Hi everyone, just trying to understand the big picture of things in the O&G world.
First of all, I dont want to call anyone dumb or incompetent.
So far in my short career, I've worked in the civil, E&P, and O&G industries. One thing that I cant wrap my head around is that so many of the pipeline surveyors I worked under just dont care. You can put a plat in front of them, say it's correct, and they'll stamp without even looking. They even sometimes refuse to follow state regulations, like not setting pins on surface lease corners even though the state qualifies it as a boundary survey. And since they dont care, the drafters/checkers never got feedback, so I just get handed junk when it's my project.
Meanwhile I try to give every detail a check before stamping. So of course management would rather use the guy who spends much less time per plat over me. And now I am even being asked to spend minimal time per plat to meet budget constraints.
Is there something I am missing that enables them to be stamp machines? Like do state boards usually just not care about pipeline work or something? Or do I just need to take a chill pill
The truth is so bad.... And this is a public forum....
Often, the work gets revised 3 x before it's final.
So I'm told.
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As Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) said in The Maltese Falcon:
"We didn't exactly believe your story, Miss O'Shaughnessy. We believed your 200 dollars. I mean, you paid us more than if you had been telling us the truth, and enough more to make it all right."
The Oil & Gas business pays surveyors well. Well enough to get some to cut corners in the interest of staying on schedule.?ÿ I must say that, in my personal experience, I didn't actually see it happen too much, but I'm sure it happens.?ÿ The fact that there are almost no negative consequences makes it easy.
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I must say that, in my personal experience, I didn't actually see it happen too much, but I'm sure it happens
Having worked in that industry in the past, I personally don't think it's the norm.?ÿ Just like all segments of surveying, and everything else, there are bad actors who don't necessarily represent the industry standard
I don't think that's unique to pipeline surveying.?ÿ There are some LS's who don't care, or can be paid enough to not care.?ÿ
I haven't seen that; all the pipeline easements I've been following have been very good. Some across 1/2 a state.?ÿ
There are issues with pre-designed easements, the pipe gets laid somewhere other than the CL of the easement.?ÿ
The DOT easements have so much oversight, I suppose it's possible to have issues but I haven't seen them, although most of my work has been for lines contained in surface use agreement areas. The O&G lines I've got involved with that traversed big distances were very regulated and everyone wanted them pinned down as exactly as possible and paid for it.?ÿ
It's odd this has come up, easements for utilities (H20 lines, electric lines, communication lines) seem to be problematic, not so much O&G lines.?ÿ
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I just completed a 6-1/2 year tour of duty in O&G. I didn't check every number on every plat, but I had adequately trained staff working under my direction and supervision who knew enough about their jobs to put out a plat that met the requirements. I would establish the boundary (and as we were stacking wells, it might be the same boundary for multiple plats). CAD Tech would draft the plat or easement based on client needs. Preliminary plat would go to a 3rd person for QA/QC. Every coordinate, bearing, distance and label would be checked on the plat and highlighted yellow for correct or marked in red for incorrect. Markups would return to CAD Tech for revision and then a new plat and the markups were given to me to make sure that the markups had been addressed. A lot of the time, I would do the QA/QC but not always and especially when we were busy. But many of the people I worked with were with the company in excess of 5 years and knew what was required.
I was unaware of a requirement to monument a lease pad. I am not aware of any of my colleagues monumenting pads either. The pads and easements are tied to a minimum of two boundary monuments and then the pad is staked with lathes. The dirt guys come in and lay down the caliche and they try to stay within the limits of the lease because where I was working, we had active landowners. These landowners would check to make sure that the pad was within the limits because otherwise they're requesting a resurveying and new check$$ for the additional surface area lease.
Most of my work was within TSPS Chapter 10 boundaries and we had a lot of trouble with out-of-state licensees sending contract crews to do slipshod work without the RPLS knowing the basics of how the boundary was established or should be re-established. Chapter 10 has an ethics committee to review bad work and has referred cases to the BOR for investigation.
I have found that in all areas that boundary surveying is involved, it falls upon the field crew to complete the projects in setting things back in place that are gone and to report what they actually did to the office.
Many times the draftsmen must go by the standards of their office because they never got any notice of change in the field crews' actions.
When it comes to monuments verses to a point, You got to look at the whole job and see if the missing monuments can be retraced using the information on the drawing. If so, it was a proper survey.
When it is reported that a monument was set, there best be one there or some evidence of it's being disturbed. I know a few that won't take that drive back to a project and set monuments.
I dont really have an answer, but I think what they get away with is disgusting. There is a mountain us sub professional work out there in every land surveying field, but I don't think any other types come close to the probability of finding bad O&G surveys.?ÿ
I dont know what specific problems the original poster is upset about, but the problems I see rarely have anything to do with the problems with the numbers. It is with what is missing, or what the numbers represent.?ÿ
A lease, or a pipeline easment, is a boundary just like any others, and deserves as much respect as any other boundary. The requirement to monument lease boundaries varies by jurisdiction, but many O&G surveyors routinely ignore them. Even if I owned property in a jurisdiction that didn't require them, I wouldn't give up my property rights without monumenting the boundaries, and it wouldn't be with a 1/2" rebar with a plastic cap.?ÿ
Tying to two monuments can be sufficient in some cases, like?ÿ when the lease parcel is far from any exterior boundaries, but if those monuments are magnails in the road, with no explanation, or attempt to relate them to the history of the parcel, there is still more work to be done.?ÿ
@andy-nold Wanna trade staff? 🙂 Jk, I am getting it nailed down here. Im used to exactly what you said about highlighting/redlining, but it's bizarre being in larger firms without that procedure. Been in 2 companies in a row now where they had a dedicated "no care" guy who just stamped everything, and we were encouraged to be the same. Backtracked/revised their work and there are all these blown calls between plat and legal, legals dont make sense, segments dont match totals, etc.
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But what's got me wondering and got me to make this thread is hearing opinions from several others about O&G surveyors, some even refusing to hire them or allow them on their projects.?ÿ
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And the lease corner thing: Off the top of my head Louisiana qualifies surfaces leases as boundary surveys. And if I remember right, Texas says easements are to follow the board rules, which I assume means monumentation standards as well. Either way I just figured we are putting fence posts on their corners anyway
@aliquot You get it 🙂 Definitely a lot of what's missing or doesnt make sense. Or plat/legals not matching, wrong title, legals barely make sense, etc... and it's stamped. Some guys just dont take pride in their work and give us a bad reputation.
It's unfortunate because I met several others who talk down on O&G guys and some refuse to hire them
