Entry Level Operator Assistant l Cementing

With Halliburton, the raises come with increasing your skills and moving up the ladder to more training, knowledge, and responsibility. Not by doing time.

I know a guy who has been there a little over a year and a half, and has made 2 such moves. He is making considerably more than an OA1. There are jobs there that have no specific career mobility (like baroid warehouse driver), so the only way you move up from there is by doing well at that, and in six months or so, changing location and/or function.

You earn it by being of value, not for just being there....but after 6 months, you can go anywhere in the world they operate, and if YOU are worth THEIR time, THEY will train YOU for any entry level job you think you can or want to do. (OA1, Frac, etc.) From there, it's a matter of timing, hard work, and ability.

I think it's pretty funny when people expect it to be any different.

 

I am an OA1 at Halliburton in Duncan Ok. The job is actually really easy. We work on call 24/6 with 3 days off. So 6 days on 3 days off. Its 100% on call. We typically drive around 100 miles one way, spend about an hour or two rigging up at the rig site, then we cab up and do what ever you want for a while. Then we rig down and drive back home. The shortest day I have had so far in my short career has been 12.5 hrs. Its long hours but the work is easy, plus you get paid for every second that you are away from the house. They are not stingy at all with overtime. Trucking is only about 20% of the job, but they send you to school to get your CDL and you get valuable training and you can enjoy making some good overtime pay and benefits. Don't let the "hard work" talk trick you. I will give you a breakdown of a typical day. Get a call to come in. I show up within 20 minutes of being called. I get my paperwork and go pretrip my truck. I load my truck with cement and then wait for the others going out to get loaded. Then we convoy out usually around 100 miles or so. We will stop and eat on the way out at a truck stop or a good local resturaunt. When we arrive on site we check in with the company man and see where they are at and when they will need us. If its gonna be a couple of hours we cab up and chill, sleep, watch movies or do what ever you want in your truck. Then when they are ready for you its work time. You have to help hook up all the iron that goes from the pump truck to the rig and then hook your bulk trailer up to the pump truck. Its a little physical. Iron isn't light and you have to whack it with a sledge hammer. But its not hard. After we pump the cement we rig down and then its all in reverse order..... eat, drive back to Duncan, fuel the trucks, show up at the yard and then we have to wash the trucks which takes about 10-15 minutes and then we do some paper work and go home. Its easy, not very stressfull and you get paid pretty decent while doing it. Plus you are getting valuable CDL experience. The good thing with Halliburton is when you put 6 months in with them you can put in for any job they have open. You can move up and laterally in this company. From what I have been told this position has about a 70% wash out rate mainly due to the long hours out. Some people just want to work 9-5 monday through Friday. I have been on some 25hr jobs. That is some great overtime and I got to sleep several hours of it. You get paid for all your sleeping and waiting when you are in the truck. I just through this info out quickly cause the wife is wanting me to watch a movie, let me know if you have any other questions about this position and I can get back with you. I would think hard before I turned down a position with Halliburton.

 

Gisquid I don't have enough posts to send PM's, so here is your response.

I actually just moved from North Dakota. I was in the Air Force up there so I don't know anything about the oil field trucking scene up there. I do know they get paid really good and they work like crazy. I doubt that they would have the same schedule as we have here due to their high demand level. The distance of driving just depends where the rig site is at. I saw a lot of water trucks coming out of Minot heading out to the locations. Nothing is really close to Minot so you would be looking at probably 100 miles one way easy. The good thing about up there is they know how to clear the roads in the winter. They have the equipment for it and they do it almost half the year. I have only been with Halliburton for 2 months. The advice I get from the old timers is to stay as close to the rig as possible. You avoid lay offs and down sizing that way. Honestly I want to stay right where I am at. Its an easy low stress but good paying job.

 

About how much $$$ are you averaging a week in Duncan,OK. My friend works for Halliburton Cementing Operator 1 in Laredo,Tx. and he tells me he can go and punch in for work and go for a few hours of sleep at home and they will call him when they need him is that also common in Duncan

 

We don't have to punch in. All of our time is logged with our DOT log books. There are people who exagerate their numbers a bit, but you are risking getting fired if you get stupid with it. I personally got 182.5 hours this last pay period. Thats 12 days of working, thats also 102.5hrs of overtime. I haven't heard of anyone going home when they get called in. I don't know how they do it at Laredo but here in Duncan we are 100% on call. So when they call us, that means they need us and we don't have time to go home for a while.

 

Anybody know anything about E&P Wireline. I think they're with schlumberger. I want to know if anyone has any knowledge about the Equipment Operator Positions. If they get paid well and what the hours are like.

 

I did Frac at Halliburton for a year and a half..at first I loved it and wanted to make a career out of Halliburton..but as time went on, that 13$ an hour just wasn't cutting it and some weeks we'd barely get 40 hours. And id only gotten 1 raise my whole time there to 13.39$ an hour which isn't anything. You are underpaid for all the hard work you do and you can make more money with ANY other company and actually get good raises as Halliburton probably pays the least out of everybody. I ended up hating my job because I loved to drive and we only drove about 20% of the time like someone stated earlier. And the money was just not good.. I did Frac in east Texas though. But I have a buddy that works for boots and coots snubbing and makes 4,000$ every 2 weeks. But he is also working more than 100 hours a week and is gone all the time. Cementing would probably be a good job but I'm sure you are still underpaid for the hard labor you put in. the job to have is a Halliburton baroid truck driver. Mainly drives flatbeds and most of what they do is driving..I was always jealous when id see those guys going down the highway or pulling in to a truck stop to get a good meal in. they hardly let us even go to truck stops!

 

Yup. Driving baroid means you get to drive 2-6 hours in a given day, depending on the size of your region, and the rest of the time you're at a rig loading or unloading with a 4x4 forklift you carry on yor step deck, (or the rig has a hand unload you) restacking/wrapping pallets of sack material or totes to come back to the warehouse or to the new rig location, or you're waiting to load or unload at the rig or the warerhouse.

Occasionally, you get to stand up or pull down baroid tanks with a winch and forklift, and set up blowers, almost always with another driver. To keep from sitting on my butt at the warehouse, I like to load my own truck. Other than pre and post trips, that's about the whole job. It's not bad, not that hard, just hot, and the pay isn't what it should be, but you "usually" get 70 hours a in. It slows down some, and then the low hourly pay gets noticed a lot more.

It's not too bad, and Halliburton has a good benefits package that pays considerably more than the hourly wage over the course of a year in pre-loaded vacation time, an annual bonus and 401K contributions. You could do worse than Halliburton, make more per hour, and then get let go the first time a company loses a contract, but there are other companies hauling drilling materials. Some. Hauling crude oil, water, or running a vacuum truck is more to some guy's liking. There's less physical labor involved, and it's more driving or sitting.

 

Yeah the baroid guys in east TX don't haul forklifts so no unloading for them at the location. They have it pretty easy and they usually get 70 hours one week and 50 the next. Must be a pretty good gig because I have never seen them hire for that position. Ever. And I check the website alot I have seen positions open for baroid material handler, but would these guys get to drive also?

 

A baroid flatbed that pulled into the yard to get unloaded.