Before the rig arrives: in the boots of a wellpad site manager.
A new Journal format: the “trade interview” gives a voice to the trades that will build EnerTchad. First episode with a site-construction manager — a composite figure drawn from industry practice, to tell what happens before the drilling rig arrives.
In EnerTchad’s oilfield services catalogue, site construction deliberately comes first: you build before you drill. But what does this trade of earthmovers, surveyors and plant operators — on which the first day of drilling depends — actually involve? Answers from a man of the site.
They say your real boss is the drilling rig. Why?
Because it costs a fortune every single day, whether it is drilling or waiting. A drilling rig does not wait: when the convoy arrives, the pad must be finished, compacted, drained, the cellar poured, the camp open. My whole trade lives inside that deadline. If the wellpad isn’t ready, it is not a civil-works delay — it is lost rig time, the most expensive line of the project.
In practice, what is a wellpad?
A platform of a few hectares, built to carry hundreds of tonnes: stripping, selected fill, layer-by-layer compaction, drainage slopes, lined mud pits, perimeter bunds. Around it, the rig foundations, the fence, the well cellar. And the part everyone forgets: the all-weather access road, with its wadi crossings — in Chad, the road is part of the well.
And the rainy season — nightmare or planning constraint?
Both. From July to September a dry wadi becomes a river, a poorly drained embankment becomes a sponge. So we sequence the heavy earthworks in the dry season, size the crossings for the flood rather than the average, and raise whatever must survive the water. A site that gets through its first rainy season without rework — that is what quality means; the rest is cosmetic.
Drilling starts with the bulldozer. By the time the bit touches rock, my work is already behind it.
What about safety on an earthworks site?
It is the most “road-like” worksite in oil: machines, convoys, dust, simultaneous operations. The golden rules apply from the first blade cut — traffic plans, permits to work, stopping the job the moment a doubt appears. Stop-work is not a theoretical right: an operator who halts a doubtful movement is right by principle. And site restoration is designed before the site opens, not after.
What changes when Chadian crews do this work?
Everything. This trade is the gateway of local content: plant operators, surveyors, steel fixers, soil-lab technicians — skills that train fast and then serve far beyond oil, on the country’s roads and structures. That is the point of EnerTchad’s 7th service family: keeping in Chad the first link of every well, the one usually subcontracted abroad without a second thought.
A format that will continue
The “trade interview” will return regularly in the Journal: artificial-lift supervisor, mini-refinery operator, basin geologist… The principle stays the same — telling the story of Chad’s oil chain through the people who will run it. The full service catalogue, from earthworks to plug & abandonment, lives on the Oilfield Services page.