H2S gas in the oil fields.

if you use your head dealing with h2s isnt as bad as it sounds. keep yourself upwind dont look down in the tanks when you pop the hatch sometimes there is some pressure in the tanks and will blast air/or h2s out the top when the hatch is released so turn your head away upwind hold your breath and pop the hatch if it blasts out when you pop the hatch keep walking away from in up wind and let the tank vent off. stay away upwind of trailer vents when loading be very carefully of calm days and locations that are built in low lieing areas we had a few locations i wouldn't load unless there was some kind of a breeze your h2s meter would go off in the truck dropping down into location on the lease road. dont breath the stuff. if you are coming into a location and there are air tanks at the bottom of the stairs its probably a sour well. all locations have h2s signs posted but sour wells typically have additional signage and will sometimes say h2s gas is present instead of the normal sign that says h2s gas may be present. allways do dillagence on any well site location treat them as if everyone had h2s.

in no dak typically wells drilled in the bakken are typically clean 3 forks is common to have h2s old wells typicaly produce more h2s than new wells. (not always the case though so treat every location as if it has h2s)

h2s gas is produced when you have decomposition in absence of o2.

not to be crude but your farts can also contain h2s.

stay safe out there.

 

I've never heard that claim in my H2S classes, but I never open a tank hatch unless there's wind and I can place myself upwind of the hatch.

 

that would be a sour well, one that requires respirator while on location. They are know, and marked. H2S DOES NOT HAPPEN AT RANDOM. I load at 400 different well pads, and only 4 of those are known to have very low concentrations of H2S.

One has to remember the H2S training is for ALL people who work around oil, including those at refineries, and transfer stations, where the mixture of oil is not always known.

H2S is a known hazard. The only wells that I load at that have any H2S were drilled in 1978.
For me, H2S is just another part of the job, my pretrip inspection of the equipment has a much higher priority on keeping me alive safe, and back home at the end of the day.

 

When you guys refer to a tank hatch, are you referring to a tank full of oil by a well or are you referring to the tanker trailer you are pulling? The reason I ask is because I pulled a pneumatic tanker and we had three hatches on top of the trailer. We opened the middle one to load. The other two stayed closed. I never had a reason to open them unless it was leaking.

 

Both. H2S can be found in both the tank battery and your tank trailer.

 

On the trailers I pull, we NEVER open the hatch... we have air valves to open the recovery line, that vents the trailer.

Yes many of our tank batteries are pressurized when we open them, and the methane gas will make you light headed if your breath it... I am always up wind, or I turn my back, and step away while the methane vents off.

 

I had H2S training where I used to work because of the EPA, it was a 10 hour class which included SCBA use and EEP training. I had a chance to take online training and was disappointed with the lack of coverage of key points that I learned in my class room training, like the recovery from H2S poisoning and acceleration to a reaction of it if you are sick or have respiratory issues.

 

No I don't imagine crude haulers have much need to open trailer hatches. Vac truck drivers have to do it regularly to wash out.