As a business partner new to the oil fields I am wondering if I should be concerned about Chevron's safety. I am a single dad with 2 kids. I hear things like there's always time to do it right and safety first, yet I also hear Chevron is not in the safety business and the expectation is that we will reach our goals for the day no matter what transpires. I have also been told that Chevron has ki---d at least one person every year for over 140 years of being in business. We have been told about stop work authority but there are enough people I work with who describe punishment for those that use it. What is the true Chevron?
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Midcon is nothing but a bunch of drain bamaged country hicks with cow doo in their boots. That includes upper management.
“Examples of Midcon wells safety issues as told to me by a friend.”
Someone told you all these things in enough detail for you to post about them all on here?
Please elaborate on how drilling mud destroyed BOPs. While your at it, you can expand on the details of the “locking mechanism” failure in where the “supervisor” completely ignored the Wireline operators concerns.
Chevron cares about safety, but you will always have individuals who make poor decisions. To the OP… work out here is inherently dangerous, but having worked on the service side before, I’d rather work for a company like Chevron. Of course Chevron cares about performance, we have to make money in order to employ people and that means taking some risk.
If you don’t feel that Chevron is safe enough for you, then the oilfield is not for you.
“ Midcon's current OP's Manager once stated in a Ops meeting that he saw no value in safety. Same person then eliminated the entire V&V group during the transformation event. Predecessor Op's Manager had declared V&V as essential personnel during the pandemic and allowed air transportation of V&V individuals while D's & W's were not permitted to travel by air. When current Op's Manager eliminated V&V group he do so without the blessing of the current Well's VP. Although current Well's VP consistently desires to down size safety personnel. Must be a culture brought with them from BP. Get er done as long as it doesn't cost any time or money.”
You guys drove to one site a day, shoot the s**t for an hour, then headed for lunch and called it a day. The reason the V&V program was scrapped was because they realized paying millions of dollars with no actual benefits didn’t make much business sense.
That's because midcon is nothing but a bunch of re----k cowboys that can't get a job anywhere else. The dregs of the industry wind up there.
Just once it would be nice to see a Midcon RCA with results showing that management doesn't support safety as the root cause. Oh wait, it has to be human error because management can't own their own negative performance and they have to blame and punish someone. It is the root cause of why we don't learn and improve.
Having worked Midcon wells I can corroborate all these issues and safety concerns. Ops manager, wells VP and her hubby either aren’t aware or don’t care or are incompetent when it comes to managing safe operations, people, risks and decision making. It’s become a paper work exercise - well safe is a joke, check the box exercise and CYA. Chasing items or work tasks that add no value (I.e. digital tool to populate rig procedures that are supposed to help rig guys but actually create more work) and not focused on the things that matter. Chevron has significant challenges and one of them is admitting we have a problem.
Midcon's current OP's Manager once stated in a Ops meeting that he saw no value in safety. Same person then eliminated the entire V&V group during the transformation event. Predecessor Op's Manager had declared V&V as essential personnel during the pandemic and allowed air transportation of V&V individuals while D's & W's were not permitted to travel by air. When current Op's Manager eliminated V&V group he do so without the blessing of the current Well's VP. Although current Well's VP consistently desires to down size safety personnel. Must be a culture brought with them from BP. Get er done as long as it doesn't cost any time or money.
Examples of Midcon wells safety issues as told to me by a friend. All under the direction of the current Ops Manager. 1) Coil tubing stuck in a well, superintendent orders drilling mud to be pumped into the well which destroyed the CT BOP's. Superintendent refused to put the incident into lessons learned and directed drilling mud to be pumped into the next well with stuck CT. 2) SWA issued for back pressure valves not being tested before being installed. SWA ignored for 8 months before actually performing the required testing. 3) In a hurry to utilize natural gas for frac pumps a proper risk assessment was not performed. Strainer blew apart striking an individual in the face causing loss of sight. It took several hours to shut off the uncontrolled gas to the atmosphere. 4) Wireline operator informed supervisor that the locking mechanism for the lubricator was malfunctioning. Supervisor ordered work to continue. While wireline was at the bottom of the well the locking mechanism failed. Operator was fired with the blessing of Chevron management. How many examples do you need? There are many more.
Safety first. Period.
Many things at Chevron are not good, Safety is not one of them.
Every BU has a huge safety metric component to the bonus, so motivation is high to work safe.
1ekl+1gVGQPcJ you have never worked on wells in Midcon. Shortcuts are common to make the daily goal. I was told that safety wasn't even to be discussed at the brief & debrief daily meetings. I was told I was not to tell the BP's working for me that safety was my top priority. I did file a complaint for harassment & retaliation against my supervisors and my claims were confirmed by Chevron legal but no action was taken against the supervisors. You're dreaming if you think safety is a priority in Chevron.
Bring your own PPE is always my advice in Texas.
Don’t know if this is troll or not, but we absolutely prioritize safe operations above all else. There is no question. Of course we have to deliver the business - safely. We are accountable to each other to send everyone home each day to their friends, families and communities in good health. We can always explain the numbers if we have a production impact. We can never explain away serious injury / fatality events.
Generally the people in the field want to do the right thing, however, if their supervisor is more about the numbers then they are caught between there is always time to do it right and I need to meet the goals to keep the supervisor happy. This all depends on where you are located. Midcon is all about the numbers. Bako is generally safe. Overseas is somewhat safe but hard on the environment. My advise, find an experienced co-worker and rely on them.