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Roustabout (Australia/New Zealand English: rouseabout) is an occupational term. Traditionally, it referred to a worker with broad-based, non-specific skills. In particular, it was used to describe show or circus workers who handled materials for construction on fairgrounds. In modern times it is applied to rural employment, such as those assisting sheep shearing, and positions in the oil industry.
Oil roustabout refers to a worker who maintains all things in the oil field. Roustabout is an official classification of natural gas and oil rig personnel. Roustabouts working in oil fields typically perform various jobs requiring little training. Drillers start off as roustabouts until they gain enough hands-on experience to move up to a roughneck or floorhand position, then to driller and rig supervisor. [1] Roustabouts will set up oil well heads, maintain saltwater disposal pumps, lease roads, lease mowing, create dikes around tank batteries on a lease, etc. An oil roustabout has no limits in the oil industry and can, and will do any and all oil field work, including roughneck drilling, oil well completion and well service, and even chemical work. An oil field roustabout will also do all things that an oil field pumper would have to do. However, they frequently turn out to be long-term employees and take on more difficult and sometimes dangerous jobs as they gain experience. Most go on to at least become “roughnecks” if they work for the rig company for more than a few months.
An early 2010 survey by Careercast.com of the best and worst jobs based on five criteria—environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress—rated 'roustabout' as the worst job. [2] Nonetheless, the anecdotal and subjective experience of an actual roustabout suggests that for some, it can be a challenging, adventurous job. [3]
In Australia and New Zealand a "rouseabout" can be any worker with broad-based, non-specific skills, in any industry. However, rouseabouts or "rousies" most commonly work in rural employment, especially sheep farming, as in the film The Sundowners, where they leave town before the sun goes down.
The term was discriminately used in Disney's 1941 animated film Dumbo , during a musical scene in which depicted a group of African-American laborers pulling circus materials off the train for construction.
Roustabout was a 1964 musical movie starring Elvis Presley, Barbara Stanwyck, and Joan Freeman, in a story set in a traveling carnival — for which Presley recorded the song titled "Roustabout".
Farley Granger's character, Arthur "Bowie" Bowers, in Nicholas Ray's 1948 film noir They Live By Night, tells Catherine "Keeetchie" Mobley (Cathy O'Donnell) that he was a roustabout with a circus.
The term is used in the song "The Mariner's Revenge Song", by The Decemberists. "Roustabout" is also the name of a song recorded by the bluegrass band, Open Road, on their album Lucky Drive.
The term is also used by Beats Antique for two songs on their album Collide.
The Slamball team Rousties is named after a roustabout. In the musical theater production All Shook Up , the lead character Chad is often referred to as a roustabout.
Roughnecks and Roustabouts is the second album by Pete Williams, formerly bassist and vocalist with Dexys Midnight Runners, and currently performing as The Pete Williams Band. [4]
In the sci-fi short story Big Sam Was My Friend, Harlan Ellison refers to roustabout robots as "roustabots".
In a 1995 episode of BBC TV comedy series "Bottom" titled "Hole". The two main characters Richie and Eddie are deliberately left at the very top of a fairground ferris wheel, after Richie sexually approached the attendant. When it is noticed they are the only ones on the ride and left up there, Richie goes into a rant referring to those on the ground below as roustabouts.
An oil platform is a large structure with facilities to extract and process petroleum and natural gas that lie in rock formations beneath the seabed. Many oil platforms will also have facilities to accommodate the workers, although it is also common to have a separate accommodation platform linked by bridge to the production platform. Most commonly, oil platforms engage in activities on the continental shelf, though they can also be used in lakes, inshore waters, and inland seas. Depending on the circumstances, the platform may be fixed to the ocean floor, consist of an artificial island, or float. In some arrangements the main facility may have storage facilities for the processed oil. Remote subsea wells may also be connected to a platform by flow lines and by umbilical connections. These sub-sea facilities may include one or more subsea wells or manifold centres for multiple wells.
Roughneck is a term for a person whose occupation is hard manual labor. The term applies across a number of industries, but is most commonly associated with the workers on a drilling rig. The ideal of the hard-working, tough roughneck has been adopted by several sports teams who use the phrase as part of their name or logo.
A drilling rig is an integrated system that drills wells, such as oil or water wells, or holes for piling and other construction purposes, into the earth's subsurface. Drilling rigs can be massive structures housing equipment used to drill water wells, oil wells, or natural gas extraction wells, or they can be small enough to be moved manually by one person and such are called augers. Drilling rigs can sample subsurface mineral deposits, test rock, soil and groundwater physical properties, and also can be used to install sub-surface fabrications, such as underground utilities, instrumentation, tunnels or wells. Drilling rigs can be mobile equipment mounted on trucks, tracks or trailers, or more permanent land or marine-based structures. The term "rig" therefore generally refers to the complex equipment that is used to penetrate the surface of the Earth's crust.
A mud engineer works on an oil well or gas well drilling rig, and is responsible for ensuring the properties of the drilling fluid, also known as drilling mud, are within designed specifications.
William Myron Keck was an American businessman and philanthropist. He was best known as the founder of Superior Oil Company, author Kevin Krajick has described Keck as "the world's greatest oil prospector, a man whose instincts about the location of petroleum were so uncanny, some believed him clairvoyant." Keck established the W. M. Keck Foundation.
NOV Inc., formerly National Oilwell Varco, is an American multinational corporation based in Houston, Texas. It is a worldwide provider of equipment and components used in oil and gas drilling and production operations, oilfield services, and supply chain integration services to the upstream oil and gas industry. The company conducts operations in more than 500 locations across six continents, operating through three reporting segments: Rig Technologies, Wellbore Technologies, and Completion & Production Solutions.
In geotechnical engineering, drilling fluid, also known as drilling mud, is used to aid the drilling of boreholes into the earth. Used while drilling oil and natural gas wells and on exploration drilling rigs, drilling fluids are also used for much simpler boreholes, such as water wells.
A company man in the petroleum industry refers to a representative of an operating/exploration company. Other terms that may be used are company representative, foreman, drill site supervisor (DSV), company consultant, rigsite leader or "well site manager".
A tool pusher is an occupation within the oil drilling industry.
All Shook Up is a 2004 American jukebox musical with music from the Elvis Presley songbook and with a book by Joe DiPietro.
Petroleum is a fossil fuel that can be drawn from beneath the Earth's surface. Reservoirs of petroleum are formed through the mixture of plants, algae, and sediments in shallow seas under high pressure. Petroleum is mostly recovered from oil drilling. Seismic surveys and other methods are used to locate oil reservoirs. Oil rigs and oil platforms are used to drill long holes into the earth to create an oil well and extract petroleum. After extraction, oil is refined to make gasoline and other products such as tires and refrigerators. Extraction of petroleum can be dangerous and have led to oil spills.
Offshore drilling is a mechanical process where a wellbore is drilled below the seabed. It is typically carried out in order to explore for and subsequently extract petroleum that lies in rock formations beneath the seabed. Most commonly, the term is used to describe drilling activities on the continental shelf, though the term can also be applied to drilling in lakes, inshore waters and inland seas.
The Santa Barbara oil spill occurred in January and February 1969 in the Santa Barbara Channel, near the city of Santa Barbara in Southern California. It was the largest oil spill in United States waters at the time, and now ranks third after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon and 1989 Exxon Valdez spills. It remains the largest oil spill to have occurred in the waters off California.
Deepwater drilling, or deep well drilling, is the process of creating holes in the Earth's crust using a drilling rig for oil extraction under the deep sea. There are approximately 3400 deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico with depths greater than 150 meters.
Oilfield terminology refers to the jargon used by those working in fields within and related to the upstream segment of the petroleum industry. It includes words and phrases describing professions, equipment, and procedures specific to the industry. It may also include slang terms used by oilfield workers to describe the same.
Black Gold is a reality-documentary television series that chronicles three oil drilling rigs in Andrews County, Texas, 30 miles northwest of Odessa. It was partly produced by Thom Beers, creator of Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers. The Black Gold theme song was sung by country music star Trace Adkins. The title "Black Gold" comes from a slang term for oil.
On April 20, 2010, an explosion and fire occurred on the Deepwater Horizon semi-submersible mobile offshore drilling unit, which was owned and operated by Transocean and drilling for BP in the Macondo Prospect oil field about 40 miles (64 km) southeast off the Louisiana coast. The explosion and subsequent fire resulted in the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon and the deaths of 11 workers; 17 others were injured. The same blowout that caused the explosion also caused an oil well fire and a massive offshore oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, considered the largest accidental marine oil spill in the world, and the largest environmental disaster in United States history.
The North Dakota oil boom was the period of rapidly expanding oil extraction from the Bakken Formation in the state of North Dakota that lasted from the discovery of Parshall Oil Field in 2006, and peaked in 2012, but with substantially less growth noted since 2015 due to a global decline in oil prices.
A service rig is a mobile platform loaded with oil industry service equipment that can be driven long distances within the oil fields to service wells. Unlike drilling rigs, service rigs return to a particular well many times.
An iron roughneck is a piece of hydraulic machinery used to "handle" segments of pipe in a modern drilling rig. The segments can be manipulated as they are hoisted into and out of a borehole. This type of work was previously performed manually by workers using tongs, and was one of the most dangerous jobs in a drilling operation. However, with iron roughnecks and modern technology, much of this can be done remotely with minimal manual handling.
