Drill Bit

Hard-Knock life: "You gotta learn how to take shit," says Bower, pictured "trippin' pipe," of life on the rig.

How a Penn sociology senior found direction on a bayou oil rig.

by Jonas Raab

"Good morning Parker Rangers!" shouted the mess cook every morning at 5 a.m. sharp. After a short breakfast and a safety meeting, the next 12 hours of William Bower's days between November last year and August this year were spent toiling in the hot Louisiana sun. The 8-foot-tall swamp grass hid gators and snakes, but the mosquitoes were the worst. "We would rub diesel fuel on ourselves to keep them off," says Bower, wincing at the thought.

After a lackluster academic performance during spring semester last year, Bower, then a junior University of Pennsylvania sociology major, packed his bags and headed for southern Louisiana, where he lived for four years as a child. The headstrong 22-year-old with high expectations needed to get his head on straight and figure out where his life was headed. He ended up on the Parker Drilling Company's inland barge oil rig 21 B, trolling the bayous of Cajun country, where the temperature during the day was often over 100 degrees and the exhaustion and muscle aches from a day's work were paralyzing.

Why oil rigging? Bower explains that he had no idea what to do with himself at first. Then his grandmother, whom he was staying with, suggested working on the rig would be an opportunity to make good money while he figured it out.

"When I first heard the idea, I was like, "Fuck that,'" says Bower with a laugh, sitting in his Baltimore Avenue apartment. "But then I thought that it could be really cool if I went out there and could actually make it."

Humpin' sacks and trippin' pipe

An inland barge rig is different from rigs in the movies—those are offshore rigs and are highly automated. An inland barge rig is similar, but it's smaller, generally older, and moves from place to place. According to Bower, this type of rig is the "red-headed stepchild of the oil field"; some tasks on it require twice the manpower as the same task on newer offshore models.

New hands start at the very bottom in this business, and must earn the respect of the rest of the crew. "Worm" and "Green" are nicknames given to newbies; people with these names are worked extremely hard.

"My job title was roustabout," says Bower of his first position on the rig. "All you do is run around and wash [the rig]; you clean continuously and "hump sacks.'"

Efficient drilling requires that mud be pumped down into the drill hole so the material that is broken up by the drill bit can be easily pumped out. But the mud needs to be of a specific weight, composition and viscosity, so chemicals are added. "Humpin' sacks" refers to lugging 100-pound sacks of those chemicals—including salt, calcium and small glass beads—and adding them to the mud "hopper."

"One week I had to hump sacks 12 hours a day for seven days in a row," explains Bower. "I lost 10 pounds that week."

Roustabouting is one thing; "Trippin' pipe"—Bower's main responsibility after being promoted to roughneck—is something else entirely.

As wells can be up to 10,000 feet deep, 30-foot pipe extensions must be continually added to the back end of the drill as the hole gets deeper. So when the pipe runs down the roughneck adds a pipe extension directly to the back end of the drill with large tongs.

Gators and snakes

Life on 21 B wasn't all work. According to Bower, the other crew members bragged of their ability to rope alligators. He was skeptical. "I said, "If you rope an alligator, I'll jump on its back and we'll duct-tape its mouth and take some pictures.'"

One of his crewmates took him up on this offer.

"I look over the side and he's holding on to the rope and this alligator is lunging out of the water as high as he can," he says. Bower, however, reneged on his offer. "I wouldn't jump in the water with those gators," he says with a smile. They let it go shortly after.

"They started off calling me Philly [and] they always made fun of me for being a Yankee and because I was the youngest. But it was all in good fun," says Bower. To get by, he followed three simple rules. "You gotta work hard, you gotta learn how to take shit and you gotta learn how to give shit," he adds laughing.

Maybe it was the mosquitoes, or the working 12 hours in the stifling heat, but the experience reinforced for him the importance of finishing his degree. Now 23, he returned to Penn this fall and hopes to finish by December next year.

"But," says Bower, "there's something about sweating for your money that makes you feel real good about yourself."

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