The Geo-Hut is adjacent to the derrick, hooked up to electric with heaters blasting 24/7 to deal with deteriorating colder and colder weather.
Snow started yesterday and has laid a six inch blanket atop the Geo-Hut roof. Inside the trailer-office-bunkhouse, one bed is covered with clothes,gear, and Max’s guitar. A sleeping bag is on the other. In a separate room is a desk, a microscope, and a place to spread geological maps. A bag of groceries is on the floor by the front door. There is no stove or frig and an orange portable toilet is at the edge of the drill site,at the field’s edge, and it, thankfully, has paper.
Max has been here several days, arriving after the well was surveyed and spudded. There are long stretches in drilling where nothing happens, then short quick stretches of anxiety or exhilaration when the drill bit enters a pay zone.
This evening, late, the creators of this business plan peer at samples, measure how the interior of the Earth is conforming to their mental picture of it, wait for more samples, decide which zones need to be tested to see if they are to be profitable. This well is the end of a long process of coming up with a prospect, leasing land, selling the deal to investors, lining up a driller, making sure your t’s are crossed and your i’s are dotted, all legal and proper.
We don’t stay all night, have an upstairs hotel room in Benkleman heated with three little electric heaters plugged into the walls. Tomorrow morning, early, we’ll be back to this well site looking for a profitable bottom line..
The oil business is predictably unpredictable, in a predictable way.
The rig moved in four days ago.
The drilling crew are cold and wet but crews run twenty four seven coming back out of the hole only to replace a broken or dull bit, or let a logger test a zone.
Despite what you read in the Washington Post, the Denver Post, the New York Times, the environmental impact of this rig is about as much as a fly on an elephant’s back.
Snow blew in yesterday and is falling earthward softly.
Big sloppy soft flakes hit a diesel power plant that runs all the rig lights and equipment, touch hot metal and turn to water on contact. Snow covers the roof of the mud logger’s SUV and dark mid west prairie mud is tracked inside the Geo-hut.
Near Benkleman, Nebraska, it takes us a couple of wrong turns before the new Caterpillar bladed road is found and we see a lit up oil derrick in the middle of a farmers corn field in a section of Nebraska farmland.
Oil is under our feet. When you drill in this area you have drilling history, some clues, some ” seismic ” data. Oil men are trying to reach layers of sand that have oil, permeability,and structure with enough pressure to push the black gold to the surface.
In old tycoon Texas days gushers exploded into the light of day and hardened drillers smiled and wiped black streams off their faces with oil soaked sleeves. There are still good finds to be made but the easy stuff has already been pumped out of the Earth.
In the Geo Hut, the guys look at samples, pour over maps with highs and lows of nearby wells marked and contour lines for the entire area surrounding this well.
Without money, as incentive, nobody in their right mind would do this.
By late tomorrow we will know whether we have anything, or not.
Most black gold is found in places people don’t live, can’t live, or don’t want to live.
Thom’s shop is full of heavy steel automobiles from the fifties and sixties, stripped down, in various stages of renovation.Paint and body tools are resting in the shop where they were used last,collecting dust on the hood of a Chevy Pickup or the roof of a Ford mustang.
Hanging on wire lines in the shop’s paint booth are a detached hood and car door, suspended from a cable running from one side of the room to the other. The painter can walk around the hood and car door, unobstructed, wearing his respirator , careful to keep the spray gun moving, not creating runs and catching all the nooks and crannies.
When the final coats of paint are done,my nephew Weston’s El Camino will be a beauty.
Collectors want their gems to sparkle.
When you put lots of time, thought, and energy into a project you want it to be worth doing.
This car is no longer a car. It is a piece of family history.
In high school, Weston started banging out its dents, measuring from A to B, searching the internet for alternators and chrome. In college, he was home for holidays and fashioned new panels to replace rusted steel and grinder smoothed the rough welded seams. This week, he is back in the garage, with his dad, getting the El Camino ready for its final paint job.
He hauled his project to Thom’s country paint and body shop last week on a flatbed.
” You guys did a great job on this, ” Thom says, running his hand over the metal curves of the car, lovingly. ” We don’t see much here we have to do, a couple of coats of primer, a little touch up and then two coats of paint. She will be a beauty…. ”
When you have spent hours and hours wearing respirators, paint dust all over your levi’s and buried in the creases of your shirt, it is good to hear compliments.
After the paint job, Weston and his dad will haul it home, put in the glass, the seats, attach the chrome and dashboard, hook up the electric and lights, start her up and take her for a victory lap around the block.
This 1960 El Camino will find her place in parades, car shows and Sunday afternoon drives.
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