How a 1968 Well Became Wireline Training Grounds

Peter Brecht00:01

All right, welcome to Local Energy. My name's Peter Brecht here with Wade Spear and our guest today is Russell Smith from Top Gun Oil Field Training. Russell, thanks for coming on with us. Excited to have you.

Russell Smith00:12

No, thank you.

Thank you. It's an honor to get to do this, guys. Y'all are doing really good. Man, I'm pumped. So thank y'all.

Peter Brecht00:19

Alright.

Wade00:20

Alright, good deal.

Peter Brecht00:22

Yeah, well, so of course I get a phone call right as we kick this off as it should be keep it relaxed around here. But anyways, Russell, so I was introduced to your YouTube channel I think about two years ago, maybe when you started doing this. And I don't know how long Top Gun's been around, but I watched a couple of your videos and at the time...

Russell Smith00:28

I had to mute my phone.

Really?

Peter Brecht00:45

I felt like everything you were saying was just incredibly foreign to me and still to this time, you know not having sat in a wireline chair or done any of that I still feel like there's a lot to be learned but as I've watched more of your videos the way that you explain things has always been just so well laid out and I think thoughtful and in terms of kind of bringing people from an unknown perspective to okay we can actually get you guys to do this job so

Russell Smith01:05

Thanks. Thanks.

Peter Brecht01:13

Wanted to really learn about you and really what started and why did you start Top Gun?

Russell Smith01:18

Well, it's funny, I started as a farmer and somebody always said the best employees in the wireline are ex-ranchers farmers, and military. So I kind of fit the bill, to jump in on the wireline side. The Halliburton got me and went through the ranks and, they taught me and spent a lot of money on training on wireline. Then...

Just went through the system and got tired of doing pump down work and standing out a window that started up and we were used to doing work, vertical work. We were doing bond log today and then something else tomorrow and when they put us on a pump down truck it just got so monotonous like I can't do this anymore. So I got out of the field and I don't want to do this anymore. So I became a tech manager for little company called JW Wireline which was bought out by FTSI and gone through the rank.

But in the process, I bought a piece of land and it accidentally had a well on it. So I was getting clear and brush and here's this pipe sticking out of the ground and thinking it's sealed. It's and I get to play with it and I stuck like 60 foot adjoining PVC and I never got to the bottom. I was like, man, I don't know how deep this goes. And so.

Wade02:17

Right.

Russell Smith02:26

Needless to say, I got a little waterline truck. I got a sand truck to come out and they went to 1,200 feet and they said, we're on our cat line. We can't go no deeper.

And my gosh, I didn't think this thing went that deep, you know. And so I'm all pumped and needless to say, went down, got, Jay Debra gave me a truck, we checked it and it went down to 4,600 feet and we ahead and put semen in it and kind of sealed it up a little better, not knowing if it was going on. And we started off as a test well and then, I got to thinking, man.

Wade02:47

Wow.

Russell Smith02:59

I got a hole to do this and make an actual training for it. And we ran a bond log in, and it semen. And I'm like, man, this is really neat. And so it was a God-blessing thing. He planned it. And there's no way a person could drill a well and do a school and be profitable, because the money to do that will cost so much. And for something that was given to me, and it was drilled in 1968, and that's when I was born. So to give you an idea how old this well is.

Wade03:18

Right.

Russell Smith03:29

But that's how we got going. And we just slowly talked to people. Halliburton, Slumberjay, Baker, they had all the training. They did it. And there was never a third party training guy out there. And there was a guy overseas that did slick line training on his own. I think it was in New Zealand. And he gave me the idea to do E-line. And that's all I know.

We started from there. And I kind of copied. JW had a little training facility in East Texas, and I got to help train over there. So I knew how they did it. And I said, hey, let's just copy the process, and we'll do it on our own, and make it a third party issue. And anybody can come. You don't have to have a big board job with Halliburton or somebody. So that's how we started. And 2017 is when we started down. Yes, sir.

Peter Brecht04:13

Hmm.

Wade04:19

Okay, so that 2017? Alright.

Russell Smith04:22

So it's

Wade04:22

Are you guys still out there running up and down in that same tubing and doing all that stuff?

Russell Smith04:25

You

Know, a couple of years, people were testing, they brought a caliper out and they said, man, Russell, there's something wrong with your casing. And what do mean? He goes, man, you got something wrong. You got these insets on the inside that are like this terrible. I'm like, I don't know. This well was given to me. Don't know. It over toward collars or whatever? And I looked at the...

The caliber log and realize it's drill stem is what the casing is. Now whether or not they had wore out drill stem and said look, next this will fit together, let's make production out of it. Because the guy that drilled it owned the well, I think is the way I looked at it, on the little card.

And that's what we got. So we actually have drill stream in the hole. So it's kind of unique on that end of it. I guess I ain't got to worry about it rotting or rusting through any one soon. So it's been doing good. Kind of unique. Yeah.

Peter Brecht05:16

That's awesome.

Wade05:18

That's off.

How frequently are you running classes and doing all that stuff?

Russell Smith05:23

You

Know, I try to do a bond log class and a supervisor class. A supervisor class is a guy that wants to learn how to run the truck. We teach them gamma tools and temperature tools and the software and everything. And then a bond log class is a specific class just for learning to bond log, you know. And I try to do that once a month if I can is kind of what I shoot for. But if somebody calls me and says, hey, we got a couple guys, I throw them in any time. If I got an opening,

We've got a class going, so it's kind of how we do it.

Wade05:53

Can you

Usually get that done like a bond logging class in a single day or is it multiple day?

Russell Smith05:57

No, no, takes,

It depends on the people. If I got a class of four people, I would probably need three days, just because I gotta share the whale and everybody's gotta take turns running the whale. But if it's one or two guys, we could usually get it done in about two days, pretty easy. If it's over three, I'm starting to lean on that third day to do it. And so same with the supervisor class. We shoot for 10 days. If it's one or two guys, we may finish the day early, just because they can get it on the whale done sooner.

Wade06:11

Okay.

Okay.

Right. Huh.

Peter Brecht06:28

And I saw, I was on LinkedIn post a few days ago, but it seems like you're training folks from all over the country. I mean, you have people from California coming in and all the places.

Russell Smith06:35

My gosh,

When I had no idea I would be getting guys from Australia and New Zealand and Argentina and I had no idea.

It's not that popular guys, don't act like this is some popular school, we're so small. Why are we in such a small industry and in such a niche little thing that people all over the world.

It's only a handful of guys that do that, but they gotta learn how to do it. And there's no other place to do it unless you do hands-on training. And that's what most wireline companies do. It's all behind the seat and learning. If you got a good teacher, you got a good mentor, that does fine. I got nothing against it. But just the other day, to give you an example, a guy called me and said, you wouldn't believe, we had a short on our wireline truck, and the guy who's a 10-, 15-year vet had no idea how to find it.

Wade07:20

Job.

Russell Smith07:37

But that's what we've run into, just a simple little test on the wire, but he's never been showed how to do it. So it's been a one.

Wade07:45

Think

My experience on the drilling side, we're not out there running wire line every day, hopefully. We will have to run some casing logs or CBLs and things like that. And my experience has been that there's definitely a need for proper training out there. I've been in the truck before and we're trying to run a CBL in our seven inch and it's showing cement where like

Russell Smith07:50

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

It is.

Wade08:12

I'm like, guys, there's no way. We didn't pump enough volume to get up to 2,000 feet below surface. It should be ringing free right here. And I don't know enough about it. I never had the experience to be able to help and do all this. And we've had to call another company, a guy who's been doing it 40 years to come over to this competitor's truck and help dial in tools and do these things. And it feels like right now we've got a lot of people who can run the wire in and out. But whenever it comes to evaluating problems or whatever, there's big challenges.

Russell Smith08:14

There's no way they could be there.

To verify.

Good.

Bond logging, it's not hard to run. It's just knowing your tool set up right and knowing what you're seeing is what you're seeing. And if you get in the free pipe and you're like, look, this is free. Everything tells me it's free. My tool is telling me. Then when I go in the hole and I run into the same man, I run, it is what it is. Guys tend to want to make the log read what a good bond. I go, don't do that. You can't do that. It's like, well, I don't disappoint my customer. It is what it is, guys. It's,

Wade08:58

Right.

Right.

Peter Brecht09:10

Mm-hmm.

Russell Smith09:11

Don't

Wade09:11

Right.

Russell Smith09:12

Change the log to make it the outcome and seem like that's the mindset of a lot of people and

Wade09:19

That's definitely a problem. If you're making, a lot of times you make decisions off of that data, and if you're getting bad data, you're not gonna make good decisions. You're definitely not gonna get to the root cause.

Russell Smith09:23

Yeah, there's a guy, Kirk Harris, he does a thing on LinkedIn and he made great on on bond log interpretation and great deal. And I asked a question with I said, how do we know the law was ran correctly? And it's like,

If you're not there and you don't know the company that ran it or whatever and they had things set up wrong, then how do we decipher if we got good semen or not? By just looking at it. But the VDO pretty much tells us, and I teach guys mostly how to read the VDO. I can't manipulate it with Warrior, I can't change it, and it'll tell you if you got semen or not. Yeah. The VDO's the key. Learn the VDO, how to read the VDO, you got it.

Peter Brecht09:51

Mm.

Wade10:02

I got you.

Peter Brecht10:02

Hmm, okay.

Russell Smith10:07

Not the amplitude or the color over there, because I can change the color, do whatever you want. Nobody will go, is it red? And you're like, I can make it red, sir, and that's probably not what we should be at.

Peter Brecht10:07

Gotcha.

Wade10:11

Hahaha.

Peter Brecht10:11

Hahaha.

Wade10:16

Do you want it to be? Yeah, I got you.

I got you.

Peter Brecht10:20

Interesting.

Well, Russell, I can tell that you're an inquisitive person. If I think a lot of people buy a piece of property and find a well on it and just kind of throw dirt on it and move on. But, it's really interesting to hear like that origin story. But what are some things that maybe you've learned along the way that in teaching people as far as like what's what how do most people respond to learning wireline? Is it a hands on thing? Is it books? Like really, what does it take to learn this?

Russell Smith10:30

Yeah.

It,

The hands-on, believe, is the key to this. We can lecture all day long. I could go anywhere and lecture, but until they actually do it and they actually turn the tool on and set the gates up and start seeing and seeing the winch running.

Then it clicked. So like, I got this. Okay. And I'm a farm ranch kid and I'm sorry, but you're gonna have to dumb it down for me to make me understand it. Okay. I did graduate from A with an agronomy degree. I did have a degree which got me in the door with Halliburton because you had to have a degree there. But, in our training, we try to keep it as simple as I can and put it in terms that a person can understand it.

I talk about a bond log and the waves.

If you throw a rock in a pond and it's perfectly clear, are the waves smooth? And they're like, yeah, it's equal all the way through. I said, so the waves are perfectly straight up and down. That's free pipe. But if you go through some trees or brush or something in the waves, what does the wave do? Well, it starts refracting. I go, that's because it's going into the formation. And that's a good sign for a bomb log, because the sound's traveling into the formation. That means I've got a seam in. So just a little simple idea like that. They're like, oh, OK, I get it. I get it.

Wade11:43

Thank you.

Peter Brecht12:02

Hmm.

Russell Smith12:06

And it starts diffracting. But that's the key to teaching is to be able to get it to where they can understand it. And that's just one little aspect of wireline. I really thought wireline was going to be simple when I got hired on the Halliburton. Said, anybody can run a winch line truck, I don't run winch lines for area. But it's totally nothing like that. We're dealing with.

Wade12:07

Hmm.

Peter Brecht12:09

Yeah.

Russell Smith12:31

Miles in the hole, guys, but under heat, pressure. I always said, frack is easy. If they break down, that's right on surface. I go, wire line, we're way away from our tools. So it's going to take time and money and to get out of the hole and work on stuff. And training is so critical for wire line because I always said, it's like having an operation. You better make sure everything is exactly right before we go in the hole. Because if we got to turn around and come back, it's going to cost money.

Wade12:49

Mm-hmm.

Russell Smith13:01

And that was the mindset I of teach guys.

Peter Brecht13:01

Mm-hmm.

Okay,

Yeah, there's this conversation a lot of guys that I listen to that are you know in their mid 30s 40s Seeing kind of the transition from okay. We've got this age group and we have this older age group But I personally I love talking to folks that are generations older than me I learned so much more because they've seen a lot more things right they've just seen so many things but With the knowledge transfer. I mean, there's so many

Like just like even tactily things that you could do if you've been doing it for a long time. How do you transfer that knowledge to an 18 year old? Because you know where it's eight the industry obviously is aging out So how do you teach those things to an 18 year old so that when they? Get into that seat or you know let's say that their mid 20s at that point but like so that they can actually accomplish what needs to be done because We are seeing a bit of a kind of a crew change so to speak right?

Russell Smith13:44

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yes, definitely. I'll be honest with you, experiences teaches you anything. We can lecture until we're blue in our face, and until a experiences, do they really grasp what's going on? And here at the school, we do that. Tried to, when everything goes right, great.

Yeah, and everybody's real confident. I can do this until something bad happens. How do you react to that and how we handle the stress? And here at the school, we have a little pump down loop. I call it my little pump down, little pump down simulator. It's about a half a mile or two being on surface that we have little pumps to pump tools around. To teach guys how to pump tools, to react to tension and the fluid change. But I can get them stuck. Since I'm on surface, I got stops, I can put them in. I can do a lot of

Things to them, and make them experience. Look, this is and they'll pull out a rope socket, hey, you just pulled out a rope socket and they're like, oh no, I'm like, and we just pumped the tool around and it spits out the other end and they re-head and go again. But it's such an incredible training tool because they can experience something that's really bad. I go, look, you just cost, this is a lot of money you just did.

Wade14:58

Ha

It's going to cost a lot of money.

Russell Smith15:18

So

They realized that the AA valve on a winch truck, it's like a fishing drag is the best way to describe it. And always having that set, and making sure if something grabs you, if you don't react, the drama stop itself, because you set that. But the experiences is what is what makes a guy good. A guy told me the other day he went through my class, he goes, you probably taught me 10 years worth of experience in a week by teaching me.

Wade15:32

Right.

Peter Brecht15:37

Mm-hmm.

Russell Smith15:46

All the bad stuff that can go wrong because you may be 10 years before you see something like that happen, you know? And for them to be able to know how to react to it, I think, is pretty valuable, especially on the production side because you want the guys to be as good as they can be, you know? But even young guys, how do people trust a young guy?

Peter Brecht15:48

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Russell Smith16:10

To do a job for them that don't screw up and costs us a lot of money. I want that 50, 60 year old guy that's been doing this for years because I trust him and his knowledge has taught him that. And I would still lean that way if I was a production, I want the guy that's seasoned, but you gotta let a guy start off somewhere. We all had to start somewhere.

Wade16:10

Run.

Peter Brecht16:21

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Russell Smith16:31

And to give the guys the confidence to out in the field because it is stressful. Don't think being a wireline engineer is not stressful because it is, especially when things go wrong. And a lot of guys can't handle it and they just wig out, and they go, don't want to do this no more. Company man are tough.

Wade16:40

Right.

Peter Brecht16:48

Yeah.

Russell Smith16:50

You they are. And

Wade16:52

You

Russell Smith16:53

You're going to have to you're to have to get them to be your friend to be able to handle this. And we have a big salesman class on how to deal with company men and company men are alphas. And I'm like, look, get them to talk about themselves, ask them questions and they'll think you're the best person in the world because they got to brag about themselves. And don't be a one up or don't ever beat the company man in anything. Let him win in everything. And all of sudden that guy will like you.

Peter Brecht17:13

Yeah, yeah.

Russell Smith17:20

And it's a simple little deal, but you gotta get the guy to like you. And if something goes wrong, he'll help cover you. He'll go, okay, we'll write this in our report instead of making it look like you did something. So we're here anyway.

Peter Brecht17:21

I love it.

Wade17:24

Man.

Peter Brecht17:26

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wade17:34

So when

Did you first start in the oil field? What years?

Russell Smith17:37

I was

In 2008, so I was old. I was 38 years old when I got into it. And I got hay pretty good.

Wade17:40

Okay.

Yeah. See,

I started in 2006 and I feel like there's like this Goldilocks time of starting right there because I mean, Shale had just really started blowing up, everybody was going so crazy and they needed a group of people to come in the oil field and like I kind of raised my hand. I was literally told we're hiring anybody with a pulse and I was like, well, I've got one of those, and

Russell Smith17:58

How's going?

Wade18:13

We were in this really, really interesting time that activity was so high that they just needed people and you could make mistakes and survive it. Because there was just so much work, right? And they couldn't find somebody else to replace you. So we got to gain all of this experience in a period of about four or five years because activity was so high and the need was so high. But I feel like now, half the mistakes that, I say we, but.

Russell Smith18:21

They didn't

Wade18:39

Half the mistakes I made wouldn't be acceptable now just because there's not enough activity. The stakes are too high. And so when you were kinda talking, it was making me think about that. And I just don't know that there's gonna be another time like that. It really felt like a very special time to enter the oil field.

Russell Smith18:39

Mm-hmm.

I don't either.

It was such a, I here in South Texas, the Eagleford took off and there was no infrastructure and they were drilling everywhere. We had no place to stay.

Wade19:08

Right.

Russell Smith19:09

We were driving into Standing Tone to stay on the River Walk Hotel, because that's where we could find a place to stay. People were saying, you're staying at the River Walk? And you're like, we'll be tired when we get there, because we're hours away driving. But it was a wild time. The money they were throwing, we were getting steak dinners on location. Conoco, to give you an idea, Conoco, when we started, if we did a job with

Wade19:16

Right.

Right.

We're done.

Russell Smith19:39

Without

Any down times. FRAC didn't screen out, Wireline didn't have a misrun. We all got a job bonus from Conoco. Conoco would give us. So here we're getting our normal job, which is good. And next thing I know on my paycheck, we got an extra seven grand this month for job that we did really good just from Conoco. And it was a crazy time. But understand also,

Wade20:02

Right.

Peter Brecht20:06

Hmm.

Russell Smith20:08

Coal Tubing was sitting on location waiting for us to fish tools out. And they were paying them, because they, it was a time and they just expected us to mess up. And at the beginning, believe me, it was a lot of mess ups. But it was a learning curve on us trying to figure out how to do it. We didn't have the right wire. We were using 732nd line. We had this little bitty wire. And it was a process.

Wade20:15

Right. Yeah.

Peter Brecht20:34

Mm.

Russell Smith20:35

But I don't think we'll ever experience that ever again. That was a rare time in life. A rare time.

Wade20:38

God, really was. It felt

Like a blessing to be able to get all of that experience in that short amount of time.

Russell Smith20:47

Yeah. And nobody, you didn't get fired because you got pumped up? OK, you got pumped up now?

No, you get pumped off, that would be detrimental. But technology has changed, guys. We it's nowhere like it was when we were there. I mean, they got a briceless line that's super slick and it's reheaded solid, and if they got to come off of it, they just release a release tool. It's totally different than what we used to run. And how do you figure a rehead on a horizontal well that's 18,000 feet? We didn't know. We can figure gravity on the vertical, but how do we know

Wade20:59

Right.

Russell Smith21:26

The turn and because friction played such a valuable role, and it mattered because I remember pumping all the way down and we're pulling our limit, almost 5,000 tension and we're thinking we're stuck. I mean, we were like, look, sand must be holding us and we finally get it to move and we set up guns and we shoot and we made a next run with a down-hold tension device and same thing, we're pulling close to 4,000, 5,000 pounds and it's only showing 80 pounds on the head.

Wade21:29

Right.

Russell Smith21:55

And it was all friction is what we're pulling. I want you to if we do get stuck, there's no way we're going to get off of this head because we're going to pull our line in half. So it's just funny how things change. But technology seems really cool stuff.

Peter Brecht21:55

Hmm.

Wade21:56

All friction.

Right.

Peter Brecht22:08

Yeah.

Wade22:09

Well...

Peter Brecht22:12

Wade told me a story last week on the show and just how wireline, so like drilling was pulling technology from wireline and like everything kind of gets shared in between and it just really like the whole industry changes because of when that starts to happen, it's pretty, I just love seeing that, between departments, I guess it's pretty cool. So.

Russell Smith22:21

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Peter Brecht22:33

One question I had for you is starting later in your in your thirties, getting into the oil field, you probably went into the industry with some sort of, belief of what the business was like. Is there anything that, that you maybe walked into and said, Hey, this is something I believe about the oil and gas industry, but that, that's changed over the years as I've learned more about it.

Russell Smith22:56

Think as being a farm kid, we always got up when the sun came up and went down, and getting up at three in the morning and four in the morning, every day to make it on location by six was something I did not, no one ever told me that when I got into the, you know.

And I hated it. Man, I hated it. Cause I'm going to bed at eight o'clock trying to get my eight hours in, you know. And guys wanted to go and do stuff. So, and I don't know if that's answering your question, but that was the hardest part for me is the hours and the time change. But once I got on the groove, it got better. But man, I had double alarms set, if one didn't go off, I got another one to go off, because man, if you didn't make it, it's bad, you know.

Wade23:22

Red.

Peter Brecht23:40

You

Yeah.

Wade23:44

I

Have four or five, I've got two on my watch, I've got two or three on my phone. You can't miss those calls.

Russell Smith23:45

And yeah, I'm out of the field. So if y'all are still doing this, you're like, look, you got to be able to wake up and it was, it was, that was what I hated the most about it.

Peter Brecht24:04

And that's actually, that's

Perfect. I mean, the hours of the job, I've heard that over and over again, right? Everyone talks about who's got what schedule and how does it work? And it's like, you can talk about this stuff all day long, but the reality is it's just a lot of hours. You know?

Russell Smith24:12

Yeah.

We

Well.

We didn't know any

Better. We were on a salary with Halliburton and they could work us to death and we never got any type of overtime, anything, but we got a job bonus. But, it was, when we started, you I remember starting off making 45 grand a year as a trainee and I was happy and I'm like, oh my God, this is awesome. I had insurance, and the next year, you we break out and you become a job and you're making around 75, and then you slowly, you might be getting close to us.

Peter Brecht24:23

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Russell Smith24:50

Six figure income, in my third year. And then the pump down started and it totally changed. And they had this thing called dedicated truck where you never left a truck. You're always on this wireline truck and, we were just begged down. If we could only get on that, and...

And then all of a sudden the salaries just got astronomical. The money we can make doing that stuff. It was incredible. But I got sick of the money because I got sick of doing it. And all of a sudden it ain't the money.

Wade25:16

Hmm.

Peter Brecht25:20

Yeah.

Russell Smith25:22

I didn't like my life, I didn't like just two weeks on, one week off. By the time I got home and I didn't want to get settled down, my kids started recognizing me again, you I gotta leave again. And on the vertical side, it was different because I got to come home, all the time. You you did a job and came home and, you may leave early, but you always, you were still around. But once you started living in man camps, then it changed everything.

Peter Brecht25:43

Yeah.

Yeah, good friend of mine, he's an offshore engineer and he'll leave for 30 days, fly to Australia and then he'll come home for 30 days and that recovery period, he'll turn his phone off for two weeks when he gets home just because he's like, just gotta remember what it's like to be a dad, right? And that's real, so it's a real thing.

Russell Smith25:56

Yeah.

Yeah, decompress and do that. But that's even, but that's

Better. I would much rather work a 30 on 30 off because I'm in my pill because one week is just was tough for me. I was just to get back in the groove and my wife recognized me again and I'm leaving again, and not to mention a 30 day on 30 off. What's that?

Peter Brecht26:13

Yeah, okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Wade26:23

Well, it's not just that either. You talk about...

Well,

I was going to say when you're working the two on one off too, a lot of those times those two weeks, you're not getting much sleep, you're, or you're, or you're working nights and you come back home and you're trying to swap back over to days. That takes a day or two to get used to.

Russell Smith26:43

Yeah.

Well, we were definitely a 12 hour shift and was around, they paid us 14 no matter what, but it was always a drive back and forth. Though we had to shift from daylight to daytime to nighttime work, you know.

Wade26:50

Okay.

Russell Smith26:59

So it wasn't, we never went further than our hours. It was really good because it seemed like from six to six was the meetings and the shift changes happened. Now if it ever was a, what would you call it, daylight operations only, that was a nightmare because you'll be out there till one or two in the morning. It was crazy because nobody's gonna relieve you. It's just you. That was a different deal. If they say daylight hours, everybody's like, oh, is it, oh, and you're like, oh no, this is gonna be bad.

Wade27:04

I got it.

Red.

Peter Brecht27:22

Mm-hmm.

Russell Smith27:29

And so anyway.

Wade27:32

Bye guys.

Peter Brecht27:32

Oh, that's awesome. So Russell, and this is something, we can talk about it or not. I just, I think the first time I talked to you, it might've been like a year ago or something like that, just a casual conversation, just out of curiosity what you did, but something I've noticed about, your website, the way you carry yourself is, you you have like a very deep faith in what you believe. And I just think that

Russell Smith27:56

Yeah.

Peter Brecht27:58

If we could touch on that for a few minutes, like maybe just your background and your faith, that'd be fantastic.

Russell Smith28:00

Yeah.

Wow, it's funny you ask that. Yeah, I was brought up as a Methodist. My mother was a piano player for 50 years for this little church that we grew up in. So I never not knew Jesus, I guess. It was just in brained in me my whole life. And as I got older, my faith grew.

Peter Brecht28:24

Mm-hmm.

Russell Smith28:28

It wasn't because my parents told me. Was, actually started studying the Bible and reading it and understanding and going, the more you study it, more you go, how can I not believe this? That was just the way I see the Bible because it's just incredible. I've made mistakes in life and we all have our testimony and nobody's perfect. But the faith thing, I...

I give credit to him on everything I do.

Good or bad, it really doesn't matter. I've learned, he's got me. And that's just the way I go with it. And I try to teach guys here at the school, I don't want to ruffle people's feathers and teach faith stuff, you know. But a company man gave me a DVD, probably at Halliburton, called Learn the Bible in 24 Hours by Guy Bane Chuck Missler.

Peter Brecht29:08

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Russell Smith29:28

And that changed me. And honestly, I had no idea what he was giving me. But a company man took the time and said, look, Russell, listen to this. I think this is really helping you. It really helped me. And I listened to it. It really woke me up on understanding the Bible. And you can go on YouTube and type 24-hour Bible all day long and listen to it. The man died already that did it. But it's not preaching. It's more an engineering.

Peter Brecht29:40

Hmm.

That's cool.

Yeah.

Russell Smith29:58

Mindset, teaching. That went right down my line in the way I think. I'm a very common sense, thinker. So anyway, not to get off on another subject. That was what...

Peter Brecht29:59

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

No, no, mean that, I love your

Wade30:15

Check that

Peter Brecht30:15

Answer.

Wade30:16

Out.

Peter Brecht30:16

It's, yeah.

Russell Smith30:18

Yeah, check it

Out. You can look it up on YouTube. 24 hour Bible. Just in this is certain things that are I feel like there are.

That are incredible. Nobody ever told me, and they've got time to say this, but in Genesis it says the ark landed on the seventh month of the seventeenth day. You're like, why did God say when the ark landed on the month and the day? And you would just read over that. And then you realize that the seventh month is the month of the Passover. And you realize the day they sacrificed the animals is always on the fourteenth day of the month.

Peter Brecht30:31

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Russell Smith30:57

And

If Jesus was crucified on the 14th day and he rose three days later then he rose on the anniversary of the Ark landing with a new beginning through Noah and now you have a new beginning through Christ and I went my gosh why didn't he may have shown me this stuff that you just can't make this stuff up you know and so that's kind of the understanding with the

Peter Brecht31:11

Huh.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Russell Smith31:25

What it taught me and just woke me up. I thought it was really cool. So yeah, yeah, right, it would be neat.

Peter Brecht31:33

My dad, engineering mindset, and I asked my dad the same question, when I was like 17 years old. Dad, why do you believe, right? And he's like, because when you read it, it just makes logical sense after a certain period, right? You just kind of start to go, okay, this is logical, right? Which is interesting. Just, maybe it's the engineering mind that thinks that way, but I had to ask because you brought it up and I just wanted to dig a little deeper there, so.

Russell Smith31:36

Yeah.

You have to come with me.

Yeah.

Well,

People have told me, and I get into arguments in the classroom. They say, well, the oil was put together and the plankton and all the other things. I go, I just don't buy that. I ain't saying that's how oil wasn't made, but there's too much of it. And I thank God just put it here just like everything else for us to utilize. And a lot of people don't like that answer.

Peter Brecht32:05

Yeah.

Yeah, we all have our beliefs and we need to stick to them. That's great. Well, thank you. Wade, I don't want to stray too far off the oil and gas, we are getting close to our 35 minute mark here. I just want to be respectful. And is there anything else you'd like to ask Russell and Russell, anything you want to ask us?

Russell Smith32:22

Yeah.

I'm

Wade32:33

Yeah.

Russell Smith32:36

Yeah,

I'm enjoying this.

Wade32:40

Now, I got to ask questions I really wanted to. I was saying, I got to ask questions I really wanted to. I thought it was really interesting. I didn't know that you had essentially a flow loop set up on surface. That kind of hands-on training right there seems like it would be absolutely invaluable.

Peter Brecht32:41

Go other way.

Russell Smith32:45

All right.

Peter Brecht32:45

Alright,

Perfect.

Russell Smith32:53

Yeah, yeah, we are. Yeah.

Yeah, it, and a lot of people have tested tools because we can get tools stuck and see how the tools react and stuff. Dog tools, making sure they hold, how much we can pull on them. And the pipe is not big, so it's only like a two and a half inch inside ID. So I'm limited on that. Yeah, it's pretty, and it's not straight. There's a creek in the background, in the back, and so it's up and down. I mean, it's like a roller coaster. So the guys are not getting this pump down the hill. You know what I mean?

Wade33:05

Right.

Russell Smith33:28

There's a lot of deviation in this thing. So they can see a lot of stuff.

Wade33:28

Right.

Alright,

That's really cool.

Peter Brecht33:34

Awesome. Russell, got other things I could ask. I have so many questions, but I gotta, yeah. One thing that, so I spoke with a gentleman two weeks ago, and I wrote a short article on this, but he started Wireline back in the 70s. And Wade, I think I told you this, and I was like, I gotta talk to someone in Wireline, but he was telling me how the Wireline reports, yeah, the Wireline.

Russell Smith33:40

Man, ask away. You can always clip or edit whatever you want.

Wade33:57

That's, yep. Yep.

Peter Brecht34:02

Logs changed around 1980. So I didn't know what he meant by that. And he was just being so generous with his time already that I didn't want to like keep digging. But did do wireline log formats change over time? Or is there any any anything to that?

Russell Smith34:10

Huh.

Well, believe it or not, at Wireline

Unit, when you're inside, they call it a dark room because they developed film while they're logging to give the film to the company. They understand how it used to be. And people don't call it a dark room, This was before my time, but this is what people have told me. And you see logs that are on like a clear.

Peter Brecht34:22

Okay.

Yeah.

Russell Smith34:41

Plastic with the made yeah yeah but it looks like a pen and recorder they I keep hearing that a lot and I don't know what that means because that was before my time but it's come a long way it has come a long way with even with us everything we did it was print we printed everything print print print you couldn't leave them without a print and now printers don't mean hardly exist it PDF now it's PDF PDF so we don't have to do that no more and so the data being

Peter Brecht34:42

Like an x-ray thing almost. Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Wade35:03

Right.

Peter Brecht35:06

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Russell Smith35:11

Delivered to the customers, definitely changing.

Peter Brecht35:13

Yeah.

Russell Smith35:14

The technology

Has really helped though. You we used to perforate a zone and you you got to be very specific. We were shooting the zone exactly. We got to be correlated, making sure we're on depth and everything's right. And it was the company man and the engineer. We're the ones that did it. And now, shoot, send out an email and let the guys in the office look at the log and they'll tell us, shift it this way or that way and we'll send another one. And they're like, okay, we're good on depth and we'll go ahead and shoot, you know. Well, before we couldn't do that.

Peter Brecht35:41

Hmm.

Russell Smith35:44

You know and so it makes it I kind of like it it's just it's less responsibility on the engineer if somebody else can let them tell you what to do

Peter Brecht35:45

Yeah.

Totally.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's like Wade, saw him a couple weeks ago and he pulls up his phone and he's like looking at the welder drill and he's like, it's like all, it's doing this cool stuff on his phone through an app. And I'm like, he's like, yeah, I'm actually working right now, you know? So it's cool. It's really cool. Yeah.

Wade36:03

Mm.

Russell Smith36:06

My gosh. Yeah. It was funny. There's a company

Called DiePoll. I've been training a couple of their guys. What they're doing is they're watching these pump down crews in the office of Houston. I said, why are they so worried about watching the pump down and shooting on depth? And he goes, Russell, what they're doing is they're one guy watch five wireline trucks in one room and making sure everything's going right. And they don't have a company man out on location no more.

Peter Brecht36:33

Mmm.

Russell Smith36:34

And they're saving a fee for a company man being out there for one guy watching everything, the video, Cynthia Houston live. And I went, wow, that's pretty cool, you know. So stuff I'm learning, and what's going on. So it's changing. Everything's changing.

Peter Brecht36:41

Hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah,

Yeah, we I got to tour a company out in Houston and very similar. They've got, three guys at computers and they've got, my gosh, there must have been 50 monitors in that room for, overseas drilling. And I was just, I'm blown away. You know, they've got, it's all green and red and they know what to look for and they can shut it down and it's amazing what they do.

Russell Smith37:04

Yeah, yeah, watching stuff.

Yeah, well...

Well, Wade, you could

Probably help me with this because the horizontal drilling, they're doing that remotely from Houston and stuff. Because the guys that are doing that, he goes, I'm a horizontal driller. I you're on location. Like, no, we're guiding the bit from Houston. I went, oh my gosh, that's wild.

Wade37:24

Always.

Yep. Yeah, I know. &P's

Got, Devon and all those other companies have remote ops centers where they're watching it real time 24 seven. But I mean, H &P has directional drillers sitting in their office in downtown Tulsa working 24 seven. Like you said, steering and drilling and sliding and, hundreds of miles away.

Russell Smith37:56

Yeah, in that wild, crazy. Yeah, crazy.

Wade37:56

Crazy.

Peter Brecht37:56

Yeah, incredible. Absolutely

Incredible. Well, Russell, we'll kind of close up here and I could talk forever, but just thank you so much for coming on the show. Where could people find you? I know we've got your website, is, yeah, topguntooilfield.com. Yep.

Russell Smith38:05

Bye.

Yeah, no.

Yeah, you can find me on topgunolfield.com.

Like I said, we got our little podcast. I try to shoot for one a month if I'm lucky, and that's just me. We call it All Shots Fired because after a perforating run on a pump down there, we'll announce All Shots Fired coming out of the hole. So that's kind where we got the name. So you can look at that little pod. But you can go on YouTube. We got our Top Gun. I try to make videos on everything I don't want to teach, so that's just how it works.

Peter Brecht38:21

Yeah.

Russell Smith38:42

The basic stuff, I'm like, look, I don't want to tell you how to read head, I want you read CCOs. You can do that on your own. I'll teach the specific stuff. Maybe that's wrong of me, but anyway. Yeah. Everybody asks me, Russell, you need to put more videos. I go, look, I'm going to put myself out of business if I teach everything online.

Peter Brecht38:42

Yeah, it's...

I love it.

No, it's repetitive, right? Whatever you can kind of teach that gets out, I love it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Russell Smith39:06

But we have done some stuff online. We put an RP67 class together, so it is online. You can take, which is nice. So if guys need explosive training, it's there. It's available. Send them a card. They'll get a certificate showing they went through it to show people on location. So that helps.

Peter Brecht39:22

Awesome.

Well, we'll include all that in the show notes. Thank you guys for listening to Local Energy. Wade, thank you. Russell, thank you so much. And we'll see you guys again next week.

Russell Smith39:33

All right, thanks again.

Wade39:35

Thanks, Russell.

Wade00:00

Awesome.

Peter Brecht00:01

Wade, that was so much fun. I love talking to people that are just passionate about what they do and he definitely had the it factor there. I think my favorite thing is he found a well on a piece of property he bought. I can't get over that. The origin story is really cool.

Wade00:03

I like Russell.

Yep.

Wow, that's great.

That's really neat.

That is really neat.

Peter Brecht00:24

Yeah, so well hey, I hope you have a great week. I just wanted to you know say thanks for jumping on and yeah guys Good yeah, Savannah bananas man you got to go to a game now Okay, good my favorite pen my Yeah, it's it so I had a guy and I'll see I don't know if my camera will show this but It's a Japanese pen and I had a one of my sales guys

Wade00:30

Hey, I got the hat and the ball, it's at the house, man, that's all.

I started using the pen some too. Where'd you get that pen from? It looked like it had like Japanese writing all over it.

Okay.

Peter Brecht00:53

Went over this was like five years ago went to Japan and came back with like just a bunch of pens for me because I used to use just pen all day long right we used to just hand write everything and he's like you're gonna love this one I literally started using it I use nothing else now and I don't know what it is I just love maybe it's because it's Japanese but it's so precise they're so incredibly well done so my gosh do I don't know if I should show you this I'm gonna show it to you hang on all right okay

Wade01:01

Okay.

Okay, right

I gots it.

Okay, show me what you got.

Peter Brecht01:22

I'm not gonna show this in the show, but I got our first bottle of hot sauce. Yeah.

Wade01:26

Very nice.

I still use it. I use that. Well, that's not the same as the hot sauce you sent me though, is it? Or is it the same?

Peter Brecht01:33

It's gonna be some very similar. Yeah, very similar. Yeah, it's just gonna flip back in. Yeah, so I picked that up today. So Anyways, I'll cut that out It's cool. So we'll get that up. But Alright guys, so I'll do a little close out here and we'll bounce but guys. Thanks for listening to us here at local energy We'll see you again next week and Wade have a great finish to your day Alright late

Wade01:36

That's awesome.

Alright, that's exciting,

Okay.

All right, you too. Thanks, Peter.