Hardcore in Vankor!! 21 November 2011

This is unacceptable, I know. Over three weeks without posting. So I’m not so good at this blogging thing. Or perhaps I just have stuff to do. I guess it’s just lower on my priority list than learning my job, learning Russian, keeping up with US pop culture and politics (one of my pre-expat promises to myself), and exercising. I thought I would be better at posting a lot of short things often, but my inability to take an observation/experience and say, “Oh yeah! I’d better blog about it now!” keeps hindering me.

I’ll have you know, though, that in my absence from the blogosphere I have in fact managed to be quite productive. I’ve completed all the online coursework required of me to complete “pre-school” and I still have more than two months until my ENG-1 school starts in mid-February. I also have been getting used to life on a rig in the arctic, where internet pages load at dial-up speed, among other things. And, I’m trying to memorize and retain at least 100 new Russian words a week. That’s not too lofty of a goal is it? More on my other “things-to-accomplish-while-secluded-in-the-middle-of-nowhere” later…

So, on the 21^st of November, we (Jeff and I) woke up bright and early to catch our cab to the airport. Because of our Russian deficiencies and our never having chartered to a rig before, we were joined up with a Russian technician, Ilgiz, who would lead us through all the tough spots. He was in the cab that picked us up and he pretty much made our always-hectic experience bearable.

There’s something about trunk space in the cars in Russia that makes me feel like I pack too heavily. I even left my large duffle in the apartment and was down to just my backpacking pack and laptop bag, but the cab driver had to work hard to stuff our belongings in the small hatchback of the car (not as embarrassing as the cab ride when we arrived in Krasnoyarsk, when my large duffle had to sit by itself in the front seat). I’ve definitely learned my lesson and will be eschewing my large duffle for something much smaller (or nothing at all) upon my return to the US. I’ll probably get a nice shoulder-strap kind of bag that would basically be a large laptop bag with room for more stuff. The backpacks we got to carry our laptops don’t have enough space for much more than the laptop and some papers, and I carry it in my hand anyway, because I already have a backpack. That just about covers the packing topic

So, anyway, we got to the airport, Cheremshanka, which is different than Krasnoyarsk’s main airport, Yemilyenova. It might as well be the same airport, because it happens to be right next door. But Cheremshanka just handles the little planes, and we of course are riding a charter flight on a prop plane. Woohoo! There’s something about aging prop planes that makes me just want to jump out of a plane without a parachute, because I might fare better that way. But seriously, these are Antonov 24’s and they are the ol’ Russkij Standard. It’s like taking a Greyhound bus in the air.

There were about five separate charter flights taking off to Vankor this morning, and Ilgiz thankfully was there to let us know when our flight had been called to board. As had become standard in the non-metropolis cities, upon going through security, the “concourse” was just a waiting room, and these waiting rooms have become increasingly smaller. Security, I think, was also just a formality here. Since this wasn’t a commercial airline flight, and we were all just going to work, I don’t think it really mattered what we brought with us, as long as they would allow it into Vankor. Everyone in the waiting room, save for one tall pretty woman in a mini skirt and high-heeled boots (presumably someone with a desk job, but you never know…), was a tired-looking man. Nobody seemed excited to be ending their days off and heading back to the arctic to spend the end of the year. I wondered why... I, for one, was giddy as a schoolgirl.

It’s the little things in life—like going further north than you’ve ever gone (nearly 70°), or riding in a helicopter for the first time—that really make it special. Even though the journey was probably going to be a logistical drag, as most things are out here, I was looking forward to some special experiences. When they called our flight, I excitedly tried to be the first person on the bus, not that it mattered, really. We sped along, down the tarmac, and came upon a real beauty.

Not the actual plane (it was slightly less perfect looking). I think this is just a plastic miniature...  But the type is the important thing!

The baggage system was pretty simple: wait in line and then toss yours into the behind-the-cockpit cargo area. Then we had to walk around and board the plane from the back. Still failing at being pushy and shovy (I’m going to make it a real word, damnit!) in these Russian lines, I was one of the last to get my bag into cargo and board the plan. So of course I got to sit at the back. That gave me a great view of the plane as a whole, and from the inside, save for the round windows, it really did look like a Greyhound bus. The windows were perfect circles, instead of the modern ellipsoid, and they were complete with little curtains instead of the standard sliding cover. The overhead storage spaces, like a bus, were open-shelf-like instead of shut-able bins. I knew this was going to be a good time. At least our stewardess was attractive, which has also been a pretty consistent Russian standard.

The window was pretty scraped up, so it was difficult to get any good pictures looking out, but I would soon find out that it wouldn’t matter, since the normal view out of the plane was either the white snow or the white clouds. Here we are getting ready to take off. For a moment it seemed as if our engines weren’t going to work properly and that they needed to be manually jumped.

I don't think that cord will be long enough....

When the plane set off down the runway, I was confused because I figured it probably needed to go faster to actually lift off, even though it was a prop plane and all. Jeff, too, was slightly confused, having served for 4 years in the Air Force and knowing a thing or two about flying. I wondered if the engines really were broken and couldn't operate at full capacity. We slowed down at the end of the runway, luckily, and then the plane did a U-turn. As it turned out, there just weren't any taxiways, so we had to taxi down the runway in one direction to take off in the other. Then the propellers really went wild, and we actually gained significant speed and took off.

Hey, look! The Arctic!

Like I said, there wasn’t much to look at below us for the 2 to 3 hour flight. It was white, and there were a lot of frozen bodies of water, suggesting that this huge area was all just muddy marshland in the summer time. That’ll be annoying and buggy, come June, or whenever their “summer” starts here. Our in-flight meal consisted of a good-sized container of pâté with not enough things on which to spread it. I like pâté, but I wasn’t about to eat it plain, so I ended up just wasting half the container after exhausting the various bread and cracker resources on my food tray. Jeff didn’t even eat his once I told him it was liver. At least there’s no fear of going hungry when flying in Russia.

I tried to sleep for most of the flight, because I hadn’t really slept the last night. But before I knew it, we were touching down on the snowy runways in Igarka. Igarka is the nearest town to Vankor Field (in Russia, 80 miles is "near"). It was once the site of a major gulag and the destination of a quickly-abandoned railroad-building attempt. It is now known as the main aerial access point to the area’s oil industry and for its award-winning permafrost museum. I fear I will never spend enough time in Igarka to get to see this museum. Upon deplaning, we were met by several people who split us up and escorted us to our helicopters, big orange ones. They looked sturdy enough...

Upon boarding the helicopter, I decided the look on the outside was just for show. If somebody had shown me pictures of the inside and outside of this helicopter side-by-side, I wouldn’t have believed they were the same vehicle. There was a bench against the left and right walls, along which we all--twenty of us--had to squeeze. I made the mistake of picking the end, thinking half my body what get some breathing room from this decision. Unfortunately, I spent the length of the flight struggling to stay in my seat. They squeezed the absolute maximum amount of people they could onto these choppers.

Looking back at our plane from the helicopter. That's the noontime sun up there.

The takeoff was another funny thing. It took awhile for the pilot to decide that he actually wanted to go, but then when he did, we did some moves I wasn't expecting. First we started to lift off vertically, which I expected, but then we came back down for a bit, unexpectedly. The chopper turned, facing down the airport runway, and then, like a plane, it began to speed forward along the ground, before lifting off diagonally as if it needed all that forward momentum to fly properly. Jeff also didn't recognize this as standard procedure. Of course, the US Air Force has been known to utilize slightly more advanced flight technology than what we saw here today. In Soviet Russia, procedure standardizes YOU!

So my first ever helicopter ride wasn’t all that exciting. I didn’t get to look out the window, because the bench faced inward and I didn’t feel like twisting my neck around every time I wanted to look out, so I leaned forward, putting my head in my lap, and tried to get some rest.

Two hours later, we landed at Vankor. The 2 pm sun was not very high, as I expected. I got my first taste of arctic “weather” when an unexpected approaching helicopter flew not more than twenty feet above my head and whipped up a bunch of snow into my face. That woke me up. We entered the little guard house, passing through security, where we had to have both a laptop pass and a personal pass, and then we found Ilgiz on the other side, who had been separated from us in between the plane and helicopters. He led us out to the company’s Mitsubishi truck that we would take to the base.

It turned out to be a rather long drive. Vankor is the largest oil field in East Siberia, and despite having only begun in 2008, the facilities were extensive. It was apparently one of the largest construction projects in all of Russia, and it was even important enough that Putin attended the groundbreaking ceremony. The field is 40 km long, and the speed limit on its roads is only about 40 kph, so it was slow-going, because our base was at a different end of the complex than the Rosneft/Vankorneft hotel-like building near the guardhouse and helipads. We passed rig after rig, each one giving off a mystifying gas flare. “This is it,” I told myself. Pipelines of all sizes lined and crossed over the road. Massive trucks with incredibly-sized tires for the purposes of transporting who-knows-what drove past along the road.  

We reached our base, and it was a pretty good-sized site. Most every building was a trailer, except for the main workshop area. This was going to be like Hollywood!!!! Except that I would not only live in a trailer, but I would work in a trailer too. We were directed to the DD (Directional Driller) Coordinator’s office (trailer) to receive our instructions on what to do next. We were handed our linens and told where our living unit was (the trailer right next door). We had to stay on the base to complete a specific amount of training requirements before being let loose to a rig (and another identical working unit (trailer) and living unit (trailer)). Ok, so living in a trailer isn’t all that bad except for A) whenever someone enters and leaves they slam the door shut, which shakes the whole thing and makes it impossible to fall asleep, and B) there’s no toilet, and the options are one of the three stalls of real toilets in the workshop building (one female seat, one male seat, and a urinal) or what I will cover in the next paragraph.

This is where I bring up toilet talk. Warning, the next image may scare you. Our other option was this thing, which was a hundred yard walk from the trailer:

It smells nastier than it looks. People tend to use these sh*tholes to smoke while they’re relieving themselves, apparently, because the smell of cigarette smoke hits you almost as strongly as that ripe sewage scent. It wouldn’t be that bad if it weren’t for that the smell seems to follow you on the way out. I would be fine with going in, breathing through my mouth for a little bit, and then GTFO, but the reason the smell is so bad is because it is literally in the air, attaching itself to the body the longer it’s in there. I actually appreciate the arctic wind for this, because I can open up my jacket, spread my arms, and hope that the smell will be carried away after exiting one of these. But I can’t help but feel like I smell like it later on, and I hope it’s just all in my head or that other people don’t end up smelling me too.

The solution, obviously, was to avoid the sh*thole. So, for number 2, I’d make the journey into the workshop building, where I had to don coveralls, hard hat, and safety glasses, but it was a small price to pay to not smell like Andy Dufresne probably did after his escape from Shawshank. And for number one, I would’ve been fine just going outside somewhere, but the Russians already gave me enough crap about my blatant disregard for excessively warm clothing, that the idea of getting caught out in the open with my manhood out would probably get me a stern talking-to. I didn’t feel like having one of those so early in my employment, so I adopted Jeff’s Air Force-tested method of peeing in a bottle. This was really only used at nighttime, to avoid the hassle of getting out of bed, and getting warm clothes on just to take a leak. And I always have to pee like a racehorse in the morning.

Later, at the rig, the only option was a sh*thole (a smaller one than in the picture, where people often missed (number 2 as well as 1)), and there were no water bottles provided, so I man up and do it the way God intended.

Okay, enough about poo. Back to our adventure!

We got our little tour of the base, and then we got to go pick up our personal supply of PPE (personal protective equipment). And damn, do I look good!!!

The parkas are so big and warm, I really don’t have to wear anything else. This was tested and proven during a few nighttime sh*thole trips (pre-bottle usage) in which I could be found trudging along through the snow in just my boots, shorts and a parka. The parka goes down to my knees, so I probably looked naked to any passersby. There was only one, and he said something to me in Russian before I ducked away to my trailer.

Then, we went to bed at a decent time, ready to wake up bright and early and get our base training on!