's all the way up? Kind of, you can kind of tell because of the weight. Okay. So all of a sudden the rig's like, ooh,
29:03 the weight came up on the pipe. So you know you've got something. Good feeling.
29:07 Yeah, I mean, just to wrap on it, I hear there's like different ways to do it. Like the way you describe it, it's like there's like a gel sometimes that like - Sometimes, yeah, there's chemical
29:18 cutters that you can throw down and try to like cut the tool. And like, yeah. Like you're picturing it, it's like just kind of wedging itself in a hole, right? So you want to just kind of pull
29:28 it out or you want to like hit it so it goes back to normal or like, is it like literally - It's a whole science. Is there some that are literally like a clamp? Like, right? So there's a bunch of
29:37 different fishing methods. Yeah, that's so weird. It's hard. I think for us, and I'm sure that people listening, what we liked about it was, let's say a lot of the fishing jobs, really, even
29:49 though they may say it's our fault, it's always the client's fault because it's their whole, like your whole messed up. You know what I mean? Like, I'm putting my tools in, your whole caved in
29:59 or whatever, right? It's gaslighting 101. Yeah, it's literally like, if it's a fishing job, 'cause my tools are stuck 'cause I'm inside your house. Like I fell in your house, I'm gonna see you
30:08 to have a thing. You know, like that's the vibe. And so for us, our ticket would just grow insane. So like every day we're charging the client per hour. For y'all's labor. For our ticket, yeah,
30:18 yeah. Plus they have to pay the fishing guys. So a lot of times, like for let's say like two, three weeks, like we're just watching Netflix. Like what else is there? Do you have nothing there?
30:26 You're just chilling there, wasting your life away. But the ticket would just grow. So that's it, a ticket was like100, 000. By the time you're done fishing, it's like750, 000 And you got a
30:34 bonus off of the end ticket. So usually, you were pretty happy when you had to fish, other than the fact that you were going to be gone away from home for a long time. So it's like, do you want
30:43 the bonus, or do you want to just go home? I know you want in the money. I want in the money.
30:48 Yup. So these days, all wells seem to be kind of horizontal. You picture a well, they go down, and suck oil out like a straw bit. It's more complicated these days. The shell revolution,
31:01 fracking, it goes on. and you'll learn about that in other episodes. But these days, most of them go sideways as well. Some of them take U-turns. It gets pretty crazy down there. Can, does the
31:14 wire line do that? Or can it only go vertical and have gravity do to work? How does that work? Yeah, so normally you are relying on gravity with a regular wire line tool string.
31:27 There's a concept that's quite old called TLC and it's called tough logging conditions And that was like a show in itself. It's almost like fishing. It's very expensive to do. You have to use the
31:39 pipe. So you put the pipe down up to a certain place and then there's like an opening where the cable comes out and they kind of push the tools with the pipe. It's a very difficult concept 'cause a
31:52 lot of times the string would get caught in the pipe 'cause now you've got like a pipe moving and cable moving. It was just really big on failures and it would take a very long time. You have to go
32:02 super slow. You're not just running the cable now you're going with the pipe. And so overall as a very expensive process is very difficult to do. The rate of success was always quite low, um, but
32:15 then, um, different technologies came to be and there's one called through bit. Weatherford had their own like shuttle system. It's called and then SLB had one called through bit. And
32:25 interestingly enough, like two years after being a field engineer, they put me on the through bit team, which they had just bought in the US like a few years prior. And I became part of the
32:33 through bit team. And all I did was through bit, through bit jobs. What that concept is, is since regular wire line can't just go and like curve and like, you know, it's metal pieces that are
32:43 this long. How's that going to go like 90 degrees? You know what I mean? They created something where it's slim tools. They're like this big, like a through a through bit tools like this big
32:52 regular wire line tools like this big. So it's just these slim tools. They had the same measurement. You also had a source in it. It also had a caliper, but they kind of shrunk it and made it a
33:04 little bit more flexible. How it ran is you didn't need a cable anymore to log the well. So you had batteries and you had a memory, like literally like a USB stick like this big that would just
33:15 measure everything for you instead of a cable going to your computer. And so how it would work is you would put the drill pipe all the way to the bottom hole You would go in with your cable like a
33:26 normal wire line job and you would go down all the way through the vertical. And whenever the dog leg would start to kick off into a horizontal, we would kick in the pumps. So we had like a bunch
33:35 of hoses and water at the same. And that was like a really interesting dog 'cause you were down on the truck, your operator was up on the rig floor and you literally had to pump down like with a
33:47 microphone and I'd be like, okay, turn on the pumps at 20 strokes per minute. Okay, 30 and you would have to guess How much to pump? looking at my tension, if I felt like I wasn't flowing, I'm
33:59 like, dude, I'm like, I'm not going. I need the pumps higher. And then the guy would put in more speed. And so you're like playing a game. You're like, okay, I need 50 pounds. And you're
34:08 trying to get through that entire thing. And you know, if you made it there or not, because you know how deep the well is. So I knew that my cable had to match. And then you also kind of feel
34:17 like a little bit of a hit when it gets there. So that was a very difficult process. Sometimes it would take us multiple times to pump down Like, hey, I can't get past the '98, like the '92.
34:27 This is too much of a curve. We would go back up, restart the pumps. Let's pump back down. Sometimes it would take us multiple times. Sometimes it would be like, ooh, it would just flow in.
34:37 But those were all very, very stressful. 'Cause you could also break a cable. Like it was just - Sounds like it. And you're doing all this stuff, like 10, 000 feet down in the ground, and you
34:45 have your blind. Other than your tension going
34:49 like Once you get into the bottom of the well, and you are gonna release. There's this little button that you would click. that would break off, it's like a little motor at the top of the head for
34:60 the through bit. And if I knew that I was at the bottom of the well and I went through the bit, that's why it's called through bit. It was a, it's not a drilling bit, but it's just a, that looks
35:10 like a bit and it had a hole in it. My tools needed to land. And then at the top, there'd be a ball that would hit the bit. So that's when you knew you got it. And so the drill bit was just there
35:20 to hold that ball to hold all the tools below you. And so you would click a button and it would send like power, like DC power, and it would just spin that little motor. And that meant that my
35:31 cable would break off from the tool. And so I would read the amps and be like, okay, I think I burned it. You were supposed to burn the connection. And so if I felt like I burned the connection
35:41 and I dropped everything, I would do some checks prior to make sure that my tools working, my batteries are working, it's recording. You have to click record. People would do a whole job and they
35:50 forgot to click record. Well, it happened. Well, you would do the whole job, you had no data.
35:56 Like if we did the podcast, we didn't record. So again, all these variables, when you do waterline, that it's just like, you just need to be on top of your shit at full time, like any failure
36:06 is a big failure. And so after you disconnected the tool, you would just pull back to surface and re-bring all the cable. And then the tools are down whole, your cable's done. You could move the
36:18 truck away, you don't need the truck anymore. And then the rig guys would pull one stand at a time, want all the way, and so the pipe acted like the cable. So because you don't have depth, you
36:31 don't know what feet you're in, the tools blind, it just has data and it has time. And then the pipe had time and length and like depth. So as that pipe is being moved, we would take the data, I
36:44 would pull into the PASON, which has all the data from the rig and you would merge it together. And so you would merge them using time So you know, at this step, you were three o'clock and 25
36:55 minutes. you know, it's 3 pm. and then your data says 3 pm. but no depth. So you would take the data from the tool and you matched it. And then so now you had data versus depth. When really
37:07 they both had time and you match the time. Yeah. And now you have a log because now it's on batteries. So that's how we were able to log the entire horizontal entry scene. I got I got way more
37:19 complicated than the first half. Yes. It was high-tech. Yeah. That's crazy. Wait, I have a follow-up question on that. Is that how they also frack horizontal wells or like do that? So the
37:32 reason you wanted to get the well horizontally is because they wanted to see where the rock was like the softest and where the shale kind of was so that they could pick their points on where to frack.
37:43 So with that data, they would say, I'm on a frack at this step, at this step, at this step. That was a whole purpose of it. Yeah. Yeah, let's wrap up the technical nitty gritty stuff. with
37:55 just like, what is the future of Wireline? You know, I've heard that like,
38:01 it's not really needed always. It's not like a necessary step compared to like drilling a literal hole. Like, like, why is that? What is the future? What do, you know, what are we looking at?
38:11 Unfortunately, Open Hole
38:19 Wireline just has gone smaller and smaller and smaller. And it's because you, like if you look at just a Permian, they've logged so many wells over the last 80 plus years that it's become cookie
38:27 cutter where you're like, okay, well if this formation's here and it's been here for 50 other wells that are right beside me, we're gonna just take a gamble. And so it's become more of like, we
38:36 don't actually need logs for every well 'cause you can, they've already have a good enough like down-home map of where so many wells have been, you know, logged in the past X amount of years. So
38:47 they don't really need you anymore. And then even for like volume calculations for the cement, It's all, they can all calculate all that stuff now. Yes, a lot. It doesn't have to be perfect
38:56 anymore. For perforating, for frack, that's a must, which is why they're so busy on that side. You gotta be fracking, you have to be making holes with the perforating guns and you need wireline.
39:07 But for your regular exploration, they don't need it anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Only big exploration fields like Guyana and shore off deep you're whenever or
39:17 you've got a new field, then you're gonna need some wells to be logged 'cause you don't have enough data and information, but a place like the Permian or even like a lot of places in the US, you're
39:26 like, we know this formation so well by now. Yeah, that was really good. That was really good. Like you really dumbed it down the best I've heard so far. Like, I understood. Let's end it with
39:39 some fun on screen stuff. I will kind of get into more of you and what you did. You mentioned you were in Alberta and we just kind of like, oh yeah, okay. But it's like pretty crazy. Like you're
39:50 not like border of Canada, Alberta You're up there, right? So here on screen, I got this skyline. What is this? That's Cal, no, that's Edmonton. Yeah. So where - Edmonton. Edmonton.
40:04 There's literally nothing to do there. Sorry for anybody from that's from Edmonton. Yeah,
40:08 I mean, if we look at the map, it's pretty up there. Yep. So where were you? Did I go touch it? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, the mic will be kinda weird, just yell. It could pick you up. So
40:22 this is where the base was It was like right below it, it's called Nisku. And then we would work like here. Whoa. Here, we would work in BC, and then right at the border here of Northwest
40:32 Territories. So this was all like 15, 14, 18, 24 hour drives. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And we would drive our little truck. Is there roads? There's roads, yeah. But we worked like here. It was
40:48 all here. That's actually insane. Wait, what basin is this? I don't even know. I don't remember. It's
40:58 uncharted territory. It's like, there's nothing up there. There's nothing. It was just a lot of where we would go with these small little towns with one gas station, a motel, and a Chinese
41:11 restaurant. And their people are like a Chinese restaurant. They're like, what? I mean, if you keep going up, I think you hit China. Yeah.
41:18 That's a joke, I'm not an idiot. Yeah, there's nothing there I mean, talk about, to keep, I wanna hear more like, what the hell is going on up there? Yeah. Like, there's nothing, right?
41:31 No, there's just small little towns, small little towns. I mean, there's Grand Prairie, there's Fort McMurray, there's Peace River, there's Fort Nelson, Fort St. John. It's all these little,
41:41 like - Okay, shout out. If there was a Walmart, I was like, very happy. I was like, this is gonna be an awesome hitch.
41:47 A lot of gas station food. But I was a little crazy when it came to like food, you know me. And so I would always like prepare like a cooler with like cut up vegetables and they're all thought I
41:59 was crazy. They would just order pizza like every day. And I'm like meal prep. I got a great segue. You're always, you always queue me up because I'm going to pull up three images. And I want
42:09 you to describe what describes what you eat on a daily basis.
42:17 What is the first thing I'm only crabby patty So
42:20 they're feeding you on the, on the sites and when, when you're at, when you're not there, there's not, not exactly Michelin restaurants out there. So what would describe, which image, the
42:29 first, second or third, would describe what you were in taking every day. Okay. So two, two of them. Okay. One would be the first one because there's really nothing in that town or like the
42:41 food that I brought with me like didn't last me or it's gotten moldy by that point because I would bring like a lunchbox. Um, but.
42:49 there was a lot of jobs that we would get to go on, like bigger projects where you would go and sleep at a man camp. And that's what number three looks like. Ooh. And we would have - It was good.
42:59 Oh my gosh, you could gain 50 pounds that winter. Like always - They always have dessert. It was free, first of all, okay. Free. And it was free everything you can think of. Like, I mean, it
43:12 was the best food I've ever had in my life. It was just like a free cafeteria of like free for all. There was an ice cream machine, there was popcorn machine, there was everything, 'cause we're
43:20 all like, we're away from home from like months out of time when we would go up to those northern places. And so they really made sure that like, at least the food was good, and they had a gym,
43:30 they had like a movie room, you had a small little bedroom, but going to camp was my favorite thing in the world. I didn't have to cook, I didn't have to clean. I didn't have to do anything. You
43:38 had cleaning ladies. I mean, I loved it. And then every Friday they would do like steak night with shrimp like, big shrimp. And then on Sundays, there was always turkey dinner with mashed
43:48 potatoes. I mean, we were very well treated, yeah. Just like offshore, offshore gets really good food. I didn't know everyone was offshore, but they look like they have good food. But my dude,
43:57 those are very nice camps. If not, you get like trash out on location. Like, you get the middle guys in the middle and I like, we get like a barbecue once in a while, but yeah. Or the tacos
44:07 from like the gas station. Yes, yes, very common. Yeah, I mean, that pretty much wraps it up. But I mean, like, is there any other crazy stories being out there working or just like your
44:17 lifestyle? Like, are you out there dating? Do you have friends? Like what's life in Edmonton or like the outskirts of Edmonton? Yeah, okay, so this is actually a funny question. I would say a
44:31 lot of what I saw was your young, you're coming into the oil patch, you're like 22, 23, just graduate college. And you're working with a bunch of dudes who are a lot older than you or just older
44:43 And so I would see. a lot of, at least the girls, like they would all have like a operator boyfriend or the mechanic or like, you know, like everybody, because there's nothing else to do. So
44:53 like that was like your dating pool was like another engineer or like your crew. So I saw that weirdly for me, like I was always with who my husband is today. Like since I started, I was dating
45:06 him like seven years prior to that. So like I was almost married at that point, but I was like 22. Where was he? He was in Montreal, but then he moved to me with me to Edmonton while I was a
45:16 North. He was just chilling in Alberta. And what's funny is so like obviously I was never dating anybody and I was very oblivious to things because like I guess people just didn't talk to me about
45:25 like what they were doing because they're like oh she's like a saint and she's just hanging out by herself. And so when I would hear like oh yeah like they would like hook up in that truck and I was
45:33 like what? Like I couldn't believe people did this at work. I was just like that is insane you know. Or it's like I remember like we would go to the hotel or the motel like after a hitch or
45:43 whatever. you should've seen what happened last night. You know, people were walking out of people's rooms and I was like, what? Like I just did not believe this stuff happened. You're like in
45:51 your room asleep. I was literally in my room like watching the Bachelor, like literally. But I know that that really definitely happened when it came to dating, seeing people definitely all dated.
46:01 I think something that's really funny is all of the guys would always ask me about my husband to like, why are you here working? Like, where's he, you know? Like, he'd be like, why are you
46:11 doing this job? You know? I was just like, I don't know, this is the job I chose, and I like it. And then they were always like, isn't your husband worried about you being out here with a bunch
46:22 of us, or a bunch of dudes? You're always sleeping in man caps and hotels? Isn't he jealous? 'Cause I would never let my girl do that, or whatever. So I was like, that's a really interesting
46:32 question. I've never thought of that. Let me ask him. So when I went back home after my hitch, I'm like, hey, I'm like, now I have this question. why aren't you jealous that I'm out there with
46:43 like a bunch of guys on the rig floor and like all this stuff away from home, like you've never questioned me, you know? And he was like, have you seen what guys in the oil fields look like? He's
46:55 like, I'm good, like you're fine. And I was like, oh, okay, yeah, I guess that makes sense. But he was just so like - Totally. They're like, half of them are missing like five fingers, like
47:04 you're fine out there by yourself, you know? And they're Canadian, so they're missing teeth. Yeah, he was just like, not worried, it's good You're not working in like Hollywood or anything,
47:13 like last time I checked, you know? It's just funny. It's just funny. Yeah, so I was like, okay, I guess you got a point. But when it came, I guess, to lifestyle, and I think that's
47:24 probably like my favorite part of really talking about waterline, or just the oil field in general, is I usually tell people to do it when you're young. Like your 20s, go work in the field, go
47:34 work on a rig, go, that's the time in my opinion, to like hustle, work hard, If you don't have kids yet, you may not be married yet. You just have all the hustle in you to just go out and like
47:46 do hard things. 'Cause I do think like as you get older, it's just harder to go do that. Like I would just never go do that now in my 30s, but I loved that I did it in my 20s 'cause it builds
47:57 character, it challenges you every day. You're not choosing to just be like a cozy nine to five job and just be an engineer. Like you really chose a very difficult path, but the reward was there.
48:06 It was very fulfilling. It was fun to like get big jobs done And there was like an adrenaline rush that you had because the jobs were always so stressful that you wanted to like, every time you
48:16 would get your ticket sign from the client, you're like, okay, I'm a badass. Okay, we did this again. And you're like, again, onto the next day, you know? So for me, it was more like, it
48:24 felt like a roller coaster of emotions at all times and the money was really good, which is why people do it 'cause you're away from home, you're not partying. Like I would remember I would look on
48:34 Facebook and I would just see like all my friends having a great time back in the city You know get it, you know having kids or whatever. And I was like, wow, like I'm out here literally by myself
48:44 in the middle of nowhere. So that was a little bit difficult, but I just knew that this was a period of my life and that it was gonna be fine later on. Like it's just like, I was just, you know,
48:53 put my blindfolds and just like, I'm just gonna do this for five years. And that was my goal, was to do it for five years and then get up. Is that what happened? You did it for five years and
49:02 then you went to the office. Yeah. Yeah, it was getting harder on the fifth year 'cause it burns you out. You don't sleep You can't have a consistent routine. You can't have a diet. For a wire
49:15 line open hole, you're on call 247 to say that like. I'd. So you can't plan anything. Nothing. So you're like sleeping. All of a sudden you get a phone call at 3 am. It's like you gotta be at
49:23 the rig at seven and you just grab your stuff, pack whatever's in the fridge. You don't know when you're gonna come back. And so it was so all over the place that after a few years, you just want
49:34 like a normal life. I was like, I just want like a normal life. I just want to be a dinner at home at 6 pm. for once in my life. Yeah, exactly. So like it pays off, I think, of doing it early
49:45 on. Cool. Well, yeah, that's plenty of time. Yes. I mean, I've been one of the, I want to do a podcast forever of someone like you who went from like on rig to comfy office job. And there's a
49:58 lot of y'all out there, but maybe we could just have you back on or find someone else 'cause I mean, that transition's gotta be crazy. Oh my gosh. We'll do another episode. Yes Maybe someone who
50:09 does the opposite. Yeah, that would be interesting. This thing goes from the opposite of the field. It's so hard to go from the opposite of the field. I wanna do it. Somebody hiring me. Yes.
50:18 Yeah, technically it's not too late for us. Yeah. Yeah. We could go try it for like a day or two. A day or two. Just go for a day. Yeah. And we'll film it. That would be fun. Okay. That
50:27 sounds like a old discovery channel show. I met someone in Midland at our last event there And she actually was a rough neck on the rigs for. I can't remember how long she did it, but now she owns
50:44 her own company. Wow. And she was just a total badass. Like she has, I think four, five kids maybe now. And she like, I don't wanna get into like the birthing, but she had like unmedicated
50:59 births. Like she was just like a badass and everything
51:04 she did. And she was like, Yeah, come on, I'll hire you. That's amazing. I've never, I don't think I've ever, maybe once like a female drilling anything, like a, like a rake hand or. I feel
51:17 like you need to meet her. I don't remember her name, but she like, she's amazing. I mean, anybody who can last on a rake, like think about it, you have to like hang out with 10 dudes. And
51:29 every day, rough now, like hours that everyone just. They hate you. It's hard. She said that she's like, they like, they don't want you there. So they try to run you off. Probably, I can see
51:40 that. So they're like very, let's do half to do all the hard work. Yeah, they're not gonna like treat you well. Or give you the princess tree, man. No princess tree, man. No, no, no, no.
51:50 Yeah, yeah. All right, well, I think we're done here. Oh, thank you so much, this is so exciting.