Lots of big changes in the last two months.
I came back from vacation Sept 8th. Sept 9th I got my transfer letter to report Sept 16th in Ciudad del Carmen as a Junior Drilling Engineer. What does this mean? Where is Cd. Carmen? All these questions and more, answered below!
Ciudad del Carmen is just up the coast slightly from
Villahermosa. It’s in another state, Campeche, instead of Tabasco and now I’m
actually on the coast. In fact, my city is an island. 3 years later and I’m
finally getting the lifestyle everyone thinks I had in Villahermosa. I live
near the beach (1 km away to be exact) and I finally work with offshore
platforms (I was completely land rigs before. No offshore). Maybe I’ll even get
a tan.
I’m also working in the office, which is a big change from
being a field engineer. I’m excited not to put in anymore 24 hour days and not
be constantly woken by trainees. But I’m also going to miss the field. All the
sudden my days off are weekends. I’m expected not to watch movies at work and I
have to put on real clothes and shower a lot more often. Taking a nap at my
desk is also frowned upon.
There’s a lot of benefits that come with moving to the
office. I get to go home to my own bed every night. I get to buy food with a much
higher probability of finishing it than before. I even get to buy furniture
(still working on this one). I have friends that I get to see more often than
every few months and my life has a new sense of normality that it didn’t have
before.
My job has changed again, for the third time in 3 years. It’s
exciting and brings on some new challenges. Previously I was a directional
driller, which meant I was in the field executing the well. Now I’m in the
office doing the planning. The most difficult part of this right now has been
adjusting to the different scale of things here.
I’m working in the Cantarell field, the largest oil field in
Mexico and one of the largest in the world. It’s also been declining in
production for the past 10 years or so which means Pemex is working very hard to
keep that oil flowing in. This results in high volume drilling. We’re working
on new wells and also windows off older wells for several different drilling
platforms. Sometimes we’re planning for wells happening months in advance and
sometimes it’s for wells happening in a week. This creates the environment of
low level stress combined with moments of insane pressure that I’ve become so accustomed
to. I also get to stay relatively close to the action of the field with daily
contact with my field crews.
As an added bonus I suddenly getting some face time with my
client. Before, I interacted with the client at only a field level. Now I’m
going in front of the guys making the decisions. This is putting a little more
stress on my Spanish and I’m really hoping I’ll be able to improve and also
unlearn all the bad Spanish I’ve picked up after three years on the rig.
All and all it’s an interesting change and I’m excited to
see where it takes me. I’ve been told this is another 3 year assignment.
Another three years in Mexico scares me and excites me. It will certainly challenge
me either way.
