A Roughneck's First Encounter With Hydrogen Sulfide

This is an excerpt from my book, regarding the sheer terror that swept through my body when the H2S alarms sounded on my first shift working as a derrick-hand—fifty-five feet above the rig floor wrestling 6,000 pound stands of of drill collars.

My book, "Oil Field Trash Roughneck Tales From The Rig Floor" is available at Amazon.com. First person accounts of drilling for oil during the eighties boom.

My first experience with the evil vapor known as Hydrogen Sulfide was ironically my first day as a derrick-hand. We were tripping out of the hole and the morning tour latch-hand stayed over for a few minutes to show me how to jack back the drill collars since I had never handled them before. I climbed up to the board and he coached me on how to wrestle them back with a wrap and a half, then tie them off with two half hitch knots. He used the climbing belt to head down after my crash course in Six Thousand Pounds 101.

I had tied off three of them when the H2S alarms went off. I looked down to see the floor-hands scatter and JD, my driller chaining down the brake handle. He looked up and shouted, “Climb down you dumb bastard,” before he too fled.

That’s a plan, I thought. Hydrogen Sulfide is heavier than air and lies close to the ground. So here I stood, fifty-five feet off the rig floor with no climbing belt to assist me and I’m ordered to come down? JD was the boss so who was I to question him. 

My hands were shaking long before the sensors squawked, and were trembling uncontrollably as I unfastened my safety belt. I glanced at the wind sock, mounted on the doghouse as I made my way halfway down the ladder. There was nobody in sight on the ground. As I got within twenty feet I devised a plan. I’d gulp in one last breath of precious, uncontaminated oxygen when I got ten feet from the floor, climb down the last few rungs, then sprint upwind like a race horse on the wrong end of a cattle prod.

My plan went to hell when I lost my grip six feet from the floor. I bounced off the brake handle and landed flat on my back next to the draw works steps. I stood up and took another breath as I charged down those stairs, past the V-12 Detroits, past the mud pumps, and off into the woods. I’m not sure how far I’d made it before I stopped. Maybe two-hundred yards; maybe half a mile. Steel-toed boots and all, I think I outran a whitetail or two, dodging trees in high gear. I looked around and didn’t see anyone else; didn’t notice any live bodies during my dash. JD and Hadley, the tool-pusher should be around here somewhere. Maybe they were overcome. Leon our worm probably ran downwind...

I sat down on a log and fished a pack of Cowboy Killers from my shirt pocket, sides heaving, heart pounding. I needed a nicotine fix but couldn’t control my hands enough to pull a cigarette free from the pack. So I pulled a tin of Copenhagen from my back pocket, and promptly emptied it onto the ground. I sat there for fifteen minutes, wondering what I’d do next. Where I’d go to work now. I sure as hell wasn’t staying out here... Not after this. Maybe I’d go back to the sawmill, try and get a full time position. No way was I going back to the restaurant. That bridge had been burned anyway. I’d sort it out after JD’s funeral. Maybe get some flowers for the poor bastard. It was the least I could do.

Then I heard voices off in the distance, signs of life from the direction I had ran from. I cautiously walked towards the sounds, the wind at my back. Maybe an ambulance, or the coroner sent to collect the dead bodies? I reached the clearing after a few minutes, where the derrick stood high in the sky. I peered through the brush and saw JD and Hadley near the cellar. I walked onto the location nervously, down to the substructure next to my bosses.

“Where the hell have you been?” JD barked.

“Ran off into the woods.”

“Get back upstairs. We gotta get this pipe on the bank.” 

“What about the H2S?”

“That’s the fourth time that thing’s went off in the past eight hours,” Hadley groused. He looked at the Hydrogen Sulfide detector in his right hand. “All false alarms. I gotta recalibrate the bastard. This down time’s a bitch.”