Cement testing and gelling water...

Today was our first day in the lab. What does a oil extraction services provider do with a lab you ask? They design and test cement mixes as well as frack job fluids. They do this all in the comfort of an air-conditioned trailer. Needless to say, I like the lab. We got to run rheology tests for cement mixtures that were going out on jobs and we also got to help test a water to gel mix and the corresponding breaker. I'm probably not using all the right terms here but who'll check me on it? After lunch we also watched the USA soccer match on Mark's phone while he mixed test slurry. He's into soccer so it was fun to talk to him about it. Lunch was amazing by the way; La Fuerta (sp?) is the Conway version of La Fiesta. So tasty!

We'll spend a couple more days in the lab before we move out to the bulk plant where Nick has been working and sweating is (you know) off. You haul, open and mix bags of cement and additives to make the mixtures designed and tested by Mark in the lab. It will be heavy manual labor in the sun and humidity so I'm trying to soak up the AC while I got it.

As for last night's festivities at Chris's (who had a birthday yesterday), it was fun. The nice thing about working here is that everyone's really friendly and they like to hang out with each other...probably because their schedules don't really promote out of company friends...but I digress. They invited us lowly interns on the spot and they were happy to have us. It was good times!

Oh I'd also like to add a note about the effects of the gulf incident (sorry I haven't done more of this, Bre, but I don't know what to tell you):

The company will likely cut their recruiting efforts drastically for the coming year because their policy is not to fire people if the need in their district wanes (or is eliminated by other means) but to relocate them to where they are needed. All the displaced workers are going to be filling the positions that open up around other parts of the country and so they won't need to hire new greenhorns for those positions. This has been the first few days since starting work that I haven't heard something about BP or the oil spill or "the situation in the gulf." It's a hot topic.

Mom, I know I just told you all of this but now it's properly documented in case you forget about it. It was good to talk to you tonight!

Stay tuned for the next installment of Intern Sam and the Oilfield Diaries.