In the oil business, what is a "mud man" and how much do they earn?
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April 23rd, 2016
A good friend of mine has a husband who just retired from being, as he called it, a mud man. He worked for an offshoot of Halliburton and was transported by helicopter to offshore oil rigs. What did he do on the rig? He had a nice house and boat house right on a huge lake for years. He had to learn several foreign languages due to rigs far from the USA. She has no idea what he did on the rigs or I would have asked.
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I lived in Louisiana for a while and I had neighbors who worked on the offshore rigs.
They pour fluids (“mud”) in the hole as they drill. It keeps water out, lubricates the drill bit, and carries the rock bits out of the hole.
They work long hours, it is hard and dirty work, and they live on the rig for a week (or two? it was a long time ago) but then they have a week or two off.
‘A mud engineer averages $108,032 a year, according to Rigzone’
Also, the risk of hitting gas pockets and the ‘newness’ of the drilling means there is a great deal at risk. My ex worked on the Deepwater Horizon before it blew. New rigs are fraught with problems. They earn their money. They need a decent understanding of the engineering and the geology.
When I lived in Louisiana, I knew a few guys who worked on the rigs. They usually worked two weeks on, and two weeks off, working 12-hour shifts while they were on. I knew at least three guys that had to leave that line of work due to back problems.
One type of “mud” the mud man deals with is salt. If drilling through a salt layer, the water in the regular mud will erode the sides of the hole and it will collapse onto the drilling steel, causing it to seize and stop drilling. The heavy salt mixture keeps the hole from eroding, since the mixture is too salty to erode the wall. The salt comes in 5 gallon buckets.
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