Why NO RISK is the Most Dangerous Phrase in Well Control

Peter Brecht00:01

All right, welcome to Local Energy 44. My name is Peter Brecht. I'm here with Wade Spear and our guest today is Krystina Amos. And we're here to talk about well control today. So Krystina, thanks for jumping on.

Krystina Amos00:15

You're welcome. Thanks for inviting me.

Peter Brecht00:18

I've been looking forward to this call for quite a while now. So you and I were introduced about two years ago through a mutual friend, Derek Huddleston, who's an offshore engineer. And Wade now kind of helps us with our onshore stuff too, but you're in the well control space. And I've been on your newsletter now for, think, two years. I got added to that quite early. So I've had a little bit of understanding with well control from the insurance side. Like I know the carriers look at it for

Krystina Amos00:36

Yep.

Peter Brecht00:46

As a higher risk and all these other things, want to see different safety things in place. So anyways, kind of getting into a one-on-one concept like what is well control and kind of, walk us through some of the basics.

Krystina Amos00:58

All right. Well, in case any of your listeners are new to well control, the first question that I like to ask people, people who ask me what well control is, which of course happens all the time when they ask me what I do and I say, I'm a well control instructor. The next question is always, what is that? So my question to them as well, have you seen the movie Deepwater Horizon? And here's the flow chart. Here's the flow chart. Have you seen Deepwater Horizon?

Wade01:09

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Peter Brecht01:22

Yes.

Krystina Amos01:26

If yes, then I respond to them. Well, these classes are to teach how to not let that events like that happen. So how to not let wells blow out. And then of course, going back to the flow chart, if they say, no, they haven't seen the movie. Okay. That requires more explanation, but that's pretty much how I describe it. Just managing, managing pressures in the well to prevent wells from blowing out. And unfortunately,

Wade01:34

Go to

Peter Brecht01:34

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Krystina Amos01:54

A lot of people who are not familiar with our industry think that, they'll ask me, well, why would you do that? I thought you all wanted the wells to blow out. Like I thought you're supposed to drill into drill into the rock and strike oil. And if the well blows out, then it's good. And you guys get all excited and happy. No, no, we're not in the 1800s.

Peter Brecht02:12

Yeah, yeah,

Wade02:13

Red.

Peter Brecht02:16

It's changed a bit. Yeah. Okay. So in your background, you started, you have some offshore experience, right? And then you kind of come back, but is there a difference between well control for offshore versus onshore? There's gotta be, right?

Krystina Amos02:25

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, there is. So there's tons of overlap because physics is physics, right? Pressures are pressures. A well is a well. However, with subsea well control, add, there are a lot more things that we have to think about because the surface of the well is actually the mud liner, the seafloor. So above that you can have up to, in some cases up to 10,000 feet of water.

So there are other elements that we have to think about and due to that, for example, if there is an event and they need and a kick is taken and they need to circulate the influx out of the well, then they're going to have to close the BOP that's on the sea floor and then circulate down the drill string, up the annulus of the well, and then through a super long choke line. So that circulating through the choke line.

Peter Brecht03:16

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Krystina Amos03:30

Creates friction, a lot of friction. And if we don't know how to manage that, then we're going to risk blowing the bottom out.

Peter Brecht03:39

Okay. And how common are these events, right? I mean, I can't imagine it happens on every well, right? Because we don't want it to happen, but really how do we control, how often is this happening?

Krystina Amos03:47

No.

Not too often, especially on uncommon offshore. They're pretty good about safety, especially compared to certain land operations. There are certain companies that work on land where they do things that we would never have done offshore.

Peter Brecht04:14

Okay, interesting. And why do you think that is? I gotta ask.

Krystina Amos04:20

It seems to me safe culture, what the safety culture is in the company.

Peter Brecht04:27

Okay, gotcha.

Wade04:28

One question

I have is, in terms of like, I'd say land versus offshore, what do you feel like, geologically speaking, is it a lot more consistent? Do you think that there's a lot more, whenever I think of offshore, I think of a lot of money, like I think of extreme planning beforehand, right? Because your rigs are running a quarter million dollars day or even a lot of times more than that.

Krystina Amos04:48

Everything.

More. Over a million a day.

Yeah.

Wade04:54

Right. So there's a lot of planning and there's also a lot of money that's spent pre well in terms of like understanding the subsurface and all that. Whereas on land, the economics of it just don't, what I'd say support a lot of that. You can't get out and go out and get 3D seismic on every location. So is there, does some of that play into account, do you think as well? Because I

In some of the zones that we drill on land, like I would say the Morrow is one of those. It's a channel sand, and it's present in some places and not present in others. And you drill into it. Don't have a blowout, but you're two pounds under balance and you kind of take a kick while you're drilling through it on offshore projects. I mean, is that something that is common or that you would have that kind of uncertainty or is the planning and stuff enough to where it's kind of eliminates most of that?

Krystina Amos05:33

Mm-hmm.

Well, that's a great question. The answer is yes, it is pretty common. They can drill into over-pressured formations, formations where the pore pressure is higher than expected. There's really no way to eliminate the risk. So actually, when I first joined the industry, my first job was being a geophysicist. Yeah, I can't talk. Geophysicist intern. A little tongue twister.

Wade05:57

Run.

Okay, yeah.

Peter Brecht06:14

Yeah, yeah.

Krystina Amos06:16

So I was a geophysicist intern for a Marine survey company. And that was what we did. We shot shallow hazard surveys. And of course we were looking at the geological structures, but also looking for other structures. For example, after hurricanes, sometimes pipelines get shifted, even without hurricanes, they can get shifted and moved over time. Yeah. We do pipeline inspections and sometimes we'd find.

Wade06:17

Right?

Right.

Right.

Wow.

Krystina Amos06:44

Shipwrecks, we'd find old rigs, we'd find all kinds of things. One of the main, and one of the main risks that we were looking for was the risk of shallow hazard, sorry, of shallow flow. Whether it be shallow pockets of gas, water, whatever the formation fluid might be, that was a big thing we had to enter into the geohazard report. So when I was first learning, I'll just focus on shallow gas pockets. When I was first learning how to interpret the seismic,

Wade06:55

Right.

Okay.

Right.

Krystina Amos07:15

I, sometimes I would find what we call fuzzy spots. And yes, that is what the geophysicists call it. We'd see these spots. I don't know you've ever seen seismic. It's a bunch of black. When you first get it, it's black and white squiggly lines. And sometimes there would be these like halos that were, they were pretty light, almost white in color. And, I was asking my, my mentors what that was. And they said, well, because seismic is measuring changes in density.

Wade07:20

Bwahahahaha

Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Krystina Amos07:44

Anytime you see something that faints, then it's showing something is way less dense than everything around it. And it usually indicates gas because gas has the least density of all the fluids and especially lighter than rocks. So the point is, is that I was start over time, I was gaining more and more confidence with interpreting seismic. And then they started giving me more responsibilities. Then they started allowing me to.

Wade07:55

Mm-hmm.

Peter Brecht07:55

Hmm.

Wade07:59

Right.

Right.

Krystina Amos08:14

Get the GeoHazard report started and write it myself and then they would check my work. And so there was, I'll never forget the first time they gave me this task when I got to the section of the GeoHazard report where it asked what the risk level was of shallow gas flow, I put no risk. So I got in big trouble for that. Of course this hadn't gone out to anybody, but I got chastised by my boss.

Wade08:33

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Peter Brecht08:41

Mm-hmm.

Krystina Amos08:43

By the senior geophysicist and he's like, Krystina, you can't ever, ever put no risk. He said, we can say low, low to medium risk, low risk, medium risk, high risk. We can never write no risk because we do not know everything. So for example, let's say the day that they shot the survey, what if, even if it were true, if we could say with a hundred percent certainty that there was no gas in that spot the day they shot the survey.

Wade08:45

Right.

Peter Brecht08:50

Mmm.

Wade09:08

Right.

Krystina Amos09:13

Well, how long after they shoot the survey are they going to drill the well? It could be six months later. It could be a year later. Who knows depending on different factors. So he's like, even if there were, there was no, there were no gas present that day. How do you know that gas hadn't seeped up after that? What if there was an earthquake between the time we took the survey and the time they're going to drill it? And if there's an earthquake, they would create a fault and then gas could come, could migrate up from the lower zone into the upper zone.

Wade09:37

My great.

Krystina Amos09:40

Like there, can never say there's no risk. We don't know everything. We said, always remember all the seismic are showing us. Like it's not a photograph of what's going on subsurface. All it is, is just showing us the time it takes for sound to travel from point A to point B back to point A. It's all it is showing us is just travel time of sound. All it shows us is changes in density. Everything we're doing is purely interpretation and we certainly don't know everything.

Wade09:44

Run.

Bye.

Krystina Amos10:10

Even if we could be certain things might have changed. And besides that, based on the way the surveys are shot, they're shot in a grid and it's not like every single nanometer of the area is going to be included. So there are definitely gonna be blind spots.

Wade10:24

Right.

Peter Brecht10:28

Gotcha. So like kind of going back to my very basic understanding of well control, right? What exactly is causing these kicks and like how would, as you're drilling, how would you anticipate or maybe see that starting to happen?

Krystina Amos10:50

Okay, let me clarify the question. Are you asking how kicks happen or how we can recognize that there's a kick in the well?

Peter Brecht10:52

Yeah.

I think both, right? So the first part would be like, is it occurring in the first place? And then the second part would be how would you recognize the occurrence in order to start, I guess, avoiding a negative outcome.

Krystina Amos11:12

Okay, so there are different causes for kicks, but the main cause is just somehow the bottom hole pressure in the well becomes less than the pore pressure of the formation. So that's it in a nutshell. What is so to, if a case people aren't familiar with bottom, what bottom hole pressure is, that's the sum of all the pressures that we're applying to the well. For example, during drilling, conventional drilling,

Peter Brecht11:26

Okay. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Krystina Amos11:41

We're going to make sure that the well is always full of drilling mud, which exerts hydrostatic pressure. And then of course, if we start as long as we're circulating the well, once we kick the pumps on, we're also having ECD. That ain't, there's going to be annular friction just from circulating the fluid up the annulus of the well. So then our bottom hole pressure would be the hydrostatic of the mud plus your annular pressure loss. And then if we're circulating through a choke, for example, like MPD,

We're circulating through a choke. We're also going to be adding some surface back pressure. So all of those pressures together would equal the bottom hole pressure. As long as we're exerting enough bottom hole pressure to overcome formation pressure, a kick is not going to enter the well. In simple physics, high pressure always wins. So how the kicks can have, how can we lose bottom hole pressure? Could be the reason you talked about before we drill into a formation and

Peter Brecht12:32

Okay.

Krystina Amos12:40

The pressure was just higher than what we expected it to be. Another, and one of the more common causes of kicks is actually what we call swabbing. So let's say we are going to trip out of hole, we're going to pull the drill string out of the well, then we have to, we're not going to be circulating. So conventional drilling, we're depending on the hydrostatic pressure of our mud to keep the well balanced. So the pressure of the mud would need to be

At least for equal to formation pressure, ideally a little bit more. And if we pull the string too fast, then we can suck up a little bit of the mud, we're off the bottom and it could temporarily reduce bottom hole pressure just enough that it could even just be a few seconds. But in those few seconds, bottom hole pressure is less than formation pressure. It's been proven that

Peter Brecht13:34

Okay.

Krystina Amos13:37

Kicks has been determined that most kicks are due to tripped. Yeah.

Wade13:43

I want to say I saw something one time that was like 85 or 90 percent of all well control events occur during a trip.

Peter Brecht13:44

Okay.

Krystina Amos13:52

Yeah, I've heard 70, I've heard 75 to 80%. But yeah, it's always on the higher side. Yeah, it's usually a high percentage. And not only for drilling operations, that applies for work during workovers too.

Wade13:57

It's a high percentage.

Peter Brecht13:59

Hmm.

Okay, Wade, how would this, because we talked about underbalance drilling, I don't know if you remember that a couple weeks ago, this sounds like an underbalance drilling nightmare. Or am I conflating the two topics?

Wade14:11

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

They're a little bit related. When you talk about pressure, kind of like Krystina said, the physics of it is that pressure flows from high to low areas to try and equalize all the time. That's whenever you get that kick. When you're drilling under balanced, you're using a mud weight and everything that's lower than what your formation pressure is.

You've got to have, like Krystina mentioned, like an MPD system. I mean, you've got to have something in there that keeps it close to balance. And the thing about those MPD systems is you can adjust the amount of back pressure that you're holding so that you can essentially create, well, I don't know if I'd call it false mud weight but I mean, you can create additional pressure, bottom hole pressure by kind of closing in your choke and choking back your flow a little bit.

And so, you I don't know if you might be conflating them a little bit in that sense, but yeah, if you're drilling under balance, you're much more likely to take a kick whenever you hit a permeable or a porous zone.

Peter Brecht15:14

Yeah.

Krystina Amos15:21

Well,

Thing is, it's also important not to confuse managed pressure drilling with underbalance drilling, because if you're talking about true underbalance drilling, they really are taking a kick the entire time they're drilling. They're drilling with a fluid weight that is not, the bottom hole pressure is not enough to prevent a kick, but they have to have the right equipment to be able to do that. They basically have to divert the kick while they're drilling, diverting and flaring the whole time.

But that's not the same as managed pressure drilling. Managed pressure drilling is not under balanced drilling. They typically use a mud weight that is hydrostatically under balanced, but they're not allowing the well, the goal is to prevent the well from becoming under balanced. So let's not confuse those two.

Peter Brecht15:50

Hmm.

Hmm, interesting.

Wade16:09

So I got a quick question

For you. If you're drilling, so like on land, we drill a lot of times in like a shale, right? And so in those shales, there's just zero perm. It's just really low permeability. So even, right. So even though the formation is at a much higher pressure, right? None of the gas can actually flow to you. So would you consider that underbalance drilling or like by the definition you're giving, would you consider that underbalance drilling or not? When you're going in frack, you're frack grading.

Krystina Amos16:19

Right. Almost zero.

Wade16:38

Pretty high, but you're just not ever seeing any, you you're never seeing any flow because there's no perm. So how would you define?

Krystina Amos16:45

So can you rephrase the question for me, please?

Wade16:48

Uh-huh.

Well, I guess I'm asking, so if you're drilling in a shale formation that doesn't have any permeability, but like your frack gradient and everything else is much higher than what your actual mud weight is, right? So reservoir pressure is a lot higher than what your actual bottom hole pressure is, right? Because there, but because there's no perm, the gas can't flow to you while you're drilling.

Krystina Amos16:54

Okay. Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Wade17:14

Like would you just, would you say that's underbalance drilling or would you just like, is it based on what formation versus bottom hole or is it just, kind of like, are you seeing gas or not as you're drilling out? I'm just wondering about the like specific definition there. Cause it's interesting. Cause we drill like you take the Woodford shale, for example, here in Oklahoma, like when we drill it like 16,000 TBD,

Krystina Amos17:26

Hmm.

Wade17:37

You can drill it with a 13 or 13 and a half mudway, but the actual formation pressure is so much higher than what we're actually doing. I've always wondered how would you define that? Would you define that as underbalance drilling or would it be a different definition? I don't know. That's something I might have to look up because we've always done that. We don't have to go all the way up to the formation pressure because

Krystina Amos17:41

That's interesting.

Yeah.

Wade18:04

There's no perm, and so it's a, it's an interesting kind of a, maybe it's a corner case. Don't know, but something to think about. I'm gonna look at that up. Yeah.

Krystina Amos18:07

Well, that's interesting. That's

Interesting. However, just as a geologist, be careful with that because that's a risk you're taking. In fact, when I was taking my petroleum engineering classes, they gave us an assignment that was, it really was eye opening for me. So.

Wade18:15

Right.

Krystina Amos18:33

The professor gave us this assignment and I studied through University of Aberdeen. So everything is based on North Sea, UK. And the title of the assignment was 40 years in the 40s field. So how the assignment started is they gave us the information about the first well they ever drilled, their wildcat well. And we had to calculate how much, after drilling their first well, how much known data did we have about the entire 40s field?

Wade18:38

Mm-hmm.

Krystina Amos19:03

So of course it was a minuscule, minuscule percentage. Was, yeah, yeah, way, way, way less than 1%. And then they gave us some data set that, so many, maybe five years later, now they had drilled this many wells and so on and so forth. There were different phases. Every single time I could never even get 1%. Okay, I'll fast forward to the end of the project. So the very end, now it was 40 years of,

Wade19:03

Brian.

One data point.

Krystina Amos19:33

Working in the 40s field. Now they had so many wells that had been drilled, so many had been produced and now they were even in the secondary recovery phase. They had injection wells and I thought, aha, now I'm gonna get some kind of significant percentage because now there were, by this time, there were over 200 wells. So I calculated it and I thought I was messing up because no matter what I did, I could never even get 1%. It was always still 0.000.

Percent. So I thought that I made a mistake and I was messing up, but then I ran out of time. So I had to just submit the assignment. Well, I ended up getting an A on it. My calculations were not wrong. So the professor gave that assignment and the moral of the story was never think that you know everything about the field. Doesn't matter how many hundreds of wells you have.

Wade20:04

Right.

Peter Brecht20:04

Hmm.

Wade20:29

Right.

Krystina Amos20:30

Even though people say, everything's just cookie cutter because now we know everything about these formations in the field. Like you do, we don't even know in this case, they didn't even know 1%. And you have to think about it. And like later on I was taking the reservoir simulation course and plugging all these data into the software. Were using Petrel. So plugging everything in and doing these simulations. And you have to realize that it doesn't matter.

You could be using the best reservoir software in the world, but all these data points we're putting in, we're only, if it's not even 1 % of the entire field, all the simulators are doing is just crunching numbers and interpolating what we know. Doesn't matter how many offset wells you have, the data and projections and models that we're given, they're just based on interpolation. So just be careful with it. We really don't know everything. And even though shale.

Peter Brecht21:15

Hmm.

Yeah.

Krystina Amos21:28

Doesn't have good primary permeability, it can have secondary permeability. For example, if there is a fault, if there is any tectonic plate movement and there's a fault, then a lot of those pores are gonna get connected and there is a possibility for flow. Kicks certainly have been taken from shell formations. It does happen. So just be careful about.

Wade21:34

Faulting in right.

Mm-hmm.

Right. No, we've, yeah,

We've hit, we've definitely hit a couple of, like you said, secondary, secondary permeability streets in there before, like you said, though, not common, but definitely that one.

Peter Brecht21:50

Yeah. Huh.

Krystina Amos21:56

Yeah.

Yeah,

From a well-controlled perspective, it's not a good idea to purposefully drill under balance because you just, you never know. This is Romeo by the way.

Peter Brecht22:10

Yeah, it's...

There you go. I was gonna ask, what's the cat's name? Yeah, special guess. It's alright. It's alright. That's a heck of an assignment for just coming away with the idea that we don't really know a lot, right? I mean, that's a lot of work for that final outcome. But I guess that's probably a good thing to know.

Krystina Amos22:15

I didn't know he was in here, but I guess he wanted to make an appearance.

Wade22:18

Yeah

Yes.

Krystina Amos22:35

Yeah, one of my professors at Aberdeen said, all models are wrong, some are useful. They really drove that into our heads.

Peter Brecht22:42

Mm-hmm. Yes, I've heard that.

Wade22:44

Heard

That.

Peter Brecht22:47

Absolutely. So I want to get into your, you I know you do a lot of translating and language work also. I'd love to talk about that. I have a couple things ahead of that though, before we get there and then we'll talk about your well control course that you have and teaching that. Cause I think that's such a cool, I don't know, I'm excited to talk about that, but we've got the IADC and we have IWCF. And I just real quick, what's the difference between, we look at

Krystina Amos22:53

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Peter Brecht23:17

The drilling contracts from IADC all the time, as part of my job, but what's the difference between these two entities? I mean, I know they're both important, but do they play a different role or are they pretty much the same?

Krystina Amos23:26

Mm-hmm.

So when it comes to well control training, they're quite similar. IEDC is based in Houston, Texas, and IWCF is based in the UK. But both of them are accrediting bodies. So to get a valid well control certificate, the companies are usually going to require that you either get IWCF or IEDC accredited training.

Peter Brecht23:53

Okay,

So it'll be one or the other. You don't need both necessarily. Just depends on where you're going.

Krystina Amos23:57

No,

No, pardon the pun. That would be overkill, but it, really depends what company you work for and also which region you work for. There's some companies that don't care either way, as long as you get like, let's say you need supervisor level. They don't, some companies don't necessarily care if you get IDC supervisor level or the equivalent of that would be IWCF level four. Some companies don't care, but then some of them only when IDC, some of them.

Peter Brecht24:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Krystina Amos24:27

Will only accept IWCF. So it's more, it's based on company policy.

Peter Brecht24:32

Gotcha, good to know.

All right, so this is something that you and I had before recording had talked about, and I didn't wanna ask too much about it just because I wanted to kinda learn on the, while we're talking here, but what defines a well out of control? I know this is something that is widely discussed and maybe misunderstood, but how would you define that?

Krystina Amos24:59

So a well out of control. So what comes to my mind is a blowout. So let's make a distinction between a well blowing out and a well that is kicking. So let's say we are going to trip the drill string out of the hole or work string if you're in work over. Let's say we're gonna do a trip, we're gonna pull out of hole and...

Maybe there was, maybe there's a lot of annular restriction, not too much space between the whole wall and the BHA. And let's say we were pulling fat, we were in a hurry pulling fast and we swabbed in a kick. Well, that's not the end of the world. Kicks happen. A lot of times they are preventable, but not a hundred percent of the time. So sometimes they will happen. It could also happen, especially if we're drilling into a higher pressured formation. Had no way of knowing.

Peter Brecht25:37

Mm-hmm.

Krystina Amos25:53

A kick is going to enter the well. So kicks can happen. And, but as long, it doesn't necessarily mean we're going to lose control of the well. As long as we shut the well in and secure the well and circulate the kick out, then we're still in control of the well, as long as we're maintaining our bottom hole pressure over formation pressure. Now, when would we say that a well is actually blowing out?

That would be when you start to see formation fluid at surface. And this is really the image that comes to most people's minds when they think about well control. And it's kind of funny when we talk about well control, the first image that comes to mind is a well blowing out, which is actually a well out of control. If you have oil and gas coming at surface and the rigs catching fire, the well is not under control. So well can.

Peter Brecht26:47

Yeah, okay.

Krystina Amos26:49

Yeah, true well control. Like if a rig is, is really in control of the well, it's going to be a boring day when it comes to well control. No news is good news. You don't want things like that to be happening. And even if the small kick does enter the well, in most cases, as long as they recognize it in time and shut the well in and control it, in most cases, they'll be able to get the kick out and bring the well back under control. But if they don't do anything,

Peter Brecht27:02

Yep.

Krystina Amos27:18

And don't even try to kill the weld and eventually that kick is going to get to surface and it's going to blow out.

Peter Brecht27:26

Okay. And why is there, you and I had talked and there's disagreement around like some of these definitions and even with, in well controlled training, like where do you think that comes from?

Krystina Amos27:38

I want to say it comes from movies like There Will Be Blood. I don't know if you ever saw that movie. Well, but you should you should it take it takes place in California.

Peter Brecht27:43

Okay, alright. I haven't seen that. But Wade knows I haven't seen most movies that he's sent to me, so you know.

Wade27:49

Yeah, it blows my mind.

Peter Brecht27:53

Alright, yeah, I probably should watch that one next. I'll add it to my list, Wade.

Krystina Amos27:55

It's a yeah, you should. It

Wade27:58

Alright.

Krystina Amos27:59

Takes place. It takes place in the early age of drilling when they were drilling out in California. So anyway, but if you watch movies like that and you don't know anything else, then and on movies like that, that's when you see, they were just letting wells blow out and everybody was laughing and dancing around with buckets to catch the oil. So.

Peter Brecht28:13

Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Krystina Amos28:22

I think that's where

Peter Brecht28:23

Yeah.

Krystina Amos28:23

It comes from. I want to say movies.

Peter Brecht28:26

Yeah, that's fair. Hollywood messes up everything, I know. Or just makes it better at some point.

Krystina Amos28:30

The thing is a well being

Out of control is way more exciting than a well being under control. If a well is under control, nothing's going to be, nothing's going to be happening.

Peter Brecht28:38

Right,

That's, Wade likes to hear that? Wade just wants to keep everything under control, right? So it's good. Boring is good. Awesome. Well, we'll kind of pivot over into, why you started your training company. And so how long have you been with Infinite Energy? When did you found that and what was kind of the impetus behind it?

Wade28:43

Boring is good.

Krystina Amos29:02

I started Infinite Energy Solutions in June, 2021. I used to work as a full-time well control instructor for various companies, but then I decided in early 2021, I decided to go back offshore. So I went back offshore for a couple of years. And when I updated my LinkedIn profile,

Well-controlled schools started DMing me and asking me, now that you're not working for anyone specifically, would you be willing to come teach classes for us as a contractor on your weeks off when you're not offshore? So I'll admit at the beginning, I was not keen on it. Like the whole point of me going back offshore is to have weeks off. Like that was the whole point. The only time I ever felt at the true work life balance is when I was working offshore. It's like.

Peter Brecht29:39

Hmm.

Wade29:48

Right.

Peter Brecht29:48

Right.

Yeah.

Krystina Amos29:54

When I'm off and I get weeks off at a time, but I didn't want to burn any bridges. So was polite and I thought about it. I took a break from well control for it, from teaching for several months. And then I decided, why not? I can always do it. And if I ever do start to feel burned out, I could always just say no. Right. So that's actually how my company happened. I wouldn't say I truly intended it for it to happen. It, everything just happened. So I just registered it.

Peter Brecht29:54

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Right, right, Yep.

Yeah.

Krystina Amos30:22

For the LLC, that way I could work as a contractor. So that's how it started. I juggled both for a couple of years, but I've been fully self-employed since, I want to say March, 2023. So it's been a little over two years. And the freedom that comes with that is that when I'm not teaching, then I can do other things too.

Peter Brecht30:26

Yeah.

Okay.

Awesome.

Yeah, it's probably, it's a bit different than being offshore for sure. And the way that you design your courses are like you're trying to give the student, right, things that they can put into action immediately. You actually custom design these courses, right?

Krystina Amos31:02

Well, I have worked in curriculum development, especially when I worked for schools as a full-time employee. So yeah, I've actually worked a lot in curriculum development, but yes, that's always the intention. But the thing is we have to have several goals. And I know they say that you can't have more than one priority. By definition, priority can only be one thing. However, when it comes to well-controlled training, there are several priorities.

Peter Brecht31:09

Hmm. Okay.

Krystina Amos31:29

For example, if the school wants to be accredited to teach both IEDC and IWCF well control courses, when we're designing the curriculum, we have to make sure that we follow IEDC guidelines, that we follow IWCF guidelines. They both have handbooks. They have all the topics that we need to cover and to what depth. So we do have to make sure we cover everything they want. And as far as making it relevant,

Think, easily apply to the field. I think the best way to do that is really, really what happens in the classroom when it comes to facilitating the training. And that's something I really try to do. I never, in my classes at least, I never want this to be all about, okay, we're gonna look at these slides and you're gonna take a test and that'll be it. No, I always try to keep it relevant. And I ask a lot of open-ended.

Questions and I ask them, what have you seen in your experience? You know, let's, get away from the slides. What have you seen? Have you done anything like this? When this happened, how did you guys handle it? And how can you do, I just want to make sure everybody knows that they play a part in well control. So it's this balance that we have to hit of covering what these accreditation bodies want us to cover, but making sure that we don't act like, we're universities in a classroom.

Peter Brecht32:29

Mm-hmm.

Krystina Amos32:54

Because this is not just about passing the test. The reality is, yes, at the end of the class, there is gonna be a standardized exam, but we have to remember the real reason why we're in these trainings, and it's to prevent blowouts. And you can have the best training in the world. Training and well-controlled certificates don't prevent blowouts. Only people can do that.

Peter Brecht32:54

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Gotcha.

Yeah, curriculum development is challenging. Don't have, so I'm not a teacher, but we have a class that we actually walk people through, professional rugby athletes through insurance, risk management, and then get them into the oil and gas industry too. Just coming up with like over 12, I only got 12 weeks with these people and it's like, it is hard to cram in. Like I wish I could add in more weeks because there's so much I want to cover, right? But it's tough when you got, it's fun though. Like I love putting the

Krystina Amos33:36

I'm done.

I feel your pain.

Peter Brecht33:46

These

Things together and then getting the feedback and like learning and readjusting and I thought I would be done like developing and it's like no every new group that comes through we're making small adjustments or big adjustments depending on you know kind of what comes up so a lot of fun yeah

Krystina Amos33:59

Mm-hmm. I feel your pain and, in well, in well control, it's like that too, except

We have even more condensed time. Like for a sup, let's say you're going to take drilling supervisor level surface subsea and work over like an IDC course, you get four days of training. We have to cram all of that into four days because the exams are going to be on Friday. That's typically the way it is set up. And if you count the hours, this is like

Peter Brecht34:09

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Gosh.

Krystina Amos34:28

40 hours of training. So I realized like this is just as many hours as my university courses at UL. So it's like we're like no wonder it's so intense and people get stressed and it feels like so much is because we're cramming entire semesters worth of information into four days with the final exam on the fifth day. It's a lot.

Peter Brecht34:30

Yeah.

Gosh, that's crazy.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I don't think I'll ever be in one of those rooms, but that stresses me out just thinking about it. I mean, guess if I got an invite and I was like, I'm gonna go audit and sit in the back and learn it, but I hope, I don't know, I'd probably never be on a well pad doing something like that. It'd be interesting for me, but probably be overkill for what I'm doing.

Krystina Amos34:57

Not even mine? Not even mine?

You could,

If you want, I can keep you updated whenever I offer virtual courses. You can, you can jump into the virtual one and not have to take the test. Yeah. Yeah. I can send you an invite for the next virtual course.

Peter Brecht35:18

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I'm so bad at tests. Yeah, there's a reason.

Wade35:23

Okay

Peter Brecht35:27

All right. Perfect. I'd love that. That'd be great. Wade, have you ever taken, have you ever had to take well control or anything like that? I just don't know like who takes this. Okay. All right. All right. Okay. Plenty of it, I'm sure. Okay. So.

Wade35:33

Oh, yeah. Yeah, you get certified every two years. Yeah, most, it's required

For all the guys on the rig, most engineers are taking it as well.

Peter Brecht35:44

Okay.

Okay, all right. Yeah. Okay. Everybody. Okay. All right. Good to know. All right, so this is like, this is a bigger, this is a way bigger deal than...

Krystina Amos35:47

Yeah. Yeah, they take, I get engineers all the time. Yeah, it's field people, engineers, sometimes geologists.

Wade35:58

Mm-hmm.

Peter Brecht35:59

That I'm kind of thinking it is. So you've got this going on. You're also doing translation. We talked about this. There's such a cross section of cultures and people in the oil and gas industry. And I think that that's something that is interesting. It's unique. I mean, you have such a skill set in translation. Talk about what you do there a little bit. And then we'll kind of lead into your

Krystina Amos36:00

Ha

Peter Brecht36:28

Your new website and then go from there. But let's talk about that.

Krystina Amos36:32

Cool,

So moving on to my other passion, languages and cultures, I love it. So I started that, I got into that by accident too. So I did a high school exchange program in Argentina back in 2002. 2002 and 2003, I lived with a local family in Mendoza where they make the best Malbec wine. And so I spent a year there and

Peter Brecht36:38

Yeah.

Hmm.

Okay.

Krystina Amos37:02

Two and I started teaching for two of the language schools I wasn't seeking it out but word got around that there was somebody from the US there So schools were reaching out to me and I was so young I didn't want to do it. I was 16 at first So was really nervous too. Mean public speaking was my worst fear But when I was 17, somehow I got the confidence like okay and plus I was starting to run out of money So I needed to

Peter Brecht37:22

Mm-hmm.

It's a good motivator.

Krystina Amos37:32

Yeah, I was starting to run out of money

And they're like, well, it's not a lot. It's five pesos an hour, but it'll be something. So I started teaching for, I think I was teaching for one school for a couple hours, Tuesday evenings and the other one Thursday evenings for a couple hours. So I was doing both. So yeah, started out being an English teacher. I didn't know how to do it. And they're like, oh, it's easy. Like you're a native speaker. All you have to do is answer their questions. Okay. So I started that. And then when I came back to the U S then.

People would ask me if I would help them do tutoring, like if they were taking a high school or college Spanish class. And then I was working for a company where I was administrative assistant, but they asked me if I could create a language training program from them, because they actually created the position for me because I was bilingual and they needed a bilingual person. They use a lot of temp workers from Mexico. So their visa is, I forgot the name of the visa.

But they would just come for like three to six months. Then they'd go back home and then maybe come back the next year during the busy season. So that what they wanted me to do, they asked me to create like a vocational language training course, but they wanted me to make two, one to teach Spanish to the people in the office. And then another one to teach English to the people who worked in the field, to the people who worked on the rigs and the pipe fitters, the welders, they're mostly welders and pipe fitters. So was like a well controlled.

Peter Brecht38:54

Okay. Yeah.

Wade38:54

Mm-hmm.

Peter Brecht38:58

Yeah.

Krystina Amos38:59

Construction and reparation, after storms. So I started doing that. It was a, so I, that's when I started my language business. Yeah, I just start businesses because people ask me to, do things. Then I, yeah. But I did that.

Peter Brecht39:08

Okay.

Yeah. Wait, wait,

Wade39:14

Alright.

Peter Brecht39:16

You speak Spanish? Do you speak Spanish Wade or no?

Wade39:18

Un poco.

Very little.

Peter Brecht39:20

Yeah, yeah, I could barely order a burrito. Like it's not gonna happen. Like we go to my wife, my wife grew up, she's got plenty of time in Puerto Rico, we'll go over there and it's like, it's all like, that's, and I'm like, I'm literally using Google translate for everything. She's like, well, we'll give ourselves an hour, we'll be fine. No, we need two hours, cause I'm gonna have to stop on, it's just, it's chaos. Don't travel with me, I'm a liability.

Peter Brecht39:46

I know that for a fact. Sorry to cut you off there, Krystina. I just had to ask.

Krystina Amos39:52

Well, that's how I started that side of the business. And from then I started doing, I started creating more customized language training for businesses. Like I just, loved it. It's all pure facilitation and it's so exciting because after, even two to three days with them, it's just so exciting. Some of them go from knowing nothing except dos cervezas, por favor. And then by the end of it, like they're, like

Wade39:55

The top.

Peter Brecht40:08

Yeah, yeah.

Wade40:17

Yeah

Krystina Amos40:20

By the end of it, they can tell their construction workers like, Hey, get down. That's not safe. Put on your hard hat, put on your safety glasses. It is, it's just really, it's just really fun. And, but I do other translations too. And I've done tons of other interpreting jobs. Surprisingly, surprisingly this year, the majority of the interpreting jobs I've done has been for immigration interviews at USCIS.

Peter Brecht40:30

Yeah.

Okay, interesting. Any reason for that? What do you think the underlying cause of that is or reason for that?

Krystina Amos40:46

Now.

I really don't know because I was not at the time, I was not even advertising, like I hadn't even advertised for my language services in probably 10 years. So I honestly don't know how they got my number found out about me. I don't know. But I just started getting emails and phone calls asking if I would go with them to their immigration interviews and interpret for them. Okay.

Peter Brecht41:03

Yeah.

It just takes one, right? It just takes one person and then you just get connected. Good. Yeah.

Wade41:15

Was run.

Peter Brecht41:22

Love it.

Krystina Amos41:23

I didn't

Have it on my website, didn't have it on LinkedIn, nothing. I don't know. I don't know how they found out about me, but I'm, working on adding it to the site. Now I haven't finished building my language services page out, but I realized like, well, I hadn't really been doing it much in 10 years, but since people want that, guess there's a need for it and they're asking for it. So I'm going to just go ahead and make it official.

Peter Brecht41:26

Yeah.

Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it does.

Wade41:29

Bird of mouth travels fast.

That's great.

Peter Brecht41:48

Perfect. Well, speaking of your new website, so I'm actually looking at it right now and we'll have a link in the show notes for it too, but you have a study guide just for well control on there and shared it with us. So I'll direct everyone to go there if you're interested in learning something. I know, I think it's like $9, but if you put local energy in, you can download it for free and check it out there. So.

But yeah, where else can people find you and connect with you? Where's the best place to go?

Krystina Amos42:19

Well,

The best place to go would be my website. There's a little chat message. They can send me messages. I'll, I try to respond within 24 hours. And if they don't want to go to my website, then they can find me on LinkedIn.

Peter Brecht42:32

Yep.

Gotcha, LinkedIn. Okay, so we'll

Include that too. So awesome. Well, I've learned a lot. Wade, any other questions before we let Krystina go and get off to the rest of her day?

Wade42:47

No, I appreciate

The time today, thank you.

Peter Brecht42:50

Yeah, I love it. Awesome. Well, hey guys, thanks for joining us and look up Krystina Connect with Her on LinkedIn. Check out our website. Wade, I'll see you next week and everyone have a great weekend. Thanks.

Wade43:00

Sounds good. Thanks.

Krystina Amos43:01

Bye.