Maddox Files #3

Hey Family,

   Our last update was pretty recent, so I just had a few things that I wanted to share with ya'll, its mostly related to work stuff, if that doesn't interest you, that's okay, you don't have to read this.

   This week at work I had scheduled a Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) for the project I was working on (the Manka Facility). The meeting is a chance to review the safety of the design and make sure we considered what would happen in various cases. This is a pretty standard thing and pretty routine, but it didn't go at all according to plan.

   The design is captured in a document called a P&ID. I had prepared a P&ID for the facility, which was my scope of work, but I did not include the equipment and piping that connected the facility to the wells. This scope belonged to someone else.

   As the PHA got started we hit rough patches almost immediately. The guy that covered the well hook-ups didn't have his scope ironed out very well, and there were a lot of comments on his piece. There were also some discrepancies between his drawings and mine on the piece of equipment that we had in common (a 3 phase separator used to allocate or count the gas, oil and water that ran through it). On a standard piece of equipment that should have been a 30 to 45 minute exercise we took 3 hours to evaluate the safety. It was lunch time and we hadn't even started looking at the scope of my facility yet. I had been 'filibustered' by Operations and Gary for facilities.

   I have seen facilities be run through a PHA with minimal documentation. Basically they just want to know the bare essentials of the project. I had sufficient documentation and safety implementations equivalent to our currently operating facilities. The safety aspects of the design weren't a concern, I was getting held up by two other problems, neither of which were 'safety'.

   First, Operations had a problem with the lack of an atmospheric separator. They hadn't seen a facility without one before and didn't like that we were taking it out. I had been tasked to find a way to meet all the technical, regulatory and safety requirements with minimal capital and that required eliminating some equipment. They weren't a fan of the idea and didn't like that we trying to do it.

   The second issue was a question on whether the facility as designed would meet regulatory requirements. Long story short, when the work on the design started we got with regulations and back calculated the facility capacity from the regulatory requirements. Ron gave us a green light that we meet the VOC requirements of TCEQ, which were the limiting factor. He indicated that we would need a permanent flaring permit as well.

  Gary recently started working for Murphy. He didn't see my design until days before the PHA. He had some serious concerns about the TRC flaring permits and whether they would be granted. (There are two governing agencies in Texas with different regulations, the Texas Railroad Commission and the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality). He spoke with the recently hired regulatory manager (Ron's boss) and she told him that we would not be allowed the flaring permits as we would be flaring too much gas. Basically, Ron and his boss were of opposite opinions on this particular point, which was a key assumption in the design of the facility.

   Between operations wanting an AP vessel and Gary's concerns about regulatory requirements I was stuck. They PHA was derailed entirely and finally called to an early end. We converted it into a design review and Operations got their chance to write their Christmas-list of features on the project. All of which add additional cost to the facility.

   While my painful meeting was progressing, by boss Jaimee was fighting another battle. Two months of preparation involving over 80 Murphy Employees had generated the overall plan and strategy for developing the oil leases. Facilities are a key part. Jaimee was put on the spot to explain why a 4000 bbl facility cost $8.5 million while the 3000 bbl facility  designed would only cost $3.5 million. In the mind of the vice president it was clearly better to use the facility that had 3/4 of the capacity for less than half the cost.

    At Murphy, the upper management has become dominated by people rising from the drilling side. They understand the reservoir and the downhole portion, which accounts for about 70% of the capital we expend, but they are blind to the part of work that I and my team focus on.

   Jaimee was trying to explain to them the differences in equipment, functionality, operability and regulatory assumptions that resulted in the two items. The VP was being difficult, questioning everything, and not buying into what she was saying. Finally she explained to him that at the very moment they were having the meeting, the design for the smaller facilities was being torn apart and operations was refusing to approve it because it didn't have the additional features they wanted. Operations has a way of getting what they want, if they don't like it, they will make sure it doesn't run. If it doesn't run, no one makes any money. They have a lot of weight to throw around.

   

          That is the end of my story for today, if you're interested I can tell you how it concludes when I know what is going to happen. I just wanted to share some of the things that I have been up to with work and let you all get a feel for the kind of things I do there. Love you all!

Maddox Files #2

The last few weeks have gone by quite quickly. I believe it is time for the update. Starting a few weeks back, JaLeen and I invited a bunch of people to join us at the park for a dutch oven picnic. We invited Kelsey, some old friends and some new friends to join us as I tried out some new variations on some of my favorite dutch oven recipes. I think the food turned out pretty well - We did a potato/bacon/onion dish but I added some bell pepper and a secret assortment of spices to finish it off. I resurrected by old chicken soup dish and added a twist: peas, rice, and cream of celery and the good ol' italian seasonings mix, to make a pretty tasty treat.
   JaLeen pulled out her slack-lining gear for our amusement and our friend brought a frisbee and a croquet set. We had quite a good time in the perfect early summer weather. Kelsey's world famous cookies added a sweet final touch to the evening.

After a few short days at work, full of busily trying to answer design questions for the new facilities, we had a work picnic for the entire Eagle Ford Shale group - roughly 200 people. In texas they have what they call "Crawfish Boils". I think it came from the Louisiana's who work in the oil patch. They had a huge tank, roughly 6' in diameter full of boiling water. The have a cage they can lower in and out of the tank. They fill the cage full of still-squirming crawfish, pour loads of Cajun seasoning on them (or in the water) and lower the cage in. The crawfish are  boiled for about 15 minutes and then the cooks add shovel fulls of ice. Nobdy knows they they throw the ice on after, they just do it... and it tastes better.
The big crawfish are about the size of your hand. They don't have much meat, so when you are eating them you fill up a whole cafeteria-sized tray of crawfish and get to work. The Louisianans taught me how to eat them. First you grab their 'head' (really its the whole abdomen) and you pull the tail out of it. Put the head away and just take the tail. The tail is cracked in half by squeezing in on the sides and then you break the rest of the shell off. Then you eat the rest. As you are eating your crawfish be careful - if the tail is tucked up under the body its safe, if the tail is sticking out don't eat it - it was dead before they boiled it and its anyone's guess how long it has been deceased.

We left right after the crawfish boil to head up to Oregon. The airport lost our bags, so we spent all of friday in our same clothes - gross. When we finally got them on Saturday morning we were quite grateful for the change.
Nate (JaLeen's Uncle) picked us up from the airport. On Friday we started right off when some work chores and helped them a bit with their gorgeous back yard. They have pretty trees and bushes and roses and grass. Loved being outside. It was a little cold, but we didn't mind much. Apparently we have become a little too accustomed to Texas weather.
  Nate and Alicia have two little girls: Rowen and Emerson. They are super cute and loads of fun. We played several games with them, had dinner with the family - Alicia is quite the chef - and just had a great time.
   On Saturday we met up with Heather, Kristen, Mike, Maddox and Natalya for a waterfall hike. It was a pretty short hike, but hikes take longer when there are kia around. Rowen and Emerson gave Maddox fruit snacks and he decided they were nice enough - he followed them like a shadow for the rest of the day. After the wilderness trek we headed back to the house for a BBQ dinner. Natalya was having some indigestion and was quite upset. I decided to take her for a couple laps of the back yard so she could scream in the relative privacy of the backyard away from everyone. It took a couple laps to finally find the right position to hold her in so she was comfortable, about one more to help her get her digestive track all taken care of, and one final lap to get her to fall asleep. I felt an odd since of achievement - kinda like winning a chess tournament.
   The families seemed to get along well enough, and Kristen and Company headed back to Corvallis. After another fun day with the Bay Family JaLeen and I left for home as well.

   Coming back to work was an adventure - I felt like I had missed a week instead of just the half-day friday. The Reservoir Engineer decided that the production forecast for the Williams Facility (the second of two I am working on) was inaccurate and trued it up to the current production. In addition, they had adjusted the drilling schedule. I came back to find that there was a 50% increase in the oil and gas my facility would be processing. They also hadn't provided that information to me yet. Suddenly I had two undersized pieces of equipment and a sales gas agreement that would be insufficient.
   JD also came to talk to me. He wanted to know when I would have a cost and schedule update for these facilities (this would be round 5 of cost estimates). Apparently the guys up the latter were off the impression that one of these facilities could be picked up at Walmart for $1.95 plus tax and set up in 4 weeks. I just laughed. When I got one put together a few days later, JD came in and tested every item he could think of. The interrogation lasted 30 minutes. In the end he simply said 'good job, you're doing well. Let's shoot for getting it installed the first week of September' While that schedule is extremely agressive, it does mean that I finally will be getting timely approvals to buy all of my equipment and get these project in construction.

On Saturday JaLeen and  I went down to Lake Jackson. Mom and Dad had just moved in! It was time to party! We were treated to some of Mom's amazing pancakes right off the bat. Then we went to work picking peaches in the orchard. Perhaps it was the sweetness of the peaches, or the gorgeous sky, or everyone kinda spreading to pick their peaches, but we ended up with roughly 80lbs of peaches. Mom posted a smaller number, but I did the math and it ends up at 77lbs and change. We started to work on making freezer jam, frozen peach slices, peach smoothies and the works. We're going to be eatin peaches for quite some time.

Dad and Mom also joined JaLeen and I for some doubles R-Ball. We did guys vs girls doubles. It was some crazy fun games. We had a blast. I thought Mom and Dad would have gotten rusty from not playing much for awhile but they were doing well! Dad still had some of his Z-serves in good form and Mom's ball placement is still top-notch!

Church today was also of note. - In the Black Pearl (clerk's office) we lost our captain - Br. Shanley and got a new Ward Clerk, Br. Stephens, who will be released next week from his calling as Elder's Quorum President. Hmm... We also found out that the most recently called Asst. Ward Clerk got a job in DC and is moving. The other one is out of town on business for three weeks. Talk about a crazy time. So basically I am trying to show everyone how we have been doing things as the new Ward Clerk gets up to speed and decides what he wants to change/leave the same.

Hope ya'll are going well. Catch you soon!