Author: Alex

My fears of interrupted and awful sleep yesterday were unfounded it seems. The people at Americas Best Value Inn actually let us check in immediately, at 9 in the morning, and we were all able to get a good night (day) of sleep. Woot!

And then tonight was a short shift, as shifts go. When we got to the site we were down to our last three sections of drill pipe, which basically meant at most an additional 24 feet of core (I think that’s right) could be drilled. So that went fast. I took a little video of the last Polecat Bench core being brought up, so that will hopefully end up on youtube sometime soon. Dr. Gingerich came back to the site after dinner just so he could put the last of the core into the truck, which was cool. The site is totally finished, and now we’re all off for at least another week until we start at Gilmore Hill on August 1. And some of us are done with drilling (everyone on the night shift but me, actually :/ ) and we won’t be gathering up again until we meet in Bremen in January.

After we had the last of the core (which was, I’m sad to say, a fairly unexciting mix of gray sandstone and gray mudstone from the Paleocene, no final red bed for Dr. Gingerich) buttoned down, the rest of the night was all site cleanup. We got everything ready so people can just go up to the Bench in the morning and haul all the trailers out.

It’ll be fun to be the experienced hand at Gilmore Hill. We also have the same drilling crew for that site, so I’ll be seeing AJ again. He seemed a little nervous about it being mostly new people again now that he’s just gotten us trained up, but at least I’ll be there! Until then, I’m just going to try to get all this mud out of my boots…

Also, just a little progress report from Dr. Will Clyde, on the project in general:

To date we have completed two 450 foot (138 m) cores at Basin Substation, one 425 foot (130 m) core at Polecat Bench, and one 790 ft (240 m) core from Polecat Bench. All of these cores should span the PETM.

Just so you have all the numbers. The 790-footer is the one I was there for most of. :D

It was a busy night, though not as busy as last night. We only did about 25 meters of core, which is a major drop off from last night. This is because the hole is getting deeper, so that means it takes longer to drill, and longer to trip in and out of the hole.

It was also a night where we had a LOT of problems with slipped core. Which was probably partially because of the depth and partially because of the sands and muds we were drilling through. Other than one core that had some red banding in it, it’s been nothing but gray sands and gray-green mudstones. Which makes it really hard to tell where the contacts are through the liner, so that’s been frustrating. We also came across some really neat things in the sands, though – some bits of coal, and we found a fossilized leaf as well, so that was exciting.

The sad news for us night shift people is that it’s been decided we’re going to drill past our intended depth, so we’ll probably have another shift tomorrow night. This wouldn’t be a big deal except no one has a motel room past today, so we’re all having to move to a different motel. In the middle of the day. So that’s going to make sleep rough, which will in turn make work even rougher.

Tonight felt tougher than last night, though, because it was so cold! And windy! And it rained! So we had to race outside around midnight and take all the core on the drying rack and put it in the truck. That was not fun.

But hey, it’s after sunrise, the day crew is here, and it’s time to get some sleep! After Sander makes us a crazy huge bacon and egg breakfast, that is. :)

Anders says: Oh noes they’ve brought up ANOTHER core barrel!!!

In the very brief breaks between cores, Anders and I have been sitting across from each other in the RV with a slowly diminishing block of cheese between us. Because when you’re working around heavy machinery, it can’t be something classic like whiskey – so cheese is the next best thing when it comes to drowning one’s sorrows.

Seriously, yesterday gave me no idea what I was signing up for. We spent most of the night sitting around while logs were run and the location moved. Tonight has been a different story entirely. We’ve been processing core constantly, outside of the drillers’ midnight break. Aaron actually asked them to please take another 30 minutes off because we’re just running ragged.

We’ve brought up 45 meters of core already, and we’ve still got three hours left before day shift takes over. Now that they’ve started using a polymer additive and bentonite in the drilling mud, they’re even cutting through the mudstones fast. (The sandstones, they cut through crazy fast.) Basically, we’ll finish labeling and describing and whatever else the core. I’ll sit down for about two minutes, look at an e-mail, and then there’s that change in the sound of the rig that says they’re pulling up a core barrel, which takes about 3-4 minutes to run up. Then we do it all over again. And I swear the cores are getting heavier and heavier as we go through the night.

The downside of the polymer and bentonite is that it makes the cores harder to handle. The polymer is extremely slippery, and the bentonite tends to make everything more or less mud colored. The polymer stuff reminds me a lot of the “animal birthing agent” that was featured in the episode of Mythbusters where they try to slip on a banana peel. Now consider how awesome it is to pick up a core liner and have that stuff draining out all over your hands. ICK.

We’ve had a couple of big sand bodies. Normally I like sand, but in this case we want as little sand as possible since the paleosols are going to tell us a lot more about the chemistry and other stuff. Lots of gray mudstones, and then we’ve had some really big bright red paleosols, and a little bit of purple and brown. Some of them have huge (3cm in diameter or more) carbonate nodules in them, which is really exciting.

I’m going to sleep really, really well as soon as I get back to the motel.

(Remember: You can follow my adventures as they happen – if you’re up WAY TOO LATE – on Twitter)

My first evening shift has been uneventful so far. Drilling is way ahead of schedule, and they had about 400 and some feet of core drilled on Polecat Bench when the hole started to collapse. So this meant that this evening has pretty much been dealing with the collapsed hole and then moving the rig over to start on the second hole for the site, which we’re hoping we’ll get a full core out of. We’ll be drilling the second hole with polymer additives instead of just straight water, so that ought to keep things more stable.

The funny part is, all the trouble is coming from poorly cemented sand collapsing into the hole. Which was not something that we were all that worried about in planning – everyone was more focused on the abundance of swelling clays. But it’s not something I find particularly surprising, since we had a similar problem with some gas wells when I worked for Noble. Sand can be a bitch.

So I’ve spent most of the evening hunkered down in the RV on site. It’s pretty windy out on the Bench (because gee, it’s a treeless plateau, in the middle of Wyoming) and there’s not really anything much to do until we start getting core out of the second hole. And now that the rig’s been moved, we have to drill through the cap of Quaternary gravel to get to the good stuff that we actually want. Apparently on the first core, the gravel took something like six hours to get through. We’re hoping that it’ll go a little faster with the additives in the water, but we’ll see. It’s a very real possibility that I’ll go through my first shift without seeing any action at all.

This isn’t a surprise, though… everyone already knew that tonight would be uneventful due to the collapsed hole, etc. I just chose to come out to the Bench anyway because the other option was just puttering around in Powell (which rolls up its sidewalks around 9, I hear) or in the lobby of the motel. I’m sharing a room with my advisor, which is great, but she needs to be sleeping while I’m awake, so I couldn’t very well hang out here. So instead I got to meet the other night shift people. We played a game of Dominion, listened to The Book of Mormon, and did some other silly stuff to entertain ourselves. I wish I had some pictures of our beautiful crew, but most of them aren’t looking too lively right now, and I have a policy against taking picture of people who are asleep.

Four hours left to go until shift end. The motor on the rig is going now, which means they’re drilling slowly through the gravel. We’ll see how far we get before it’s time for the day shift to take over.