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Sifting through the files.
May. 22nd, 2015 10:24 amFor two days this week, work actually pulled me from my Fortress of Solitude (home office) and sent me into downtown Denver, to a client’s office. I went through the acquisition files of a petroleum company and pulled all environmental records – why, I know not. Obviously, it was a pretty boring task, but it was sorta fun going into downtown on mass transit, seeing other people, & generally having a NYC flashback. The major drawback was having to dress like an adult (curse you, women’s dress shoes!).
Going through the files was drudgery, but I noticed some interesting things along the way:
• This petroleum company, which I will not name, is not a famous company. Yet they are operating hundreds (thousands?) of wells in dozens of states. They make acquisition decisions ($5 million purchase here, $18 million purchase there) with lightning speed – based on the correspondence, it’s often less than three months from the announcement of a sale to the cutting of the check.
• ALL their environmental due diligence has to happen within that short window. It looks like they are soliciting bids from environmental contractors on Monday, picking someone on Tuesday, sending them to the field on Wednesday, & expecting the report two weeks later. Sometimes for fields with 50-100 wells. It can’t be more than that most cursory of field inspections & briefest of records reviews. The acquisitions folks in this game must have serious cojones.
• The names of the fields are remarkably poetic &/or funny. I’ve seen Lonesome, Gooseneck Eld, Southern Comfort, Esperanza, Busy Bee, Zenith Bell, Tensleep, Whiskey Joe, Bayou Galore (perhaps my favorite, as it’s a mishmash of French & Gaelic borrow words), Mamie’s Meadow, Gold-Come-Free, & many other surprisingly whimsical names. There are more prosaic names as well, of course: fields are frequently named after landowners, nearby towns or waterways. I would’ve expected some alphanumeric grid naming system from petroleum engineers. I wonder how the fields get named?
• I am surprised at how many little bits of familiarity I keep tripping over in the files. Company names like Geraghty & Miller (an American precursor to the Empire of the Evil Orange Salamander), Woodward-Clyde (a legacy firm that’s now part of AECOM, like all firms eventually shall be), & Williams Energy Services (Spider-Dad used to work for Wil-Tel, a telecom spinoff of this natural gas company). I saw names of geological formations in Texas where I’ve drilled wells, & references to different pieces of equipment that I’ve fussed with. TCEQ forms I’ve filled out. TDWR permits I’ve had to file.
• There’s a brief period (~1998-1999) where the due diligence punch list included “Y2K Readiness”. Remember how worried everyone was about that, & how little actually went wrong? It seems the oil & gas industry took Y2K very seriously indeed.
• Some of these files go back as far as the mid-80s, which is not really all that long ago. Even so, they feel ancient. Letters are addressed non-specifically to “Gentlemen:” – ‘cause there ain’t no ladies in the oil bidness! The files include VHS tapes of site inspection visits (how would you even play one of those today?). Some of the old well logs are hand-colored with colored pencils, & some of the data printouts are from dot-matrix printers, with the perforated, holed strips along the sides where the paper roll attached to the printer’s wheels. There’s a lot of the old thermal facsimile paper in these files as well, still smelling slightly burned & smearing at the slightest touch.
• I’ve decided that Post-It notes are the modern world’s version of marginalia. The main author of many of the memos & correspondence in these files was a … pithy man, to put it mildly. Obviously not wanting to put his thoughts directly on file documents, instead he peppered them liberally with Post-It notes, pointing out portions of letters as “Total Bull-SHIT” or “stupid”. One had a surprisingly deft doodle showing an alligator’s head – drawn during a boring conference call, perhaps?
What did everyone else do at work this week?
Going through the files was drudgery, but I noticed some interesting things along the way:
• This petroleum company, which I will not name, is not a famous company. Yet they are operating hundreds (thousands?) of wells in dozens of states. They make acquisition decisions ($5 million purchase here, $18 million purchase there) with lightning speed – based on the correspondence, it’s often less than three months from the announcement of a sale to the cutting of the check.
• ALL their environmental due diligence has to happen within that short window. It looks like they are soliciting bids from environmental contractors on Monday, picking someone on Tuesday, sending them to the field on Wednesday, & expecting the report two weeks later. Sometimes for fields with 50-100 wells. It can’t be more than that most cursory of field inspections & briefest of records reviews. The acquisitions folks in this game must have serious cojones.
• The names of the fields are remarkably poetic &/or funny. I’ve seen Lonesome, Gooseneck Eld, Southern Comfort, Esperanza, Busy Bee, Zenith Bell, Tensleep, Whiskey Joe, Bayou Galore (perhaps my favorite, as it’s a mishmash of French & Gaelic borrow words), Mamie’s Meadow, Gold-Come-Free, & many other surprisingly whimsical names. There are more prosaic names as well, of course: fields are frequently named after landowners, nearby towns or waterways. I would’ve expected some alphanumeric grid naming system from petroleum engineers. I wonder how the fields get named?
• I am surprised at how many little bits of familiarity I keep tripping over in the files. Company names like Geraghty & Miller (an American precursor to the Empire of the Evil Orange Salamander), Woodward-Clyde (a legacy firm that’s now part of AECOM, like all firms eventually shall be), & Williams Energy Services (Spider-Dad used to work for Wil-Tel, a telecom spinoff of this natural gas company). I saw names of geological formations in Texas where I’ve drilled wells, & references to different pieces of equipment that I’ve fussed with. TCEQ forms I’ve filled out. TDWR permits I’ve had to file.
• There’s a brief period (~1998-1999) where the due diligence punch list included “Y2K Readiness”. Remember how worried everyone was about that, & how little actually went wrong? It seems the oil & gas industry took Y2K very seriously indeed.
• Some of these files go back as far as the mid-80s, which is not really all that long ago. Even so, they feel ancient. Letters are addressed non-specifically to “Gentlemen:” – ‘cause there ain’t no ladies in the oil bidness! The files include VHS tapes of site inspection visits (how would you even play one of those today?). Some of the old well logs are hand-colored with colored pencils, & some of the data printouts are from dot-matrix printers, with the perforated, holed strips along the sides where the paper roll attached to the printer’s wheels. There’s a lot of the old thermal facsimile paper in these files as well, still smelling slightly burned & smearing at the slightest touch.
• I’ve decided that Post-It notes are the modern world’s version of marginalia. The main author of many of the memos & correspondence in these files was a … pithy man, to put it mildly. Obviously not wanting to put his thoughts directly on file documents, instead he peppered them liberally with Post-It notes, pointing out portions of letters as “Total Bull-SHIT” or “stupid”. One had a surprisingly deft doodle showing an alligator’s head – drawn during a boring conference call, perhaps?
What did everyone else do at work this week?
