Tool pushers

Joseph Ngieng, Eric Wong, Awang Junaidi, Adenan Ali, David Chin, 
Jan Martijnse,Michael Ting,Gandu Giiang, Macmilan Bau, 
Lex Alink, Rasnan Arbi, Jeff Holbrook
(Lean Tai Lee and James Nguren)

After working 5 years as a wireline operator with production department, I had enough and I applied for a transfer to drilling department to become a trainee driller. In 1978, eight trainee drillers were recruited from outside Shell: Joseph Ngieng, Eric Wong, Awang Junaidi Abdul Razak, Adenan Ali, Michael Ting, Gandu Giiang, Macmilan Bau and Rasnan Arbi. Lian Tai Lee and James Nguren joined us a year later. Out of the 25 applicants from within Shell, I was the only one accepted by ODR, Lex Alink,[1] to join the training scheme. I think he liked my answer to one of his many questions during our informal interview:
“David, why do you want to work as a driller?”
“I hope to sit one day in your chair, sir!”
I was not smiling and I think he really liked the idea of a Malaysian taking over his position one day. He realized that I know a little about the oil operations, especially oil wells.

Most of the other internal applicants were mud technicians like Michael Tay, John Kusier, Mohd. Tabib, Pungut Luntal, Bong Han Chuon and Robert Chee. None of them wanted to be a drilling superintendent one day, apparently! They did not get the job even though there were 10 vacancies being advertised in the paper.
Michael Ting has to pay back Sesco something like 14K for his scholarship bond.[2] Eric Wong paid DID about 7K only. Adenan Ali told me that when he got the job with Shell, it felt like winning the lottery! All Trainee drillers started at JG8, 1000 ringgit a month plus free housing and offshore allowances.

Any way, we began our training to become Shell Malaysia’s first oil well drillers. Nine young men and one, not so young, became the political pawns in the battle for control of the oil industry in Malaysia between Petronas and Shell. What actually happened, nobody knew exactly. Perhaps something like this:-

Petronas: Well, Shell, since your operations began in 1911 in Sarawak, how many Malaysian drillers did you manage to train here?

Shell: What driller? We have been using Dutch drillers and now American and French contract drillers.[3] They came as part of the package deal of the rig contract of Reading and Bates or Sea and Land. We have not trained any Shell drillers anywhere in the world for a very long time now because of our policy to use contractor’s rigs and personnel to save on operating costs.

Petronas: Malaysia needs to have our own drillers because we are buying oil rigs to drill our own wells offshore Trenganu. These oil concessions will not be offered to the oil companies any more, we intend to do it all by ourselves by setting up a drilling subsidiary, Petronas Carigali, initially with help of man power from oil companies like Shell, BP and Exxon. Later on, it will become an all Petronas operation, including the production operations on the expired oil fields like West Lutong, Baram, Baronia and Samarang fields. We expect to run the whole show by ourselves and you had better help us by training Malaysian drillers for us, starting right now!

Shell: OK! There is no need to get excited. We can start recruiting 10 boys next month and two more every year after that. The programme is this. The trainee drillers will work hands-on on the rigs on a week-on and week-off basis. On their week off they attend training courses at our training centre in Lutong to cover the theoretical part of the operation. After one year, we will send them in batches of two and three to The Hague for more advanced drilling courses at the Shell Training Centre for 6 weeks. At the end of the course they will be issued with round-one self study courses to take home. They sit for round-one exams after one year working on the rigs as full time assistant drillers and if they pass the exam, they will become drillers as soon as positions become available.[4] 

They then work for two years as drillers, and then they go again to The Hague for more training courses on well control. Bring back round two self study courses and continue working on the rigs again as full time drillers, JG6, for another two years. Any time they are ready, the drillers can sit for the round-two exams conducted annually in The Hague. When they pass that, they will be promoted to JG5, drilling supervisors (tool pushers). They work for a few years on cross postings in Nigeria or Oman and some of the better candidates will return as head tool pushers, JG4 or even make senior head tool pusher, JG3 before their retirement!