My first jobs after dropping out as a Senior at UNT drew me into the Oil & Gas Industry
First Company – 7/1990-9/1992 Electronics Technologist III Dallas, TX
Maintain, test, and repair the Core Measurement System (CMS-300) on an international basis. The CMS automatically analyzes core to obtain routine core properties via pneumatics, and hydraulics, all being controlled via an AT class computer running Visual Basic under a Windows environment. It provides up to 10,000-psi pressure on a core sample in both the axial and radial directions prior to analyzing via introduction of helium transfer through the core. Helium pressure drop through the rock is recorded over time via a high precision (and well calibrated) one-psi strain gauge.
Provide structured training classes worldwide as necessary covering the proper use and maintenance of the CMS-300. Team Leader for the production of first CMS-300 Operators Manual (several hundred pages).
Further developed the Auto-Saturator BASIC-52 program from R&D while building, testing, and modifying units two and three for sale. The instrument takes a core sample to vacuum state for a pre-set period of time, dependent upon the program selected. Then, it takes the core to 3,000-psi of saline solution for another period (while adjusting pressure as necessary by monitoring strain gauge) via an off-shelf BASIC-52 embedded microprocessor board.
Build, test, and repair high-pressure Incalloy valves as necessary utilizing high pressure-low volume pumps capable of producing 60,000-psi as necessary. Test and repair high-pressure pumps (up to 60,000-psi) operated by stepper motors; of which indexers are controlled via a FORTH embedded microprocessor, touch-pad, and LCD display.
| Date | Location |
|---|---|
| Oct/1991 | Bogota, Colombia |
| Feb/1992 | Hunan Province, China |
| Mar/1992 | Sichuan Province, China |
| Mar/1992 | Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia |
| Apr/1992 | Delft, Holland |
| Jun/1992 | Port Harcourt, Nigeria |
Second Company – 12/1992-3/1994 Engineering Technician Addison, TX
Performed “Routine Core Analysis” in a small laboratory which involved the following procedures/equipment:
slabbing, plugging, gamma logging, Dean Stark extraction, white & ultraviolet light photography, helium permeability/porosity analysis, mercury bulk volumes, vacuum ovens, desiccators, and final report/plot generation.
Streamlined routine core analysis procedures to provide quality results for a massive South American project requiring hundreds of thousands of calculations to be performed. Much of this was done via modifying existing HP-11 RPN calculator programming and re-introducing it into a HP-42S calculator with a menu-based format. The new program rapidly calculates permeameter calibration power curve fit, standard deviation, bulk volume, permeability, porosity, and aids the user in detecting newly introduced helium leaks in the system.
Wrote and compiled an X-Based database program (Dallas-RCAL) that was instrumental in acquiring a large contract from major competition. The program basically told the reservoir engineers the “believability” in their bottom-line oil/water saturation numbers that we give them, based upon instrumentation, parallax, and human errors.