|
PETROLEUM DIRECTORY: Good people make good Nabors — the changing face of North Slope drilling
Petroleum News
The 1970s were boom years for Nabors Alaska Drilling and everyone else in the oil business. Oil prices were high and the North Slope was in its early years of development and production.
Skyrocketing prices, the expectation of future increases and the eagerness of investors to get in on the money to be made from oil, inflamed the global search for new oil supplies.
“I met a guy here in that time period who was fired from one of the Seattle banks,” Taylor said, “because he didn't loan enough money to the oil industry. Well, heck, by the time I saw him, he looked like the only smart guy in town.”
When the oil price crash came in the early 1980s, Taylor said it was “fast and devastating.
“One guy said he went to bed New Year's Eve of 1981 and had a booming business, he was a rich man, and he woke up the next morning in 1982 and he was broke. Silly as that sounds, that's what was happening throughout the oil industry,” Taylor said.
Nabors Alaska survived “pretty well,” according to Taylor, although its parent company, like many others, went through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. North Slope production begins to decline North Slope production began to decline in 1989 and BP and ARCO, the main operators on the North Slope, wanted drillers to reduce drilling cost per foot by 30 percent by 1995, a goal that was reached in 1994.
In 1993 after 40 years with Nabors, Taylor started phasing out at the company and working with the new Nabors Alaska president and CEO, Jim Denney.
Under Denney’s leadership Nabors helped change the image and the reality of working on the North Slope. In the last decade a new culture has taken root — one where safety and efficiency are often trump cards.
Clyde Treybig, quality manager at Nabors under Denney, uses the phrase “continual improvement” with frequency.
“We’re not drilling wells the way we did 20 years ago,” he says. “And five years from now, we’ll be drilling wells differently from the way we do today. … We’re moving ahead and going to get to a better place. …
“Cutting edge equipment is easily understood by all aspects of the industry,” Treybig said, “because the results are tangible and immediate.” However, Nabors is also committed to improving the human element of the drilling equation. According to Treybig, when an innovation is a good one, it will eventually take hold. “It’s like seatbelts,” he says. “At first, when the law required people to wear them, people felt uncomfortable. Now, most people feel uncomfortable without them.”
It’s the same, he says, with safety improvements on the North Slope. There was a time when the use of certain safety gear was erratic and looked upon by some as optional. “Now,” he says, “you can’t even go onto a rig without a complete set of safety gear. You would be stopped immediately.” A picture is worth a thousand words Safety is a constant by-word at Nabors and safety policies are always under a microscope and subject to change.
In 2001, Denney made a significant change in the way operational procedures are followed. The operating instructions for each piece of equipment were augmented by pictures.
“Each rig has over 200 procedures,” he said, “and we’re taking each one, breaking each task down, and attaching it to a visual.” This, Denney said, creates a “more meaningful training document.”
Nabors also modified its employee safety bonus program to encourage employees to report any unsafe conditions or practices on the rig and work toward improving safety skills and processes. The program no longer rewards workers for working accident-free, but rather for showing that they consistently use safe work practices.
“We don’t want to punish workers who are involved in accidents,” says Treybig. “We learn from every accident. We simply want to reward our workers for being safety conscious and proactively working to improve the safety on every rig.” Treading lightly on the environment Safety for people is the top priority, Denney said, but safety for the environment is also critical. He said the rigs themselves are always being modified to improve environmental performance.
“We put a lot of money into our rigs to improve the environmental aspect of the drilling,” Treybig said. “We want our rigs working as new rigs.”
He said Nabors’ effective system of waste management is an example of the diverse services offered by the company: “We’re able to build grind and inject facilities that we attach to our rigs. We can offer that kind of capability to reduce overall well costs and environmental impacts.” Size does count — growth leads to diversity Diversity is at the heart of Nabors’ history of success, Treybig said. “As the market changes we’re able to adapt and apply our strengths to whatever is demanded of us.”
He said that offering a wide range of services is the result of operating a wide range of equipment.
“We have something that the other guys really don’t — we have the kind of diversity of equipment and experience that allows us to run anything from coil tubing to workover rigs to exploration rigs. …
“It used to be, ‘a rig is a rig — you tell us where to be and we’ll drill a hole for you.’” It’s not that way anymore, Treybig said. “Now we’re looking at better equipment, better technology, better systems, and most importantly, more professional rig hands. We’re looking at ways to do things safer and cleaner and more efficient. Now, we’re a much more integrated part of how the whole process works.”
Editor’s note: Parts of the above story were taken from stories about Nabors Alaska Drilling in Petroleum News’ special publication, Partners, and from the October 2002 Petroleum Directory.
| 