We couldn't get very far without oil rigs, both on and off shore, and the people who work there. Workers toil long hours, usually far from families and friends, to provide the fuel needed to power cars, planes, trains, and many other types of machines. Life on an offshore oil platform and the many kinds of jobs that keep it running smoothly and safely are explored through accessible text.

A Recommended Read from: Vogue * USA Today * The Los Angeles Times * Publishers Weekly * The Week * Alma * Lit Hub A stunning and brutally honest memoir that shines a light on what happens when female desire conflicts with a culture of masculinity in crisis In her midthirties and newly free from a terrible relationship, Tabitha Lasley quit her job at a London magazine, packed her bags, and poured her savings into a six-month lease on an apartment in Aberdeen, Scotland. She decided to make good on a long-deferred idea for a book about oil rigs and the men who work on them. Why oil rigs? She wanted to see what men were like with no women around. In Aberdeen, Tabitha became deeply entrenched in the world of roughnecks, a teeming subculture rich with brawls, hard labor, and competition. The longer she stayed, the more she found her presence had a destabilizing effect on the men—and her. Sea State is on the one hand a portrait of an overlooked industry: “offshore” is a way of life for generations of primarily working-class men and also a potent metaphor for those parts of life we keep at bay—class, masculinity, the transactions of desire, and the awful slipperiness of a ladder that could, if we tried hard enough, lead us to security. Sea State is on the other hand the story of a journalist whose professional distance from her subject becomes perilously thin. In Aberdeen, Tabitha gets high and dances with abandon, reliving her youth, when the music was good and the boys were bad. Twenty years on, there is Caden: a married rig worker who spends three weeks on and three weeks off. Alone and in an increasingly precarious state, Tabitha dives into their growing attraction. The relationship, reckless and explosive, will lay them both bare.

'Great two-fisted writing from the far side of hell.' - John Birmingham, bestselling author of He Died with a Felafel in his Hand 'A unique look at a gritty game. Relentlessly funny and obsessively readable.' - Phillip Noyce, director of The Quiet American and Clear and Present Danger Paul Carter has been shot at, hijacked and held hostage. He's almost died of dysentery in Asia and toothache in Russia, watched a Texan lose his mind in the jungles of Asia, lost a lot of money backing a mouse against a scorpion in a fight to the death, and been served cocktails by an orang-utan on an ocean freighter. And that's just his day job. Taking postings in some of the world's wildest and most remote regions, not to mention some of the roughest oil rigs on the planet, Paul has worked, gotten into trouble and been given serious talkings to in locations as far-flung as the North Sea, Middle East, Borneo and Tunisia, as exotic as Sumatera, Vietnam and Thailand, and as flat out dangerous as Columbia, Nigeria and Russia, with some of the maddest, baddest and strangest people you could ever hope not to meet. Strap yourself in for an exhilarating, crazed, sometimes terrifying, usually bloody funny ride through one man's adventures in the oil trade. When not getting into trouble on the rigs Paul lives a quiet life in Sydney.

The blowout of the Macondo well on April 20, 2010, led to enormous consequences for the individuals involved in the drilling operations, and for their families. Eleven workers on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig lost their lives and 16 others were seriously injured. There were also enormous consequences for the companies involved in the drilling operations, to the Gulf of Mexico environment, and to the economy of the region and beyond. The flow continued for nearly 3 months before the well could be completely killed, during which time, nearly 5 million barrels of oil spilled into the gulf. Macondo Well-Deepwater Horizon Blowout examines the causes of the blowout and provides a series of recommendations, for both the oil and gas industry and government regulators, intended to reduce the likelihood and impact of any future losses of well control during offshore drilling. According to this report, companies involved in offshore drilling should take a "system safety" approach to anticipating and managing possible dangers at every level of operation-from ensuring the integrity of wells to designing blowout preventers that function under all foreseeable conditions-in order to reduce the risk of another accident as catastrophic as the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill. In addition, an enhanced regulatory approach should combine strong industry safety goals with mandatory oversight at critical points during drilling operations. Macondo Well-Deepwater Horizon Blowout discusses ultimate responsibility and accountability for well integrity and safety of offshore equipment, formal system safety education and training of personnel engaged in offshore drilling, and guidelines that should be established so that well designs incorporate protection against the various credible risks associated with the drilling and abandonment process. This book will be of interest to professionals in the oil and gas industry, government decision makers, environmental advocacy groups, and others who seek an understanding of the processes involved in order to ensure safety in undertakings of this nature.

This "gorgeously written" National Book Award finalist is a dazzling, heart-rending story of an oil rig worker whose closest friend goes missing, plunging him into isolation and forcing him to confront his past (NPR, One of the Best Books of the Year). One night aboard an oil drilling platform in the Atlantic, Waclaw returns to his cabin to find that his bunkmate and companion, Mátyás, has gone missing. A search of the rig confirms his fear that Mátyás has fallen into the sea. Grief-stricken, he embarks on an epic emotional and physical journey that takes him to Morocco, to Budapest and Mátyás's hometown in Hungary, to Malta, Italy, and finally to the mining town of his childhood in Germany. Waclaw's encounters along the way with other lost and yearning souls—Mátyás's angry, grieving half-sister; lonely rig workers on shore leave; a truck driver who watches the world change from his driver's seat—bring us closer to his origins while also revealing the problems of a globalized economy dependent on waning natural resources. High as the Waters Rise is a stirring exploration of male intimacy, the nature of memory and grief, and the cost of freedom—the story of a man who stands at the margins of a society from which he has profited little, though its functioning depends on his labor.

Documents the events of the 1988 oil rig disaster on the North Sea, drawing on interviews with survivors and family members, the Occidental Petroleum Corp., and rescue workers to trace the gas leak that triggered the explosion and the devastation it continues to inflict.

The IADC Drilling Manual, 12th edition, is the definitive manual for drilling operations, training, maintenance and troubleshooting. The two-volume, 26-chapter reference guide covers all aspects of drilling, with chapters on types of drilling rigs, automation, drill bits, casing and tubing, casing while drilling, cementing, chains and sprockets, directional drilling, downhole tools, drill string, drilling fluid processing, drilling fluids, hydraulics, drilling practices, floating drilling equipment and operations, high-pressure drilling hoses, lubrication, managed pressure drilling and related practices, power generation and distribution, pumps, rotating and pipehandling equipment, special operations, structures and land rig mobilization, well control equipment and procedures, and wire rope. A comprehensive glossary of drilling terms is also included. More than 900 color and black-and-white illustrations, 600 tables and thirteen videos. 1,158 pages. Copyright © IADC. All rights reserved.

"First published by OR Books LLC, New York"--T.p. verso.

"Oilfield Trash is written in a charming, flowing style that any reader will enjoy....In Weaver's capable hands, the gypsy lives of a generation of young men unfold on the rigorous stage of drilling fields...."---Paul Spellman, author of Spindletop Boom Days --

“A book that should be read . . . Smith brings an alchemic talent to describing physical labor.” —The New York Times Book Review “Beautiful, funny, and harrowing.” – Sarah Smarsh, The Atlantic “Remarkable . . . this is the book that Hillbilly Elegy should have been.” —Kirkus Reviews A vivid window into the world of working class men set during the Bakken fracking boom in North Dakota Like thousands of restless men left unmoored in the wake of the 2008 economic crash, Michael Patrick Smith arrived in the fracking boomtown of Williston, North Dakota five years later homeless, unemployed, and desperate for a job. Renting a mattress on a dirty flophouse floor, he slept boot to beard with migrant men who came from all across America and as far away as Jamaica, Africa and the Philippines. They ate together, drank together, argued like crows and searched for jobs they couldn't get back home. Smith's goal was to find the hardest work he could do--to find out if he could do it. He hired on in the oil patch where he toiled fourteen hour shifts from summer's 100 degree dog days to deep into winter's bracing whiteouts, all the while wrestling with the demons of a turbulent past, his broken relationships with women, and the haunted memories of a family riven by violence. The Good Hand is a saga of fear, danger, exhaustion, suffering, loneliness, and grit that explores the struggles of America's marginalized boomtown workers—the rough-hewn, castoff, seemingly disposable men who do an indispensable job that few would exalt: oil field hands who, in the age of climate change, put the gas in our tanks and the food in our homes. Smith, who had pursued theater and played guitar in New York, observes this world with a critical eye; yet he comes to love his coworkers, forming close bonds with Huck, a goofy giant of a young man whose lead foot and quick fists get him into trouble with the law, and The Wildebeest, a foul-mouthed, dip-spitting truck driver who torments him but also trains him up, and helps Smith "make a hand." The Good Hand is ultimately a book about transformation--a classic American story of one man's attempt to burn himself clean through hard work, to reconcile himself to himself, to find community, and to become whole.