Weyburn 鈥� Bruce Miller鈥檚 company, Miller Well Servicing of Weyburn, is part of a consistent trend of service rig companies that could, at times, use just a few more hands.
When asked if they were looking for workers, Miller said on Oct. 30, 鈥淲e were. It kind of comes and goes. We go on a hiring spree that have a couple new employees that stay on full-time, with the rest finding out that oilfield workers work hard for the money. Then we start the hiring process again.
鈥淚t seemed like earlier this summer, there was nobody around. You couldn鈥檛 even find someone to put in a resum茅. But it鈥檚 been a little bit better this last little while.
鈥淲e have six crews, and only work for six rigs. We did manage to put together another crew to put the sixth rig back to work. It鈥檚 a struggle, some days, but we try to keep about 32, maybe 33 guys on to keep six rigs running, because there鈥檚 always a day off somewhere or holidays booked,鈥� he said.
Miller Well Servicing has eight rigs in total, but six are active. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a little bit of extra work out there, but it鈥檚 hard to keep a crew. You get a call for a rig for two days, and then you might not get another call for it for two weeks, so you can鈥檛 really blame the guys for moving on if that鈥檚 all the work you can provide for them,鈥� he said.
This is very similar to what other service rig companies have told Pipeline News.
Miller said they鈥檙e doing a pretty wide variety of work. 鈥淭here isn鈥檛 a whole bunch of completions now, as it seems there isn鈥檛 a lot of drilling rigs working now,鈥� he said.
They鈥檝e been doing some water injection conversions, which are nice, because they take four or five days instead of one or two.
The company recently reactivated a sixth rig. 鈥淲e promoted the top end jobs from within, but we had to go out and get two or three new green guys to the oilfield. We managed to find other guys who were done their harvest or construction stuff that finished in October.鈥�
The trend for service rig companies needing a few more hands is consistent across the industry, according to Miller. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 exactly it. If we鈥檝e got all our stuff running, ideally it would be nice to have a couple more guys, but it鈥檚 hard to maintain them if you don鈥檛 have the work. As a general rule, all summer, if we had two or three extra full-time guys, it would have been a lot easier on my men, and me, for scheduling
Indeed, they鈥檝e been sharing staff with another Weyburn service rig company, 小蓝视频ern Range Well Servicing Ltd.
Miller said, 鈥淲e were actually sharing a couple guys. If you don鈥檛 have work for them today, I do, we鈥檒l use them. If you need them back, you can. We just try to work through it.鈥�
