10-03-2009 _ Baku, Azerbaijan _ Back to Baku Again
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Back to Baku for a quick reunion My return to Baku had been a long time coming; there had been a lot of talk that I would go back there to help out with this and that, but nothing materialised until now. I had shipped some equipment to Baku at the start of January only to have it wait in Azeri customs as no one would pay the appropriate bribe to get it though. By the time the package had nearly cleared I was on my way to my holiday in Egypt and the job was delayed until I returned. When I finally got to Baku the BP rep said that it was the first time that Schlumberger had ever delayed a job on the grounds that someone had holiday booked : - ) I ended up spending 16 days in Baku with the majority of that sitting offshore conducting some experiments with the help of a BP petroleum engineer. On my time onshore I met up with a lot of the old characters, with the remainder being on days off or loaned out to a different location someone else in the world. It was nice reliving the old times; it was all of the good without the bad of actually of having to live in Baku. There are still good curries to be had in Adams! The work I did offshore afforded me a helper, so they sent a local Schlumberger guy offshore to help out with the paperwork and organising things on the platform. He didn't have much to do for a lot of the job but managed to fill his time completing some of his online work related training. Due to the amazing success of the work I performed in Baku, it looks as though I will win an Intercompany award and hopefully get an SPE paper published. Definitely a worthwhile trip. I even got BP to shut in three of their oil wells and halt production.. Quite an achievement when these wells produce about 20,000 barrels of oil per day each ... that's a lot cash. |