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September 25, 2013
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September 25, 2013
Some workdays call for heels. Others call for steel-toe boots.
For Meghan Anderson of Blackhawk Specialty Tools in Houma, those days are usually one and the same.
“I’ve already been to the shop twice this week,” Anderson, the only female sustaining engineer in her office, said. “That’s what I like about my job – the office and shop time. I don’t have to sit behind a desk all day. I get to do both.”
Since 2008, Blackhawk Specialty Tools has provided the oil and gas industry with offshore and onshore cementing equipment. Products like cement heads, diverter systems, float equipment and centralizers are used in the early stages of drilling a well.
“When a well is drilled, for longevity and environmental reasons, there has to be a cement casing in the ground to hold the well bore open,” said John Hebert, engineer manager for the Houma sustaining engineers and the research and development engineers at the company’s Houston office. “Like with building a mine, you have to reinforce the mine shaft. Cementing ensures the environmental safety and longevity of a well.
“Rotating cement jobs are our cup of tea, our claim to fame. Being able to rotate on a cementing job gives you a better cementing job. Everybody knows post-Macondo (the BP oil spill), cementing is an important aspect of a safe, long-life well.”
Anderson, who previously worked as a sustaining engineer for Weatherford International, has been with Blackhawk Specialty Tools for six months as one of the company’s three sustaining engineers. In her role, Anderson spends most days improving and making client-ordered changes to centralizers, which help center casing in a well bore while pumping cement to ensure cement is placed all the way around the casing. Anderson makes the order changes via computer and, if the centralizer ordered is in any way different from one of Blackhawk Specialty Tools has previously made, she oversees the testing of the new centralizer. The product is tested for several parameters including starting force, restoring force and running force.
“That is the complication for our products – the variety of casings, sizes, weight grades and connections,” Hebert said. “That is what keeps Meghan on her toes every day. We must tailor our tools to a client’s casing strengths.”
“The manufacturers can be working on a centralizer and we can get a call to make a change,” Anderson said. “One change in a drilling plan can change everything.”
“In drill plan work, the words ‘contingency plan’ are used a lot,” Hebert said. “We make changes to things every day to satisfy our customer’s needs.”
Hebert and Anderson spoke of a recent order for a client in the United Kingdom. The order had to be changed, and a week or so later, the product was put on a plane returning to the UK.
Many of the changes to the company’s range of tools are due to curveballs thrown by the environment, but the engineers always learn a lesson when making the adjustment.
“Mother Nature is a good teacher,” Hebert said. “Experience is a good teacher. We learn as much as we can from anything that occurs on a job. We take the information back with us and make improvements so we are better prepared for it the next time.”
Anderson regularly gets out in the field on land rigs, but her first trip to a rig dates back long before her college and career days.
“My dad worked in the oilfield, and I went on rigs with him,” she said. “I found it intriguing. My parents always knew I was going to be an engineer. I was always tinkering with things, taking my toys apart and using them to make other things.
“I’m strong in math and physics, too, so this kind of seemed to be the path for me.”
In addition to shop, desk and fieldwork, Anderson also enjoys traveling with her job – she has been as far as Poland.
“The people at Blackhawk are like my family,” she said. “We get along great and have fun. It’s something new every day and fast paced. There is never a dull moment.
“If you want to get into this field, make sure you love it. School is not easy, but if you love it, you can get through it. Believe in what you do.”
Meghan Anderson, a sustaining engineer with Blackhawk Specialty Tools in Houma, is as comfortable in heels as steel-toe boots. She is the company’s lone female engineer in the Houma office.
