Oilfield Rougneck
By Oil and Gas | Category: Oil and Gas Jobs
How to Get a Job As An Oilfield Rougneck? Here is the answer for your Oilfield Jobs.
Oilfield Rig Workers or Roughnecks are in great demand right now. If you have a high school education or GED you can easily make $50,000 or more a year.
Step 1
With the rise in oil prices there are more drilling rigs than ever working in the US and Canada and offshore. If you are in good physical shape and don’t mind long hours and hard work you can be rewarded with a salary of up to $50,000 or more. As you work your way up the oilfield ladder, to the job of driller or even rig boss or “toolpusher” you can expect to make over $100,000 per year. You must be willing to stay away from home for long periods and work 12 hour shifts.
Step2
In the case of land based rigs many work a schedule of two weeks on and two weeks off, or one week on, one week off or even two weeks on and one week off. There are many exceptions. Offshore schedules can range from two weeks to a month on and the same or less days off. This can change if the rig is shorthanded though. I know some small rigs where the workers or “hands” get off for only a day or two when they move the rig to the next well to be drilled. If you are new to the oilfield you will start out as a “worm” which is what inexperienced hands are called. You will be shown the ropes, often starting out as a “roustabout” or laborer whose job is to do manual labor that the roughnecks are too busy for such as carrying drilling mud, digging ditches and so on. As you work your way up to the rig floor, where the real money is made, you will learn how to break apart the joints of drill pipe and make “connections” as new joints are added to the drill pipe that has been drilled down into the ground. Roughnecks have to “trip pipe” or take off 30 foot joints of pipe one at a time when the oil company needs to come “out of the hole” to add a new drill bit or go back in. It is hard backbreaking work but the pay is good right now and many oil companies offer 401-K plans and medical plans, unlike the old days.
Step3
If you are just starting out you will need to relocate closer to an area where oil wells are being drilled. Fortunately, thanks to the discovery of several new oil and gas shale formations such as the Marcellus Shale, which runs from Appalachia to New York, there may be oil and gas drilling in your area. Other examples of new drilling include the Barnett Shale near Dallas - Fort Worth and the Bakken formation in North Dakota and Saskatchewan. As a “worm” oil companies will not be willing to put up with you being far away from your rig and will not likely hire you for any job if you are more than a couple hundred miles away from where the work is. As you gain experience and work your way up the ladder they may not mind you commuting to anywhere in the US, as long as you make it back to work on time. Roughnecks who work offshore, and work month or two on and the same time off, will fly from as far away as Africa and Indonesia back to the US..
Step4
I suggest you learn as much about the industry as possible before considering a job as a roughneck. One good book on oilwell drilling is “A Primer Of Oilwell Drilling”. It describes the jobs on the rig and how a well is drilled in great detail. A source for the book is below. Try the classified sections of the newspapers in areas where there is oilfield activity such as Texas and Wyoming. Call the numbers listed and ask how you might submit a resume. Believe it or not plain old door to door cold calling is a good method. Wear clean work clothes, such as blue jeans and steel toe boots and long sleeve Carhart shirt. Oilfield bosses are typically very “old school” and don’t want to see applicants with piercings, long hair and beards.
Honestly the oilfield is one of the die hard blue collar types of workplace that does not put up with much foolishness. In the past it has been a hard place for persons of color to break into but that has changed in recent years. It is still however mostly male dominated and women can find it a hard place to work. For oilfield job listings see the resources section below. Good Luck, You’ll need it.
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