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Cody's Spencer's experience in Wyoming in the
thirties may have been a factor in deciding the
course of action. According to Ralph Will, then with
the Rocky Mountain Drilling Co., and Spencer's boss,
a field on the southwest flank of the Big Horn basin
was characterized by a depleted but extremely porous
and permeable sandstone known as the Frontier. It
had to be penetrated to reach the deeper pay zones.
Ralph instructed Cody to drill through this thief
sand with pumps running very slowly, adding sawdust
all the time. Once the zone had been penetrated,
normal drilling could be resumed.
Tom Wark, tool
push on Imperial Leduc No. 48, says if those in
charge had only listened to Lloyd Stafford the
blow-out would never have happened, But Lloyd was
over-ruled.
Hughie Leiper, now a senior officer with
an oil company, is another chronicler who has
contributed to a better understanding of events,
Leiper, a native of Didsbury, moved to Turner Valley
in 1929 with his family. His father had obtained a
job first on the steam rigs and then with the
"Purity 99" Gas and Oil Products refinery.
Leiper
recalls that during World War II, the tool pushes
would line up at the high school Friday afternoons
and induce the husky lads to work weekends. This put
extra cash in Hugh's pocket and enabled him to
consider studying Petroleum Engineering (he
ultimately graduated from the University of
Oklahoma). He enrolled in Mount Royal College but
finances forced him to leave temporarily. It was
during this time that he started his roughnecking
career with Dick Harris, Hugh recalls having had to
pay his way out to Many berries to work for Bob
Wark, then with Can-Tex Drilling. When he was in
Princess, he was approached by Frank Flewelling of
G.P. who offered him a job. That is how he got to
Leduc. He was on Rig #10, first at the BA Pyrcz well
and then on the Atlantic wells.
Leiper remembers
that he was an underling on the job and was in the
cookhouse when the pow-wow was on which resulted in
the drill "dry" decision.
You know, Stafford was so
damn mad he quit - did you know that? He says,
'Well, that's the decision, boys. I want no part it,
I'm quitting.' And he walked out. But being the
dedicated and conscientious man he was, the minute
the damn thing blew out he was back into the thick
of things again.12
Let's hear Lloyd's version of the meeting in a
recent interview with Gibby Gibson and Harry
Simpson:
As I recall, Cody Spencer and Clarence
Matthews were there. Dave Gray was there and he was
the one who suggested drilling "dry". But I wasn't
in favour of it because I knew if you lost
circulation...in a bad zone...you are going to lose
it all. And the gas will bypass you because the
first pad is your big bubble of gas, your high
pressure...right at the start. And the expansion of
that gives you your blowout. Keeps moving up...till
it gets away, then it is too late. Nate Goodman was
along at the time...in the doghouse with
us...they said they were going to drill "dry" and they were
going to let the water run in, pumping a little down
the drill pipe - that water lightens up your fluid
column and any wells we ever drilled were mostly
killed with water but they had to be weighted up
after. I decided to... get ready to go ahead and
"dry drill". But I didn't start the crews. I roamed
around thinking and wondering about it, then went
over to a Commonwealth rig and talked to the tool
pusher over there and I wasn't happy, I didn't want
to start that drilling because I didn't think I
could handle it. I went back over sometime about
midnight. There was a phone call. It came from the
Macdonald Hotel in Edmonton. It was Clarence
Matthews. He wanted to know if we had started to
drill. I said, "No, we hadn't," "Well," he said, "
(you had better set it on bottom and turn it to the
right." I still wasn't happy about it so waited
around a while and finally I said "Wel1, we will
start it." I told him at the time. "I'll call you
back and let you know which way it is going". We
started drilling fairly steady. So I went down to
camp, I had a coffee and I laid down just across in
the cabin there...I had my coat and everything on
just like I had come in. I fell asleep and somebody
called me that the well had blown out. I went back
up to the rig. They had shut off all the fires and
boilers and the well was blowing. It was a nice
well, I called Matthews and I told him, "It's a
dandy and it's headed southeast", and it was.13
Lloyd then returned to the rig and had the crew
fire up the boilers. He plugged his ears with cotton
batting. Stafford knew the kelly hose wouldn't be
able to withstand the mixture of oil and sand and
shale fragments. He took the brake and pulled the
kelly up to the top of the derrick to get the hose
out of the way of the main blast, This made it
possible to at least pump down the drill pipe. Oil
was running back in around the rig so Lloyd ordered
bulldozers out to pile up the snow and ice and
create a wall.
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