I dont know if this interests anyone or not but I thought I would share since not alot of people ever get to see it happen.

I will explain what we are doing although if your not in the oil industry it will likely mean nothing.

My engine was delivered friday I was busy polishing the timing cover when I get a call. The rig is differentially stuck in the hole they require my assistance. I am a drilling fluid supervisor or slang they call me a "mud man" because the drilling fluid is often called mud. Differentially stuck is when the density of the drilling fluid is higher than the formation pressure and the drill pipe gets "sucked" against the side of the well bore. To release the suction you have reduce the density of the fluid to reduce the hydrostatic pressure and allow the formation pressure to become greater than the hydrostatic and release the drill pipe. The drilling fluid in this case had a high density in order to stop the gas from the formation from migrating to surface. In order to get the density low enough in this case we ended up having to inject 25% nitrogen into the drilling fluid in order to get the drill pipe unstuck. With the reduction of density we had lots of gas migrate up the hole and we circulated it out of our system and flared it off. Questions are welcome
At one point the flame was a pure blue but at that time I was actually working so didnt get a picture.

The trees in the back ground are at least 60ft tall for size refrence there is a semi truck in the left corner on a few pictures.

 

That is badass. I was just learning about flaring at school a few weeks ago and have heard of you mud men.

 

Pretty impressive. I grew up in an oilfield town where it was never really dark due to the flares that surrounded the town and if you were out walking at night you'd invariably hear the well compressors plonking away in their strange rhythm. My grandfather, couple uncles and cousin all went into the oilfield business, I never did.

 

Awesome.

 

Lame

I joke. That's pretty cool. We flare quite a bit a work. The other day It was all blue and about 60 ft plus. It was hydrogen.

 

WOW!

Tell me you brought marshmallows with you when you did that?

 

Sounds like dangerous place to be working, Gord....Hope you've got your fire suit on when working in the 'mud'.....

Kudos for sticking your neck out in that industry....Sounds dirty and dangerous.....

Did you say that some of that gas burns blue? Would that colour of flame not denote very high temps????

C.

 

^Very lean fuel/air mixture which also = VERY HIGH TEMPS!

 

Gord ...... you call that a flare?

Lets low/high rate the high pressure hydrocracker at work and compare

If you see me running ...... try and keep up

FYI:

blue flare ...... Carbon Monoxide content
light orange ....... high hydrogen content
dark/deep orange ......... C3 carbon or higher hydrocarbons
green .......... H2S or sulphur content
black smoke ....... whole lotta trouble

 

Which refinery do you work at?

 

I always tell the rig hands if things go south don't run down the middle of the road.....because I will run you over with my truck my truck is usually running and pointed to the location exit while I am on location just in case.

This isn't the biggest flame I have seen but I am usually busy when we have the "good" ones the oil companys don't really like cameras on location now a days either.

 

..fixed

 

I'm a pipefitter I work in lots of plants. Right now I'm up at CNRL. Have been to Syncrude, Suncor, Nova Chem, Shell Scotford, Dow Prentis for some

 

I have a couple friends in alberta working at oil rigs, i heard there is a lot of work still over there.

 

Nowadays, with cellphone technology, oil companies can't hide anything, nor should they. Contract workers are usually reporting and recording incidents to the press before the oil companies representatives can respond to the public. The Syncrude duck incident was reported by a employee to the press. Shame on Syncrude and the Environmental Govt agency watchdogs for trying to hide this from the public.

Your right, when things go very wrong, who has time to see how big the flare is, as guys like us are trying to fix the problem. Usually I may not look at it but I can hear the roar and feel the heat from the flare.