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“Oil was gushing out of the borehole and it took a while to control it, to the point that we eventually lost the well, ” says Max of this dramatic moment.
No one was prepared for this, meaning that the mud weight had been too low to resist the formation pressure. Thanks to a highly competent drilling crew, the “kick” was controlled before it ended up as a blowout. “The incident was reported in the Norwegian press as a near blow-out. Thanks to Ed Seabourn, the famous Phillips rig supervisor, it was excellently controlled, ” Max says.
The Oslo team
“When in Oslo, in the Phillips office, I was the junior member of the exploration team led by Hank Heikkila, an excellent geologist, an American of Finnish origin. He was a blond, tall, always smiling scientist who was leading the search for oil and gas in Norway, ” Max remembers
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