This story was submitted to me by Buck Kilgour, previous Noble Employee.
In 1992 Noble Drilling was awarded the drilling project for 4 exploratory wells to be drilled for Amoco on the Yamal Peninsula in Northern Russia, it was a joint venture with Nadym Gazprom. Buck Kilgour, Land Logistics Manager Noble Canada and Mark Burns, Manager of Technical Services Noble Houston were assigned to Amoco, rotating on the Amoco logistics planning and PR teams while trying to get agreements signed with all of the local groups. Buck and Mark were part of a team that cross shifted on a 28/28 rotation, each team had an engineer, a drilling foreman and either Mark or Buck. Amoco's office was set up in Nadym, which is on the south end of the Yamal Peninsula right at the end of the tree line and anything north was accessed by helicopter only. They lived in an apartment, generally walking to meetings unless they lucked out and found a seat on a bus. Coming from a Drilling Contractor, they were amazed at the amount of money that was spend on trips to visit museums, ballet and historical sights not to mention that all flights were either charter or first class. They worked on this for most of 1992/93 and were surprised that when the logistics plan was finished, it had not changed one bit from when the project was originally bid - sight unseen. There is only so many ways to do things in the Artic on permafrost.
Buck and Mark were then assigned to the Texaco/Amoco Timan Pechora project near Arkganelsk. The picture above is the group of Russians from Gazprom in Arkangelesk visiting the Noble office in Leduc, along with The Texaco Drilling Manager and a Female interpreter. These same two Noble people were also on the planning team in 1994, there was a much less social life this time.
When the team in the picture were in Canada, Boris Ewanchuk, Noble Canada Operations Manager acted as guide and interpreter when taking them to several rigs in Alberta, everyone traveling in a van from Lodgepole to Grand Prairie and overnighting in Jasper.
Neither project ever got off the ground but the dayrate for the Noble fellows was substantial, making Noble one of the very few companies that made money on these projects in those early days.
Buck credits those two years for his excellent skills in eating raw fish and drinking vodka, he also claims that's why he needed a liver replacement!!
Buck having a liver replacement is a true story.
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