See two post above 
I really don’t want to answer that. But I’ve only seen one bad accident in 15 years. I’ve sen far more car wrecks in that time.
We’re hiring! I think I’m treated pretty well, but you always have to stand up for yourself. Not much room for faint hearts, it’s still a very macho industry. I pulled in around $50,000 last year, but there again, I don’t have any expenses for six months a year.
We’re 70 feet above the water. Fishing is not allowed, as we have 5000HP thrusters which don’t enjoy being filled with nylon line. Most of the rig crew (the guys who do the real work) are married - with a very high divorce rate. A lot more of the service people are single (that’s me!)
We start off with a hole 36" across normally. The hole gets smaller with depth, and we often end ip drilling one just 8½" across.
I live in Austin too! We should go out for a drink some day - I promise not to mention my hole size again :eek: 
I’ve really got mixed feelings on this. Mainly due to the mixed information coming out of Alaska. The evil oil companies say everything will be just fine and dandy, but eco-freaks say the Northern Hellmouth will open if anyone so much as sneezes in a Northerly direction.
Personally, I’d work up there without a second thought, which makes me evil. But, there again, the only thing I drive is a bicycle, so that makes me non-evil.
Hey! This great for post padding 
Holy crap, turns out there’s a bunch of mud loggers on the SDMB, like me f’rinstance (well former, really; now I train mud loggers to be, er mud loggers). And then there’s Uncleviny, I believe.
And to think that hardly anyone in the real world ever even heard of this job.
T.D. - EVIL? holy development, Batman! The caribou love us up here! I guess I am doubly evil - I work in Prudhoe Bay and I drive a pick-up truck. What kind of instrumentation do you use in the mud pits and in the mud flow-back line? Is there something better than M-D nowadays? Are you a Baroid “hand”?
lieu - ARCO? What’s that? We own them now…
I have been fortunate to have been everywhere there is a drilling rig in Alaska, including the Cook Inlet. Folks are allowed to fish off some of the rigs in the inlet. I wonder if there is any information on the 'net about the Monopod… as the name suggests, there are no “legs” on that platform, just one large hollow column. I guess I have led a rather humdrum life, I have never had a scary moment on a rig.
Oh boy! We’ve got a bunch of y’all in here. So what do you think of the mouse jockeys back on dry land, sittin’ in the air-conditioning thinking of places y’all can stick that bit?
Who’s it easiest to hang a blow-out on? I’d say the drilling engineer, unless he can establish that he called for sufficient mud weight and it just didn’t happen. I did have an engineer try to hang one on me once for not sufficiently impressing him with the fact we’d be penetrating a virgin reservoir (I’m a wiggle meister).
Thanks, Tapioca–I’ll pass on the good word to the neophytes!
I thought Baroid was more into Mud Engineering than Mud Logging. I push that field, too… mmmm… bentonite.
(Note: Although tempted by the pay, I’ve never mud logged but had many friends in West Texas that had!)
Blow outs are rarely the fault of any one person. Normally a whole bunh of people have to screw up pretty badly for it to happen these days. But blame? Normally that’s just whoever happens to be the easiest target that day.
We use Milltonics ultasonic sensors in the pits and take a slave signal from the rig’s Totco flow-show.
Totco was a bad word where I worked, although everyone in the industry used to call the downhole logging tool a “Totco tool.”
See any whales lately? Or anything else neat floating/swimming by?
Are boats prohibited from coming within a certain distance?
How often do you spit/piss into the water?
Does the rig have its own sewage treatment system? How does it deal with waste/trash?
Does the rig have an expected lifespan?
Thanks for answering all these questions.
Never seen any whales in the Gulf. About the only thing we have right now are barracuda. In other places I’ve seen: packs of killer whales, sun fish, turtles, tuna, snakes, whale sharks, hammerhead sharks, dolphins, flying fish, mahi-mahi.
Boats are not supposed to come with around 500 ft of the rig. There isn’t any way of enforcing this, though. Right now we are 150 miles from the coast, so there aren’t many weekend fishermen around.
We don’t throw anything over the side that isn’t supposed to go that way. We have our own sewage disposal system. Food waste can be ground and put into the sea. All other waste is taken back to land to be dispoased of there. Oil companies take this kind of thing very seriously these days.
I’m not sure about lifespans for rigs. As long as a rig can stil operate modern machinery and can work safely, cleanly and efficiently, then 25+ years might be a good guess.
After 25 years (or 250) will they just leave the rigs standing there? Sink them for artificial reefs? Cannibalize and dismantle them?
How long can you tread water? 
Ever witness/suspect any drug/alcohol use/abuse on the rigs?
Any crime? Theft? Fights?
Oh yeah - here’s another - are your buddies out on the rig getting a good laugh out of the stupid questions these “civilians” are asking?
I once heard an incredibly outlandish story about prostitutes being smuggled onto an oil rig. They had to be stashed somewhere cramped, but they didn’t mind because they were making a LOT of money.
So…ever hear that story? Is it 100% b.s., or just 75%?
Never seen any sort of drugs/alcohol on an offshore rig.
There is the occasional bit of petty theft, and the occasional scuffle, bit’s one of once in a blue moon things.
So these young ladies hired a boat, sailed out into the sea and found an oil rig. Then they dropped anchor snuck onboard and did the dirty deed(s). Naturally, all the oil rig workers all carried huge bundles of cash (or the girls could swipe a visa card). No one on this rig was, say, a tattle tale born again christian or anything. The chap on the bottom bunk didn’t mind the guy in the top bunk doing business with a young lady while bottom chap guy was trying to get some sleep after working a 12 hour day?
Hmmmm … call me suspicious, but this seems as likely, as the US government coming on board looking for volunteers to swat an asteroid which happens to be on a collision course with Earth