THE BOREDOM OF WORK IN A WORLD ON FIRE.

We were broken into groups. Each one charged with securing materials, equipment and services. Anything and everything, that would be required to put out the fires and return the oilfield to normal operations. An unbelievably mind staggering task. We were one of 4 or 5 such groups. Our assigned responsibility was for the repair and rebuild of the gathering centres and tank farms.

At that moment it seemed as if we had an impossible and dangerous task ahead of us. We started out in one part of an office trailer complex sharing one satellite phone between 12 people. Basically you got your shit together and when it was your turn you made your call. To anywhere in the world and did your business quickly and efficiently. Then passed the phone off to the next in line. We rotated like this for days. In the course of which, secured contracts and purchases of millions of dollars worth of supplies and services.

There were other such groups. One supporting the firefighting effort. Another working on infrastructure. One on civil works and another group on the the refinery repairs (meaning that we were about 50 materials and procurement professionals in that office). At the outset each group shared one phone amongst themselves. Starting with this very limited communication ability, these groups put together and coordinated the largest airlift of supplies, equipment and materials in the history of man to that point. Looking back it is staggering to think of ever taking on such a task again, especially under the conditions we encountered.

Day by day things improved. There were no long term “jobs”, everything was urgent. The infrastructure improved daily, soon we had water, lights and air in our accommodations and offices. A large amount of equipment was flown in, shipped into the Port or driven on a few of the roads that were still usable connecting Kuwait to Saudi Arabia. This included a couple of hundred pickups, which made getting to all points of the oilfield(s) somewhat easier.

Communications were reestablished and soon (within days of my arrival) we had phones and some office furniture. the kitchens were now functioning full bore, and feeding up to 1000 engineering, construction, procurement, logistics, warehousing and firefighting personnel, 24 hours per day. The activity was never ending, the atmosphere around the offices was highly charged and electric, voices were raised and communications shouted, the measure of how involved you were was determined in “how fast you walked and how worried you looked”.

Anyone not suitably stressed out was probably in need of more work. The days were long and never less than 12 hours, but in mosts cases stretched to 14 or 15 hours. In each hour of our day a different part of the world was open for business. For example 7:00pm in Kuwait was about 10:00am in Houston and we used the resources of Houston suppliers and our corporate offices there, constantly. That meant for anything you needed done in the western USA or western Canada your communications to them started after 7:00pm and finished whenever you completed all of your tasks.

Also it must be remembered that we were still surrounded by fires, explosions were going off constantly, but became as background noise to your routine, it was dark outside of the offices (24/7’s), it was smoky and it was dangerous. However I still remember some interesting and amusing situations that occurred during the course of normal days. Now that the scene is set, and I have sufficiently bored you with how I got there, I will now concentrate my next Post(s) on some stories from the war zone.