No effing way dude
I earn my living playing shit tennis with Kothganesh. It is not very interesting and it doesn't pay well. This weekend we are going to play Schiit tennis instead. Things are looking up.
I'm an electrician... It's a four year trade in Canada, and I got into it shortly after high school in 2001. Started doing industrial electrical work up in northern Alberta in 2007, and I've been working in Oil/Gas since then. Most jobs are fly in/fly out on different shifts (1 week in/1 week out, 2 weeks in/1 week out, etc). The Oil and Gas industry in Canada was kind of driving our economy, and it's quite cyclic. In 2007, I was on a $6b project that was the largest in the world for a while... Then a couple years of slowdown, and recovery. Back at $40 something oil now, but things are still progressing. Our plant uses SAGD to recover the oil from the oil sands near Fort McMurray. Basically, two wells are drilled at a time, separated vertically from each other by a couple of meters. One is injected with steam, the other has a pump where the oil flows into. No solvents or "fracking" fluids are used, so it's essentially a clean operation. The steam generators use natural gas as fuel, and the larger sites also produce electricity from their steam generators (they cogenerate power for use at the site, and also to go back onto the grid). As for energy prices in Canada, natural gas is quite cheap, as is electricity. The cost of recovering the oil from the ground varies depending on the methods used. Our oil is considered on the "thermal" side, as opposed to "light oil" found in southern Alberta, where traditional pump jack style wells are used. The difference being that thermal oil is heavier/thicker, referred to as bitumen. The thermal recovery cost is around $30-$40/barrel, whereas the lighter stuff costs a bit less. Our plant basically uses a lot of electric motors, instrumentation and controls, and pipes/tanks. Nothing too crazy, but it's cool working on all the different electrical technology. We have a substation, which takes high voltage off the distribution grid, and we distribute 25kV, 5kV and 600V for our plant loads. I find that industrial work is where it's at for myself... I also worked construction on high rises in Vancouver, but the pay is a lot better in Oil and Gas. Personally, I grew up on the west coast, and have an appreciation for nature and our environment. Most of the people in our industry seem to be fairly out of touch with the environment in my opinion. Our industry could be regulated much better, and held to higher standards to prevent spills. As an example, there have been two fairly major spills in Alberta in the last month or so. The thing about oil being on the ground is that it's extremely nasty shit...Anyway, we'll see what happens in the next while. Should be interesting times!
I sell my body to the unclean.
Tennis and Schiit; will the balls be solid state or tubed?
Why do all the Canadians have the awesome jobs?
