Well, its once again been an extremely long time since I finally got around to writing a letter to everyone. I just finished most of my requirements for entrance into my training school. For those of you that havent heard, i wont be coming back to america anytime soon. see, i sorta lost my passport and right now im pretending to be a russian citizen until a new one can be sent from the embassy in new york... seriously though, i found out recently that schlumberger needs more people to go to training school in Egypt, so off i go to some remote outpost in the middle of the egyptian desert. the location im going, Ameyra, is between Cairo and Alexandria which are the two largest cities in the country. From the people ive talked to here, it is a little hard to get around there, because the arabic language is completely different and a bit harder than most other languages. fortunatly for me, i have been living in a country for the last two months that has a hard language and different alphabet (i know all about pretending to know the language and just picking up on what people are asking by their actions). yeah... so russian is a hard language and i have had little to no time to sit down and actually study it. my manager recently told me that i might be sent somewhere else in russia on my return because the only spoken language out at the rig is russian. outside of america most other countries learn engligh in school, but ive learned that if you try to talk to anyone thats been out of school for more than 3 months, they wont understand a word you're saying. i was a little mad about not being able to go back to the states to train, a lot of the friends i met in paris are gonna be there, besides i sorta miss some of the american amenities that i took for granted, like water that doesnt smell and being able to hold conversations with people for extended periods of time. since the last job i went on, its gotten pretty damn cold here. i went on the job about 3 weeks ago, to a little region just south and west of here named Priobskoe. This description is by Siberian standards as "little" means that it has a population of maybe 100 residents, the rest are just oil workers, and "just south and west" means about 700 km with 100 km being on a dirt road that normal cars cant drive upon. wait, thats not right, we did drive on them with a toyota truck, but we got stuck about every ten minutes and then would wait around until a dump truck or another large vehicle could drag us out of the deep area. before i came to siberia, i had no idea what an oil rig was like, and im almost positive noone reading this email has any idea either, so let me enlighten you. first of all, you have to realize the description im going to give you is a little different than rigs everywhere else in the world as every person ive talked to has informed me that the rigs here are about the worst anywhere. for those of you that have no interest in how my job works, or really dont have the time and just want to know whats going on, go to the dotted line below, i should have it all finished up by then and ill tell more about my life in siberia.

Ok, so ill start with the basics. an oil company finds out there is oil in the ground. How you ask... well normally companies like schlumberger use seisic techniques (explosives or other loud noise devices) to send information about the rocks underground to the surface. its sorta like how a bat uses its sonar (sound waves) to determine where to fly because its eye sight is so poor. so you have the information from below ground and through past experience and calculations, the oil company knows whether there is oil down there or not. with this determination they send over a rig (normally on wheels) which almost looks like a miniature version of the eifel tower. it has a broad base and narrows as it reaches the top about 40 m up. theres a platform about 10 m above the ground which is considered the drilling floor. this is where all the russians work and where the drill pipe enters the hole. from the rig all the drilling is done, and thats also where we use insert our tools. drilling is conducted pretty much like how you would drill a hole in wood with a power drill. only difference is that your hole is about 3000 m and instead of wood your cutting stone. so there are a few differences in the principle behind it. in order to get so deep, and because the rig is only about 40 meteres, pipes are added in 25 m increments until the total depth is finally reached. this is quite a lot of pipes if you consider that 3000/25 is 120 pipes. In order to cut through the rock, a special drill bit is used and to cool it down (even without the friction of cutting, it can get up to about 350 °F down there), they use mud which is also used to push the cuttings to the surface so the drill doesnt get jammed. With the pipe in place, the driller will rotate the entire pipe from the surface and apply some pressure to the pipes to drill deeper in the formation. after a while, they get to the depth they want and the process is reversed and 120 pipes are pulled out (normally at the rate of about 3 minutes per pipe). this is where wireline comes in. the main purpose of wireline (the segment of the company im in) is to drop a tool (basically a big electronic swiss army knife) down the hole and take different measurements. the way the tool works, you can mix and match tools to a certain degree so clients (here the clients are sibneft, ukos, lukoil, and gazprom. in the states you have different companies like exxon, bp, chevron and shell) can decide what measurements they would like. There are about 6 basic measurements that are conducted to get formation (the zone of rocks around the drill hole) data. Two measurements find the resistivity of the formation (how well electricity flows through it). basically, oil is more resistive than water (electricity goes through water easier, hence the fear of electricution in the bathroom) so a high resistivity underground might mean oil. we use 3 radiation readings, the use of 2 of these actually requires us to bring radioactive material to the wellsite for use. I dont think ill get into explaining the nuclear aspect behind it, its a little in depth for someone who hasnt taken physics recently, and not many of the people im sending this email to have much of a science background. the last measurement is simply mechanical and easiest to understand, basically we just open an arm or release a level underground and see how big the hole is. all of the information obtained from the tools is sent up to the surface through a cable connected to a bug truck. this truck is where i, as an engineer will stay for the entire process, just looking at data and troubleshooting any problems. with the information attained from the measurements, the oil companies have a pretty good idea where they should attempt to get the oil out of the ground. There are many more processes until it turns into the gasoline you pump into your car everyday, but thats a general overview of the service process up to where I am involved. sorry if that was a long explaination, i tried to make it easy to understand and brief, but i guess its a lot to talk about. thanks for reading all this if you actually got through it.

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so now back to my life in siberia. I dont remeber if i had told you guys before, but up until recently, there were some norweigan guys here that i spent most of my time with. i thought russians liked to party and drink more than most other cultures, but then i went out a couple times with these guys. the way the norweigan culture is built, (at least part of its social aspect) is to with-hold drinking and partying for a whole month, and then almost everyone in the country will just have a huge party one day of the month. this is primarily due to the high prices of alcohol in norway. I guess one glass of beer is over 5 dollars over there so the only way they can convince themselves of spending it is if they dont remember that they spent it the next day. well, the 2 norweigans and 1 mexican that worked in norway took advantage of this change by going out almost every night. Now im a trainee, and because of that, i primarily have to study and prepare for school (which every single person ive talked to has confided in me that it was probably the hardest time of their lives). so i would most times decline their offer to go out, but maybe 2 days a week i would go out with them and come back around 4 or 5 in the morning, only to be ready for work the next day at 9. as mentioned a little bit in the last email, the russian girls here are very attractive. they are all pretty skinny, some of them go so far to look like walking toothpicks, but thats a rarity. one peculiar thing here is girls in high heels. i don't think ive seen one girl since ive gotten here that wasnt wearing high heels. It's engrained into the culture to the point that guys ive talked to that have been to the states have complained because the girls over there were wearing normal shoes and not high heels. The bars here are pretty nondiscript, just a place to sit down and drink or play russian pool (a little different, and a lot harder. basically you have the same number of balls, all the same color and you try to hit as many in as possible. However, each hole is narrower requiring the ball to be hit precisely in and the table is also about 1.5 times bigger) There are signs of the mafia everywhere, one bar we frewuent often is owned by the mafia and has casino that im too afraid to play in in the back. Also theres one overpriced night club that you can also find girls in (about 10 USD cover, which is very expensive in russia). the whole city is overpriced by russian standards, with the average salary about 1000 / month the locals dont make much, especially by American standards, so you would expect the prices of things to be reduced. However, because of the influx of businesses like schlumberger and our competitors to the region, prices have rocketed upwards, not so much that living here is expensive for me, but expensive enough to make it a bit difficult for a russian to get by. this is probably why so many people stay here instead of moving somewhere a little more habitable. now as i said, its gotten a bit colder here the last coupld weeks. last time i wrote i was complaining about bugs. well, they're finally dead, not many bugs can survive a siberian september. so now i just need to put up with the 0°C weather in the middle of september. i dont think i brought enough winter cloths with me from home, so its good that ill be home around december to spend hopefully 2 weeks in america (probably flying back and forth between nashville and poland). unfortunatly i wont spend christmas with the family, but its still good that i can get home and hopefully meet up with most of you. Well, i think thats enough writing for today, ill write to y'all again when i arrive in egypt, and thanks for the letters telling me about how everything thing is going back in the states.


dobrye otra (as its around 5-6 in the morning where you are),

Well, this is installment two of my mass email, reason one being that I have been trying to figure out this Schlumberger email thing (which I finally decided I'm not going to use for personal emails anyway) and also because I guess I've been a little busy at work, and don't have much free time on the computer in the office. I've been in Noyabrsk for a little longer than a week now, and still cant follow a Russian conversation. my work schedule is quite hectic, with me getting up at 7, going to the office until 9, then the base where I'm learning what the operators do on-site till 12, go to lunch for about an hour, get back to the base, or maybe the office where I stay till 6, eat dinner and then back to the office till about 930. after that I have to come back to the hotel where I do about 3 hours of studying preparing for my training school which I will have in Kellyville, ok starting Oct 6th. One of the requirements is to learn what the operators do as I will be in charge of them once I break-out and become an actual engineer. that'll be about 5 months from now, when I get done with training. but enough about my job schedule, its boring. Noyabrsk is like a 3rd world city, the apartments are run down, the water is yellow, or sometimes black and never warm, yet I really don't mind too much, particularly for three reasons. The people here are pretty nice, they've learned to live in a remote location like this by themselves (all 90,000 of them) and they do fine, though I personally feel sorry for all the kids I see playing in the street, I was just a tad bit more privileged than them and I didn't do anything really to deserve it. besides the people, the scenery isn't bad (if you don't mind that middle of the forest look). when the airplane began its decent into Noyabrsk, looking out the window, all you see are lakes as far as the eye can see, separated by just little fingers of land with makeshift roads on them. the area farther east, where Noyabrsk is located is all forest though, lot of conifers and other trees, but really swampy. in certain places, you'll walk a couple feet off the road and sink up to your knees in mud you didn't know was there. the scenery's just gorgeous sometimes, with all the trees and lakes and wild flowers. just recently, I went on my first job at an oil rig, it was a special job, and required us to be onsite for quite a while... we left at 8 in the morning on Friday and I finally got back to the hotel around 3 on Tuesday morning. the job was a lot like camping, wilderness all around, just a couple of guys that your with all the time and sleeping in uncomfortable places (like the back of a Volvo semi). I didn't mind it nearly as much as everyone there was expecting me to, I think ill like this job, though its a lot of pressure to get your general field engineer (four promotions away) in the required 30 months. the only other reason this place is bearable is the food. its sad to say, but I think I'm eating better here, in Siberia, than I did the last four years in college. I finally, (for the first time since grade school) get 3 meals in a day. And the food is prepared homemade by these Russian ladies that don't have anything better to do with their time than feed a lot of hungry, dejected (because we're in Siberia in the first place), engineers. I still haven't had borsch, or the small Russian dumplings, pilmenis, but you get a lot of fruits and vegetables, lot of potatoes, and a variety of meats, from pork and chicken, to some meats I'm not quite sure of. I've had a bit of caviar, which I still don't like, it tastes just like fish, but saltier, and oh yea... it pops in your mouth, I guess they're sort of like fish flavored Gushers. well, that's basically it for now, I'm sure ill email you guys later when I know more about what's going on, or when I know when ill be able to come home for a little. feel free to email me to ask me questions (like about the Russian girls or if the sun ever does set this far north) at this point, I only get about 5 emails a week from people back home, and most of them are from my mom, so any response would be welcome, I just cant promise I'll respond within the next 76 hours. :) Ands if you want my contact information, just ask, I dont know it right off hand but I can look it up, I just figured noone wanted to send a package 11 times zones away.

this bellsouth account will be my new email from now on.

hope to hear from you soon, and be prepared for the topic of my next letter: (which I'm not going to try talking about until they finally die off)
Bugs in Siberia: the reason Siberians better in the middle of the winter (when its -50º outside)

later