Hi Believe;

The drill chief or the "drill boss" as they are known in the business sits in a chair with all of the controls in front of him/her and has total control over the drilling operations and the controls for the drill bit. S/He can fire anyone on the crew who is not doing their job properly. The drill boss as also been in the business for many years, having worked their way up from rig hand. They have usually done every job on the drill crew on their way to be "drill boss" so they know how everyone is supposed to perform their task and thus if someone isn't doing their job properly they will fire them. Each drill rig usually has a geologist on site who constantly monitors the sediment that the drill bit is drilling through and they frequently examine samples for oil or gas residue. But the drill boss is in charge of where the drill bit is going and how fast it is drilling and the mudflow in the well.

I watched a series a couple of months ago called "Widlcatters". Each episode had 3 different individual entrepreneurs who each had enough money to drill just one well. Usually one was in Alaska, one was in Texas and one was in Kansas etc. Each hired a rig and crew and by the end of the show the winner was the one who struck oil or gas. The success rate is usually one of every 3 wells that you drill is successful on land. Drilling underwater is usually one out of every 4 wells is successful, of course this depends on the geologists and the drilling crew and equipment that you have. On the show "Wildcatters" some episodes nobody found oil/gas while in most of the episodes that I watched usually one rig hit oil/gas at the end of the episode.

It was interesting because at the beginning of each episode of "Wildcatters" the show started with video of an oil rig totally in flames burning out of control with the warning that every year over 100 oil rigs are totally destoyed by fire/explosions and their entire crews are killed. I think that this stat was just for North America but it might be a worldwide statistic. Totally destroyed rigs and dead drilling crews is not something that I have ever seen in the newspapers anywhere so this was quite an impressive state to me.

Drilling for oil/gas on a drilling crew is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, hence the high pay that they make. But the number of entire crews killed each year is unbelievable.

Cheers; Scott