The Eagle Ford: A Partly Factual and Occasionally True Memoir from the Oilfields of South Texas and Northern Mexico

By Brandon Seale

In South Texas and northern Mexico, the Eagle Ford play has brought the oil and gas industry to the forefront of people’s minds. Yet outsiders find it hard to see the industry sympathetically, because they so rarely see
the people that inhabit it. The collection offers a vivid picture of life and people in the industry and
includes short stories (some fictional, some not) about gun battles with Mexican cartels, songs without music masquerading as poems, and essays on the oil and gas business and the larger-than-life personalities in it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312711150

Book preview

The Eagle Ford: A Partly Factual and Occasionally True Memoir from the Oilfields of South Texas and Northern Mexico

THE EAGLE FORD

A PARTLY FACTUAL AND OCCASIONALLY TRUE MEMOIR FROM THE OILFIELDS OF SOUTH TEXAS AND NORTHERN MEXICO

BRANDON SEALE

For every sorry sonofabitch who’s ever swung a sledge, turned a valve, or laid a bead on either side of the Border.

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A special thanks to Ward Hegeler (pictured) – who never let running a rig get in the way of a good photo op – for the photos, stories, and commentary he contributed to this collection.

Contents

INTRODUCTION

The Prize Mexican Racing Cow

The Eagle Ford Generation

I’ve Been Everywhere (Eagle Ford Version)

THE OIL AND GAS

Petroleum Geology: A Primer

The False Buda

The Eagleford

Bigger than the Eagle Ford

Most People Have Trouble Finding It

Three Deep on the Bench Seat of a Pickup Truck

THE OPERATIONS

Working the Oilfield: A Primer

Morning in the Eagle Ford

Old Buzzard Field

The Norwegian

Bienvenidos a Hidalgo

Jesse

Encinal Traffic

Seven Sweet Days

THE BUSINESS

Oil Economics: A Primer

Michael Chavez

Abundant Beards

How Much Oil Is in the Eagle Ford?

How Much Oil Is in the Mexican Eagle Ford?

Lost Behind the Ranges

THE LAW

Oil and Gas Law: A Primer

The Emergente-1

How to Kill the Mexican Energy Reform

467 Feet from the Line

EPILOGUE

The Oilman Looks Back

I’ve Seen Texas

INTRODUCTION

The Prize Mexican Racing Cow

An old campesino jabbered away in front of me in faded polyester jeans and an unpressed pearl snap shirt.

He says they have fairs here every year, I translated for the COO on the phone. They have prizes and the prizes can be up to two or three annual salaries.

For racing cows?

That’s what he says. The dead cow lay off to the side of the road with its tongue bloated and its eyes rolled back, as if bored. The campesino across from me had mastered the old Mexican peasant’s expressionless stare and used it to neutralize any attempt at a rational discussion.

Was she a bred cow or something? the COO asked, holding the demand letter from the old campesino’s attorney in his hands. It estimated damages for the dead cow at $1.0 million Mexican pesos, a little under $100,000 U.S. dollars.

No, she wasn’t bred, it doesn’t have anything to do with that.

We both knew that behind the old campesino was the local Don whose construction company we had refused to hire. Some companies would’ve just paid the asshole off. But we were independent oilmen, and every dollar we spent came out of our pockets. That puts you in a different frame of mind when faced with a shakedown.

A prize Mexican racing cow?

That’s about right.

Fuck him.

________

Two days later, I sat shotgun in the lead truck of a 26-load drilling rig convoy. Our security advisors had encouraged us to travel with protection, but I had declined. Most of the time, a big bullet-proof SUV provokes attention in a way that an oilfield truck doesn’t.

As we drew closer to location, a crowd of 50 or so locals, camped on the side of the road, came into view. A butchered beev cooked on the coals of an open pit where another dozen men mulled about with the enthusiasm of a breadline.

Rather than directly provoke them, I stopped a few hundred yards shy. When they saw us, the men crossed their arms and mumbled to each other. Mothers put their hands on their children’s shoulders. Children held their half-eaten guisada tacos in their hands and waited to see what would happen.

A tall man boasting an authoritative mustache moved into view with his hands on his hips, and the old campesino shuffled up behind him. After conferring with the Mustache, he began to move toward me, picking his way along the edge of the shoulderless road. I admired him for taking the initiative. I got down from my truck and walked toward him, and we met in the middle.

Someone needs to pay for my cow, he said.

I will pay for your cow, I told him. It was true. I didn’t intend to stiff this guy for his cow. I just couldn’t pay racing cow prices for a skinny old dry cow. But today I’m here to move this rig onto my location, I said.

He didn’t press me any further and turned around. I imagined that my openness had softened him. He walked back toward the Mustache. They spoke privately for a minute, then the Mustache gestured to the crowd. The old campesino looked back at me, and the locals backed away from the road.

I turned to the convoy and signaled for them to come forward. I climbed onto the running board and rode outside the lead truck in what I considered a show of confidence. I wanted the locals to see that I trusted in their decency and common sense not to mess with a convoy full of truckers and roughnecks.

After my truck had gone through, I jumped off the running board some 30 yards inside the lines. The locals didn’t pay me any mind and instead focused their attention on each load as it passed.

First through was the rig on its carrier, derrick lowered like a battering ram, followed by the substructure. The V-door ramp and mud pumps came behind with the catwalk. Two junk-box loads of tools rattled through the crowd, drowning out all conversation and announcing the coming of the doghouse with our company name stenciled on the side. The locals watched as a generator house, a utility house, a water tank, a fuel tank, blowout preventers, the gas buster, five loads of drill pipe, crew quarters, and mud tanks with shale shakers, desanders, and desilters bolted on top all paraded by.

But the locals couldn’t have known what really made Rig 2 unique. Rig 2 was a 1,000-horsepower heli-transportable rig. Every load, every tank, and every junk box had hooks on it and could be broken down for transport by helicopter. We’d bought the rig out of South America in the late ’90s when the oil price collapsed and rigs were selling for scrap. Our boss had the notion of saving money on road construction and mobilization by dropping the rig from location to location across South Texas, obviating the need to negotiate with prickly ranchers for access. Powerful men, it turns out, could be difficult in English, too.

The utility of a heli-rig in South Texas, however, soon proved minimal. It’s hard enough in this business to keep people from killing themselves when aerial assault aircraft aren’t involved. The rig fell into disfavor within our fleet. When we landed the Mexico contract, it was a natural candidate for deportation.

After all the loads had passed without incident, the crowd re-formed across the road.

________

When things get all banjaxed and right focked, you’ll be lucky to have one hand free, the Irishman had instructed me, his black eyes animated by Celtic fire. He pulled my left hand off the Glock 17. Well, come onta fock, train like you fight. Fire! he said, pointing downrange at the target that hung across the basement of his Bogota, Colombia office. I fired off the clip in a loose pattern centered on the target’s neck and lower face.

His office wall bore a painting of Bernardo O’Higgins, the Irish-Chilean liberator, and a regimental standard of the San Patricio Brigade, Irishmen who chose to fight on the side of their coreligionists in the Mexican-American War. I never inquired as to how he’d ended up in Colombia, though it wasn’t hard to appreciate how a man of his talents might have prospered in that country’s more violent spells. His reputation preceded him throughout Latin America.

He had just led the most successful commando operation since Entebbe, Operation Jaque. For a year, he had coordinated Colombian counterinsurgency forces as they tricked the FARC rebels into bringing their most prized hostages to meet with a fictitious humanitarian group. Two Mi-17 helicopters in Red Cross livery ferried a squad of Colombian special forces wearing dreadlocks and Che Guevara t-shirts to the meet. They then lured the captors with their hostages onto the helos, lifted off, and turned the tables on the surprised guerrillas.

The blades of one of those same big Russian Mi-17s punched the air overhead now. When they arrived in Mexico after Jaque, the helos had been repainted to a neutral gray. About a dozen Mexican soldiers lined the seats beside us. I wore the same coveralls and hardhat as the skeleton crew we’d brought along: a driller, a derrickman, an electrician, two mechanics, two hands, and one welder. The Irishman flanked me on one side, another bodyguard on the other. They had been offered coveralls as well but declined them, claiming the extra clothing would interfere with their ability to draw their weapons.

________

A week after we’d rigged up on the Hidalgo 401, the crowd still hadn’t dispersed. Every other day, it seemed, there was a new beev on the pit.

But the drilling had gone well, in terms of drilling wells in Mexico anyhow. Seven days in and we’d TD’d the well just shy of 6,000 feet, logged it, and were running casing. The log was promising, and all through the drilling we’d been seeing fluorescents in the pits and indications of beautiful, high-gravity condensate. We’d been looking for a shallow, stratigraphically-trapped, gas-charged Olmos sand. Instead, we had a bona fide oil well on our hands that could probably flow a few hundred barrels a day if we fraced it.

On the eighth day, however, the old campesino appeared on location, wearing the same clothes I always saw him wear. I looked over his shoulder for a truck or some sort of vehicle that had dropped him there, but saw nothing. Had this old man really walked all the way out here by himself? People didn’t go around on foot in this part of the world. His fake ostrich boots wore a heavy coat of dust. His straw hat showed fresh sweat stains through the hatband. He walked right up to the base of the substructure. I came out from the doghouse and leaned over the railing.

I need someone to pay for my cow, he said over the whine of the generator. I stepped down from the doghouse, but said nothing.

Somebody is going to pay for my cow, he repeated.

"I tell you what, viejo, if you want to settle this right now, I’ll give you $1,000. Cash, out of my pocket. That’s more than a bred cow is worth." I waited for the racing cow excuses, but this time they didn’t come.

If you don’t pay for my cow, someone else will, he said, with no particular emotion in his tone. Yet the monte grew eyes in that moment. I felt them. I looked around the location. Behind the shapeless mesquite and chaparral, two dozen forms threatened through the shadows. In the distance, I heard engines.

I looked past the man now toward the sound of the approaching engines, straining to hear them over the mud pumps. An engine belched nearer, and I saw a cloud of exhaust in the brush.

Someone is going to pay for my cow, the old man repeated for the third time. An opened throttle roared to life and two D6 dozers appeared. A dozen bandidos came out of the brush with a Mexican Barney Fife behind them in a baggy khaki uniform. The old campesino retreated as the bandidos rushed the location wielding pipes, wrenches, chains, and at least one machete. I ran back up into the doghouse, radioed down to the toolpusher, and told him to notify the COO that we were under attack. The driller beside me tried to ignore the commotion, even as the first dozer raised its bucket and smashed into the crew quarters, lifting the roof clear off the structure and shearing the trailer clear in half. The second dozer went over to the pickups parked in a row and tipped over the first one before smashing the windshield of the second.

What the fuck is going on? the derrickman asked me, as he free falled down the ladder with the derrick-assist. The