NEW GATE

We finished our first gate, went back to the yard for a couple of days and are now on a new gate. This one is only about 6 miles from the yard in Whitsett. In case you like to look at where we are, here are the co ordinates: 28 41.226 -98 17.547 If you look on Google earth you can see the road and the pad down the road, the railroad crossing and at the end the well site.

We relieved another couple who had to head home and have no idea how long we will be here. The well was finished, but they brought a reclaim rig in to do something.  We got here Saturday and today they moved the rig out.

It has been cold and wet for the last three days. About 37-42 degrees and misty rain, or a heavier steady rain. The humidity is at 98 percent and when you go out the chill just soaks right in. We can not sit out during the day, it is just too chilly.
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An interesting thing here is that there is a railroad track down a ways from us and there is another gate guard there that has to make sure no trains are coming before anyone can go across the tracks. They do not have to log any one, but do have to be at the tracks when a vehicle crosses.

I had parked the truck behind the trailer on the side of the road. It was solid at the time. But I went out to leave a little bit ago and got about 2 foot and got stuck. Tried all the maneuvers that one would use in ice and snow but no luck. Moved a few more feet, sliding sideways and that was it. Had to call the service guy to come tow me out onto the road.

Moved the truck to a spot up front that has some gravel. Hope we do not get relieved before it dries out. We would need another tow otherwise.  Remind me again why we do this......oh yes....MONEY!
Gate is pretty slow. Only about 20-30 in/outs a day. And none after about 7-8pm. But Linda still has to stay up.
Hope all is well with you
Love to ya
Jim and Linda

WELL IS ALMOST DONE

Hi
We have been here one week today and things have been pretty slow. A typical day would be about 15 ins/outs. It takes about 30 seconds to log someone in and about 10 seconds to log them out. That is 10 minutes of work a day. We have no traffic from about 10pm to 6am, but Linda has to stay up just in case. It looks like we will be here another 2-4 days.

They installed a key pad and camera on the gate, but we have to open the gate for anyone coming in. We do keep the gate open during daylight hours. After we leave anyone coming in will have to know the code or call the ranch foreman to come let them in.

I drove down to the rig this afternoon to get a picture of it. This is what is called a rework or reclaim rig and it came in mounted on a couple of semi trailers. They were only going to drill 3500 feet. I think they may be going a little bit deeper though. This morning I was told that they were done drilling, but when I was back there the bit is still turning.

If you blow the picture  up you can see a man standing on the platform to the right of the tower. That should give you an idea of the size of the rig. Pretty small compared to a full size drill rig. Also, they are not going to have to frac this well as they run into oil when they get to the right depth.
A full size rig normally drills about 5000 foot straight down and than makes a big 1000 foot radius turn and than drills out horizontally about 12-15000 feet. Than they frac the well afterwards.

There are other wells on this 18000 acre ranch also.  It is mostly a hunting ranch and they have a hunting manager and hunters have to have a guide to hunt. The guides tell the hunter which deer they can shoot and that way they can control the deer population better.

It was 90 degrees and sunny here today.

Hope you have a great week
love to all of ya
Jim and Linda

P.S. You can reply to this blog. Just click on leave a comment and select anonymous in the pop up window and type in your reply. You can sign your name.

WE DID GET A GATE

We are 17 1/2 miles southeast of George West, TX on hwy US59. Here are gps co-ords if you are interested.  28.13165  -98.30581
If you look it up on Google earth it shows where the truck is sitting. Sometimes I am still amazed with this gps stuff.
They will be drilling a well, but only 3500 foot deep and will not frack it. They will bring in the portable drill rig that is mounted on a truck tomorrow morning.
We met the ranch owner, ranch foreman and the hunting manager the first day and they were all very nice. They bring hunters on, but only with a guide and hunt deer and quail and turkeys. They offered us some venison but we declined as neither of us like it......Linda says she can not eat Bambi.
This is going to be a slow gate for traffic and we will only be here 10-14 days at the outside. But, it is money in the coffers.
No pictures. We have posted lots of  "that's us at the gate" pictures....
Hope all is well
love to all of ya
Jim and Linda

WE GOT A GATE.....MAYBE

Friday morning we got a call from the office offering us a 10-14 day job for a small company starting Sunday morning. We agreed to take it and took advantage of the time available to go into Pleasanton, about a 28 mile drive, to do grocery's. Linda also got a haircut, and of course we had to eat while we were there. Burger King, so nothing exciting. Saturday we drove back in and did laundry. That is always an exciting job....yea, right. Oh, and Burger King again.

They told us the service guy would be here between 8-9am to take us to the job site. And, we were ready to go at 8am. The guy show up about 9:30 and asks us if anyone had told us they had moved the job out to Monday.......well no they did not.  So we set back up again and hopefully we leave in the morning.

Hope you are having a great day today.
Love to all of ya
Jim and Linda

STILL IN WHITSETT

Today made 5 days we have been sitting here. Yesterday we drove down to Three Rivers and had dinner at a Mexican restaurant. It was good, but not really good. Lots of oilfield workers there and we found out that there is a refinery in town. That was our excitement for the day.
Here are a couple of pictures of the yard area.

                                                This is us parked next to the office.

This is looking the other way. The building is where they do all the maintenance of the equipment and build up trailers. They buy flat bed trailers and add the equipment to them.

And this is some of the equipment waiting to go out to a job site.
Things are pretty slow right now. We are hoping it will pick up. We are both bored to tears.
Hope all is going well with you.
You could reply to this blog. That would give us something to read.
Love to all of ya
Jim and Linda

Whitsett, TX

We moved today, 102 miles south to the Gate Guard Services yard. We have a water and electric hookup and are parked next to the office. The full hookup sites are taken, altho one rig just left for an assignment. We will stay here and not move to the full hook  up site.
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Hope to be out by early next week at the latest.
Hope all is well with everyone

Love to all of ya
Jim and Linda