Uinta Basin; 1971

Altamont Field in Duchesne County, in the N.E. part of Utah, was rocking in the late 1960's and early 1970's and some deep Green River and Wasatch oil and gas wells were being made by a Shell and Chevron Joint Venture in the area.

Brinkerhoff Drilling Company, Denver, a well-known Rocky Mountain contractor owned by the famous, Sonny Brinkerhoff, had a number of rigs working in NE Utah drilling in the Altamont Field and in the fall of 1971, before the first big snows came, it had two of its biggest rigs burn up under the ever-watchful eye of the Shell Joint Venture.

In September of 1971 Shell was drilling its King Silver-Evans 1 well at 13,800 feet, five miles west of the community of Altamont, Utah. It blew out and caught fire. Shell called Houston; Red and Boots were on a job already, so Coots and Richard Hatteberg assumed responsibility.

They were able to get pumps and loaded out in Houston before they left for Utah and once there started working on their water sources while their stuff was making the drive north.

The following photographs of the Evans fire are courtesy of the Thorne Collection of Photographs at the J. Willard Marriott Digital Library at the University of Utah. Not a big fire at all but some very nice, very high-quality photographs.

For a company man this the most difficult paperwork to file, accident reports, particularly when there are injuries to report. The drilling engineer, I believe, did not make it.

In 1971 Myron Kinley, then 73 years old was about done with his career. The Red Adair Company was the go-to well control company in the entire world, hands down.

Above, Coots and Richard getting a peek at the BOP stack thru the back door. There is never mistaking Coots' long, lanky figure and his bowed legs.

The following four photographs sort of give folks an idea of what goes on behind the scenes waiting to go to battle with one these things. Its busy out there with welders welding, lease crews and drilling hands laying pipe, rigging up monitor stands; all kinds of things, and all kinds of money are spent days before you can even lay a hand on one of these fires.

Here's a little secret about well control... a good lead off hand can sort of tell if the well is going to bridge or not. By no means can you take a chance that it will bridge, and you have to carry on like you are about ready to do war with the Devil himself, but you can pretty much tell. It may not be blowing hard to begin with, and it starts slugging water, after a few days it looks like it's not blowing near as hard, its making more water and then muddy, sandy water and it's a good bet that it's going to bridge off. Operators don't want to take chances, they want the well capped and the law suits to begin as soon as possible, but I know for a fact that waiting around an extra day or so to get equipment, or finishing water sources can be a very good "plan."

In the meantime, there is always stuff to do before engaging with the well and often preparation and procuring of enough water to protect yourself, prevent ignition, or re-ignition, can take a week or more.

Adairs monitor stands were stand alone, simple and, I suspect, very warm. By the time I got to Boots and Coots, Inc. in 1992 we had a policy of wrapping all of our stands on all sides and a tin roof, leaving the back open. These tended to be cooler, I suspect, as I never worked with Adair on a fire. I liked B&C stands a lot as one of them saved my life one time when the wind changed and laid down the well fire right over my stand. Had there been no roof or sides I'd a cooked like backed chicken in an oven. I opened the water into a spray, like a fountain, turned it straight up over the stand, and set there three or four minutes watching my steel toes melt on my boots until the wind changed again. When it did, I hauled ass out the back like I was shot out of a cannon.

Richard Hatteburg told me one time he remembered this job as heavy, low gravity, high-paraffin oil coming out of the ground like cow patties. "It'd hit your hard hat and splatter and when it got on your coveralls it was so thick it never even left a stain."

After day six, they were ready to start clearing rig debris and this one bridged, deader than a doorknob. B&C removed the damaged BOP stack and capped the well.

Debris from the well bore was fished under pressure, with a snubbing unit and after nearly a year the well was actually put on production. It made over a 100K BO and 7 BCFG before being plugged in 1995.

On the right, field notes for the calculation of cement to set nine different plugs in the well.

Seven weeks later, Shell burned another Brickerhoff rig down 1 mile north of Altamont. This one had drill pipe in it and was a much bigger fire, one that could be seen as far away as Roosevelt, Utah, 30 miles to the east.

Ute residents in Roosevelt said at night it looked like the sun never went down. Jimmy Adair, Red's son that was on the great Algerian fire in 1963, came out of retirement to help Coots sting into the drill pipe on the 2nd fire and pump it dead.

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For all the Uinta Basin shale fanatics the oil splatters that Richard spoke about on this job was actually waxy oil from Green River/Wasatch formations, sourced from deeper shale oil beds that are currently being developed today with HZ laterals. At 13,000 feet TVD wax is very soluble but as it is being hurled up the casing from bottom hole pressure is undergoing rapid cooling from critical flow rates and expanding associated gas. Then when it is hit with water, to keep re-ignition from occurring, it literally turned into a waxy mud that would not even stick to your coveralls.