Oil, Clowns and a Pig on a Motorcycle

Working in the drilling sector of the Oil and Gas industry takes you all over the world, to places some may have never heard of, let alone visited. Places that were dangerous for so many reasons, disease, rough seas or plain just people that wanted to rob you and kill you if you didn't play ball. Invading the sanctity of Mother Earth's power is a dangerous business and get it wrong, you will, without doubt, be punished severely. Once you have made a mistake, she will spit you out and burn you big time. Back in the day drilling was a "suck it and see" kind of business, carried out by farmers, motor mechanics and people who could fix it if it broke! Most things were being done for the first time, so there were very few lessons being learnt, unless something went severely wrong. During my work and travels I have visited nearly 65 countries, I have been shot at in Nigeria, mugged in New Orleans and hung over the Southern North Sea by a rope. I have been the target of an attempted kidnapping in Dagestan and been scared shitless by an ex-KGB agent in Kazakhstan. I have witnessed people murdered and seen unclaimed bodies rot by the side of the road. I have spent nights as a guest of the Ibans and Dayaks in their long houses on Borneo and "ape-knapped" a Gibbon called Charley. So I have decided to write about the adventures or misadventures of myself and also those of some close friends of mine in the Oil and Gas Industry, in particular, the drilling sector. - Some anecdotal, others not but I haven't differentiated nor delineated them - Names, in most cases, have been changed to protect them and their reputations, good or bad. Many are sadly no longer with us.

Working in the drilling sector of the Oil and Gas industry takes you all over the world, to places some may have never heard of, let alone visited. Places that were dangerous for so many reasons, disease, rough seas or plain just people that wanted to rob you and kill you if you didn't play ball. Invading the sanctity of Mother Earth's power is a dangerous business and get it wrong, you will, without doubt, be punished severely. Once you have made a mistake, she will spit you out and burn you big time. Back in the day drilling was a "suck it and see" kind of business, carried out by farmers, motor mechanics and people who could fix it if it broke! Most things were being done for the first time, so there were very few lessons being learnt, unless something went severely wrong. During my work and travels I have visited nearly 65 countries, I have been shot at in Nigeria, mugged in New Orleans and hung over the Southern North Sea by a rope. I have been the target of an attempted kidnapping in Dagestan and been scared shitless by an ex-KGB agent in Kazakhstan. I have witnessed people murdered and seen unclaimed bodies rot by the side of the road. I have spent nights as a guest of the Ibans and Dayaks in their long houses on Borneo and "ape-knapped" a Gibbon called Charley. So I have decided to write about the adventures or misadventures of myself and also those of some close friends of mine in the Oil and Gas Industry, in particular, the drilling sector. - Some anecdotal, others not but I haven't differentiated nor delineated them - Names, in most cases, have been changed to protect them and their reputations, good or bad. Many are sadly no longer with us.