Each month since January 2011, we have published Gas Oil & Mining Contractor magazine, profiling successful service contractors and being a source of information for the industry.

Unfortunately, due to the downturn in the oil industry, we have decided to suspend the print publication effective after the June issue is mailed on June 9.

GOMCmag.com, however, will continue to be your source for all the latest industry and product news. You will continue to receive weekly E-newsletters.

Thank you for your support over the last 5 1/2 years!

Cory Dellenbach

Editor

Recently we featured artist and drill rig worker Craig Mann, who uses Photoshop to enhance his black and white photographs of his rig with images of Star Wars characters – hoping to bring some levity to the hard days of his fellow workers.

Another artist has produced a tribute to the men and women working in the northern Alberta oilsands. Canadian R&B recording artist Classified released his song “Work Away” in January. The song has since been steadily gaining popularity. He wrote the song as a tribute to all the people he knows who have headed west to work in the oilfields, particularly those that have to divide time between work and being with their families back home.

Classified penned the song before the downturn hit, but it’s still relatable in the current economic environment. The song begins with oilsands workers saying their names, where they’re from and where they are currently working.

Give it a listen:

1. Moving pipe around can be dangerous for workers, but a pipe handling system can make that job both safer and faster. It also minimizes damage to pipe materials and bonded coatings. Read more about the latest hydraulically driven vacuum lifters.

2. Ever heard of microbranding? It makes sense for an oilfield services business, especially a smaller one that doesn’t have a designated marketing position. If you’re dealing with marketing yourself, try this low-cost approach. Microbranding involves concentrating your marketing efforts on a smaller, more specific target audience. This article outlines an easy 10-step technique to help brand and market a small business.

3. Never put production over safety. Trenching and excavation work is full of hazards, but there is no excuse for accidents. Having a competent person on site and following all safety procedures minimizes the danger for everyone involved. Here’s a refresher on those safety guidelines.

4. Getting creative with their business model and offering a wide range of services has resulted in success for Mustang Oilfield Services in Ohio. Read the featured profile and find out how they’ve managed to sustain growth despite facing the industry downturn.

5. Teamwork pays off. Oilsands companies in Canada have joined together to create the Oil Sands Community Alliance in order to work together to manage the challenges facing the oilsands area. Read about how the group is working alongside local governments and aboriginal communities to make positive change. 

Black and white photographs of the drilling rig combined with stills of Star Wars characters equals a collection of brilliant pop culture images that have surged in popularity in recent weeks.

Mann says the photos were aimed at other onboard workers, but the images have been shared and spread to a much wider audience. He’s received a lot of emails thanking him for his efforts, and it’s easy to see why.

See Mann’s entire series “No Bothans died to bring you this…” on Facebook and Instagram.

Tanker cars are strong pieces of equipment that, when compromised in some way in an accident, can become dangerous.

In a Jan. 16 episode of Mythbusters on the Discovery Network, hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman wanted to test the strength of tanker cars and attempt to make one implode on itself.

“It’s going to be the biggest production we’ve ever undertaken on this show, an imploding tanker car,” says Hyneman, at the start of the episode. The two started with scale versions of the tanker car built out of oil drums. After releasing the vacuum on the scale versions, they imploded.

It was a little more difficult with the real tanker car though. The show first filled a tanker car with steam — pretending to clean the inside — and then removed the vacuum inside the car using a Guzzler vacuum truck. There was no affect on the car.

“These tank cars are actually pretty tough little bastards, but as always we have one more little trick up our sleeve,” Hyneman says as the show cuts to a picture of a crane approaching the tanker car.

The crane lifted a concrete block over the tanker car and dropped it onto the car to imitate an accident. “Hopefully it’ll leave a nice big dent in our tank car and then when we pull the vacuum on it, that dent will cause the whole thing to buckle,” Hyneman says. “Kind of like pulling a single card out of a house of cards. At least that is what we hope.”

It worked. After dropping the block on the tank car, the show again used the Guzzler to pull the vacuum and at 23 inches of vacuum, the tanker imploded. Hyneman and Savage were thrilled as it was shown over and over again — in slow motion.

“This is all about the geometry, just like with a chicken’s egg,” Hyneman says. “(Eggs are) really quite strong and you can’t break them in your hand when you squeeze them. All it takes is one little crack on the frying pan and the whole thing unravels.”

It goes to show how much of a beating these cars can take and what type of force is needed for them to break. 

During the daytime trading hours on Tuesday, crude oil prices took another hit. The price of crude oil fell below $30 a barrel for the first time since last 2003. The price was again over $30 by the end of the day and opened at $31.71 on Wednesday.

On Tuesday night, President Barack Obama presented his final State of the Union address and spoke briefly on the oil and energy industries. At one point Obama praised gasoline prices at $2 a gallon.

“Gas under two bucks a gallon ain’t bad, either.”

Many in the oil and gas industry took to Twitter and other social media outlets and criticized his quote. Many were upset that he would make light of this as the domestic oil industry is laying off thousands of workers because of the low price of crude oil.

It wasn’t all bad though. Later in his speech, the president announced that the U.S. has cut imports of foreign oil by nearly 60 percent during his time in office.

“We’re taking steps to give homeowners the freedom to generate and store their own energy — something environmentalists and Tea Partiers have teamed up to support. Meanwhile, we’ve cut our imports of foreign oil by nearly 60 percent, and cut carbon pollution more than any other country on Earth.”

According to information from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, however, the decline in dependency on imports actually began in 2006, after peaking at 60.3 percent the year before.

As of the fourth quarter of 2015, net imports were down 62 percent. In the first 11 months of last year, the U.S. imported only 24.3 percent of the petroleum and refined products that it consumed.

Here are other quotes from Obama on the oil industry during the State of the Union.

“Now we’ve got to accelerate the transition away from dirty energy. Rather than subsidize the past, we should invest in the future — especially in communities that rely on fossil fuels. That’s why I’m going to push to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources, so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet.”

“None of this will happen overnight, and yes, there are plenty of entrenched interests who want to protect the status quo. But the jobs we’ll create, the money we’ll save, and the planet we’ll preserve — that’s the kind of future our kids and grandkids deserve.”

The president also spoke of, and praised, other forms of energy such as solar and wind, vowing to move the country toward that route in his final year in office.

Ulterra, a widely recognized drill bit company, produced this video to demonstrate its process and show “The Life of a Drill Bit,” from the field, to the customer, through engineering, CAM and manufacturing, then back to the field. Check it out. 

Being a great leader is more than being good at what you do; you also need to help your employees be good at what they do. Having productive, motivated employees is important to your success. In this issue, Timothy F. Bednarz explains the importance of motivating your team, both as a whole and as individuals. He provides 14 methods to help you become a better leader and to help your employees achieve company goals and improve performance.

A safety culture is different than a safety program. Safety is always so important to be mindful of, especially for employees working out in the field. A safety training program ends, but developing a mindset that keeps safe work habits in the forefront of all activity keeps workers safe. For tips on establishing a better overall culture of safety, read this month’s Safety First.

Diversifying into various market niches can be a key to success. No one knows that better than Primco Dene Group, a large company in northeast Alberta that provides a variety of services to the northern Canada oilfields, including emergency medical services, man camp catering and management, security and waste-management services. When one branch of services slows down, hopefully others can pick up the slack.

In the Bakken, the job market has shifted, but opportunities still exist. Service and support industry jobs are more important now. Work for construction workers, mechanics and drivers, engineers and welders is still out there. Experience is more important than it once was, but the jobs are out there for those willing to work. More about job market trends can be found in the Bakken Extra column.

Help is out there. Oilfield Helping Hands is a nonprofit charity organization with multiple chapters in many oilfield regions. The organization was founded in Houston in 2003 as a way to help oilfield families experiencing a financial crisis. OHH raises money through a variety of fundraising events throughout the years. For more information about this great organization and ways to get involved, check out this month’s Niobrara Extra. 

If you’re looking for an accurate portrayal of life when the Bakken was booming, your search continues.  

But if your taste in TV shows runs to the dramatic and you’re only looking to be entertained, Blood & Oil will (possibly) deliver. This is Dallas for a new generation, or so I’ve read. (Yes, I’m too young to be familiar with Dallas, thanks for noticing.)

The show stars Chace Crawford, of Gossip Girl fame, and newcomer Rebecca Rittenhouse as newlyweds on their way to North Dakota to open a laundromat and (spoiler alert) their poorly planned adventure goes awry in the first 15 seconds. Crawford’s developed some sort of Southern-ish accent that’s not quite working and recites fun phrases like “We screwed the pooch.” I’m still not convinced he can act, but he’s so pretty that no one notices.

Don Johnson plays a tough-guy oil baron named Hap, which is right up his alley, and his wife is played by Amber Valetta. For those who may not know, she’s a supermodel, though probably best known for being inexplicably attracted to Kevin James in Hitch. The two portray an interesting but mostly just attractive couple. He bemoans the lack of ambition/talent/brains/etc. in his son; she arrives home on the jet with some insider info on untapped oil reserves, then puts the squeeze on an unsuspecting oil commissioner. It’s charming stuff.

While riddled with inaccuracies (I’ll get to those), a few things seemed nearly legitimate. The difficulty to find an affordable place to live in the Bakken region is spot-on. The newlywed newcomers stay in a makeshift campground with people they met five seconds ago, then look at a crappy little apartment listed for $2,000 a month before dropping some savings on a small RV instead.

The picked-over, understocked pharmacy with mile-long lines may or may not have been normal for the boom at its height, but I do believe even a desperate drugstore owner would still draw the line at hiring a pharmacy school dropout without a license. (Oops, spoiler alert again.)

Several incidents show, in high drama with poor dialogue, that crime skyrocketed during the boom. A fight between some drunk and disorderly citizens over that poached white moose? Yes, please.

The worst offenses are only standing out to those who know better, not the average ABC viewer. I’ve seen numerous complaints. No one from North Dakota is impressed.

There is a mad scramble to purchase an easement property in order to access land that is rumored to hold those untapped oil reserves. High-stakes gambling of everyone’s future and life-savings ensues. No one really mentions mineral rights or any regulations, just the land. THEY NEED THE LAND. Also, those oil reserves … larger than the oil deposit in Saudi Arabia? Not likely.

Bakken crude itself is misrepresented. The first episode ends (SPOILER AL- does anyone care at this point?) with two guys rolling around fighting in a puddle of crude that looks more like tar than anything coming out of the ground in North Dakota. But hey, the goal is excitement and ratings, not accuracy.

The choice of scenery is where most of the backlash is concentrated. Gorgeous snow-capped mountains are the backdrop of the billionaire’s ranch, the town, and pretty much every outdoor scene. Clearly no one bothered to check out North Dakota, and why would they when Utah offers a tax break for filming and those mountains!

It remains to be seen whether the self-proclaimed “Best New Drama of 2015” stays on the air. But you can be sure I’ll maybe be trying to stream the second episode some time in the next week to see if it gets any better.

• H2S monitors are absolutely vital wherever a worker may be at risk for inhaling the toxic gas. While H2S has a characteristic odor, prolonged exposure to it can make it more challenging to notice. If a person inhales too much hydrogen sulfide, the lungs can shut down. Learn what to look for when choosing an H2S monitor in this month’s Tech Perspective.
• Real-life training is the best training. Irwin’s Safety in Calgary, Alberta, understands the importance of tailoring a safety training course for each client, giving workers comprehensive training that applies directly to the work they do daily. “I think what really helps is when you’re able to teach people in a classroom about being safe, and then actually practice that in a place that feels very similar to where they work,” says Kyle Irwin, president of Irwin’s Safety. Read up on this practical approach in Training for Oilfield Dangers.
• No cutting corners! Urgency to meet production goals can sometimes mean safety isn’t given top priority. But safety should never be compromised. When creating or evaluating a safety program, there are four factors project managers should take into account. Read up on them in Eye on the Industry: Setting Up a Safety Program and make sure your own safety training is up to snuff.

Check out the whole issue here.