Oil Business Salaries for Dummies

Where's the crane? the mudroom?
the medic's office? the radio...

From about 2007 to 2014, the US "oil patch" experienced a huge boom. At the same time, the rest of the economy languished in the doldrums, a differential that meant that a lot of people were eager to find a job in that industry. Naturally, job-seekers wanted to know the potential for earnings, and eHow.com's Denise Brandenberg (a self-appointed "expert" on salaries) was there to tell them a-a-all about it in "The Average Salary for an Oil Rig"¹ (ob. hack: we have to wonder whether that rig is eligible for dental and vision insurance...).

We won't argue Denise's numbers, although we rather suspect that they were wildly out of date once the boom turned to a bust. We did, however, want to point out some of Denise's many misconceptions and even downright stupidity; since we believe that researching the salaries should have also included researching the jobs and the setting; something Brandenburg failed to do. It's not that hard to tell...

• "The oil and gas industry employs many different types of workers to staff these large drilling stations..." – "Large drilling stations"? We're pretty sure Denise has confused drilling rigs with offshore platforms; an all-too-common misconception.
• "Most oil rigs hire teams of three roughnecks to operate the rig floor equipment and machines, as well as make sure everything is running properly in the mudroom..." – We aren't sure why Denise finds it necessary to differentiate between "equipment" and "machines," but the weirdest part of that statement is the notion that a drill rig has a "mudroom." A mud system, mud logger's trailer, mud pits, and the like, but a "mudroom"? This ain't your Mama's house...

• "Crane operators are in charge of operating the crane on the oil rig, which usually entails moving loads from boat to boat and around the deck."  – Ummm.... a lot of rig jobs were in North Dakota and Pennsylvania – in other words, what boats?
• "...other... positions needed to run an oil rig [include] Radio operators... Medics... [and] cooks..." – Oh, damn, Denise has confused a drilling rig with a platform (or perhaps a drill ship) again!

Brandenberg mixed up jobs on platforms, drill ships, and land-based drilling rigs, apparently without regard to the differences. We hope that, based on her "information," no one went to North Dakota or west Texas looking for a job on an offshore platform! We also noticed that she didn't mention the top-level position on a drill rig, the tool-pusher. Maybe that's because she thought that's the "driller." All of that makes it quite obvious that the eHow correspondent's research was incomplete and that she knew (and still knows) nothing about the working environment and positions on a drilling rig. We sure wish Denise had done even some brief research on what a drill rig is. She didn't, however, a sin the staff at the Antisocial Network often cite in their reasoning for awarding the Dumbass of the Day. Denise? Get with the program!

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/info_8607863_average-salary-oil-rig.html

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