Mike Shellman | Oilfield Veteran & Hellfighter

Becky sits down with Mike Shellman — oilfield veteran, hellfighter, and the man who spent more than 60 years in an industry that keeps the world running. Mike talks about growing up in the South Texas oilfields, tailing rods at six years old, and the life that was always waiting for him. He reflects on what it meant to be invited into hellfighting — the most dangerous and elite job in the oil industry — and what it feels like to walk toward a fire when everything in you says run. He talks about the biggest blowouts he worked, the film collection he's spent a lifetime building, and why he's finally writing it all down. And at the end — a personal note from your host.

Watch More The Highly Recommended episodes:
   https://www.youtube.com/@thehighlyrecommendedshow

Follow The Highly Recommended on social:
  Instagram: @thehighlyrecommendedshow
  TikTok: @thehighlyrecommendedshow

Follow Becky on social: 
  Instagram: @becky_perry 
  TikTok: @beckydperry

Follow Mike for more on the oilfied:
oilystuff.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the highly recommended Stories of People Worth Knowing. I'm Becky Perry, and every episode I sit down with someone who is quietly extraordinary, the kind of person you'd never know about unless you took the time to listen. Because the most remarkable stories aren't always the loudest ones. My guest today spent more than 60 years in the oil industry, as a driller, a producer, and for seven of those years as a hell fighter. That's the person you call when an oil catches fire and nothing else will stop it. He has never once boasted about any of it, but the work he and those like him have done quietly in fields most of us will never see is part of the reason we can drive our cars, heat our homes, and keep the lights on. Mike Shellman is highly recommended. Michael Shellman, welcome to the Highly Recommended. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_05 0:56

Becky, thank you. I am so honored. Really, I'm just uh thrilled to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

The honor is mine. Um we've got what do we have here? You have brought for us to drink some whiskey out of some Redaderco cups. So, with that being said, should we christen the podcast and get ourselves started?

SPEAKER_05 1:14

Thank you very much. Cheers. This is great. It's kind of early to be drinking, but um it's oil-filled. We can do whatever we want to do.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

It's an oil-filled breakfast, then.

SPEAKER_05 1:23

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

That's good whiskey.

SPEAKER_05 1:26

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

All right. So you were born, you were literally born into the oil fields in South Texas. Tell me what that world was like for you as a kid.

SPEAKER_05 1:36

Well I was my father's only son. So uh when I was old enough to walk, I was pretty much old enough to work. And I began working in the oil field when I was just a little boy. One of the first things my dad had me do was paint.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:54

And I would paint cattle guards and paint tanks and all kinds of things, and I would get more paint on me than anything else. But uh I remember he used to on the way home, he would put me in the back of the pickup because I was so dirty he didn't want me sitting in front with him.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Well, painting is probably a lot less dangerous than tailing out sucker rods, which you were doing by age six, kind of explained to me one, what that means, and two, doing that as a six-year-old.

SPEAKER_05 2:24

Well, so I graduated from painting and grunt work, so to speak, to actually working on one of my father's workover rigs. And sucker rods are just long 25-foot continuous pieces of steel that are screwed together and go downhole in the bottom of the well and move the pump up and down. So when you see the pump jack going up and down, it's it's moving the rods up and down, and there's a pump down in the bottom of the well that's moving the fluid up. So sometimes that pump would have to be replaced, and it was my job as a little six-year-old to uh the a roughneck would break the rods out and hand it to me, and I would just walk it out on the end of the pipe rack and drop it, and then come back, get another one.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

At six years old, how heavy were those?

SPEAKER_05 3:16

Aaron Ross Powell, they were v- They weren't very heavy. They were very light.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Aaron Ross Powell Like ballpark, how many pounds do you think?

SPEAKER_05 3:21

Aaron Ross Powell Oh, I think uh a sucker rod probably weighs twenty pounds, twenty-five pounds at the most.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Aaron Powell Still at six, that's pretty heavy. So you're walking those back and forth, and those end up you know connecting to go down and to pull the well, the oil out of the well.

SPEAKER_05 3:35

Aaron Powell But that was a good job for me because it didn't take a lot of thought, and uh I was useful, and that's what my dad wanted me to be. He wanted me to be very useful. And that I was. And then from there I graduated on up to bigger and better things. Aaron Ross Powell What came after six years old and well when I got to be ten, uh I could start actually reaching the rods, breaking the rods out. And I would ha I was still not big enough to do that over the top of the well head, so sometimes I would have to stand on boards to be able to reach over the top and break the rod out, and then you'd spin it out, and then I would pick it up and I would tail it out myself. So then I'd come back and I'd break another rod out and tail it. So my workload increased significantly the older I think. The bigger, the stronger, the more you could do.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

So for those that don't really understand what goes into drilling, and there's probably way more that you could explain in the time even that we have. But you we we went from six years old, you're handing the sucker rods or the tailor rods out to someone to then go ha layman's terms, what is happening when you're actually drilling a hole and all the pieces that come together? Because I've seen videos, I think a lot of people have seen videos of you know roughnecks throwing chain. Like if you could walk through just what happens when you're actually getting down into the ground to be able to pull it out.

SPEAKER_05 5:07

Well it's complicated. Yeah. But so I graduated from small workover rigs where we were simply pulling pumps and tailing out rods to big drilling rigs. My f my father was a drilling contractor. And uh I eventually moved up into a drilling rig and started working on the floor with men that were four and five times my age, and we were spinning chains and throwing tongs and setting slips, and uh the drilling rig is much, much bigger and much more dangerous uh instead of a a sucker rod that's five-eighths inches in diameter, and twenty pounds, twenty twenty-five pounds. A four and a half to five inch drill pipe is thirty feet long and can weigh 350 pounds. And so all that's uh gets to be more dangerous. You have to get stronger and stronger or work smarter in my case.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

So correct me if I'm wrong. When I've seen the videos of people throwing the chain, the chain wraps around to then screw two pieces of pipe together. Is that what's happening?

SPEAKER_05 6:18

Yeah, that's great. That's basically right. That's basically right. So in the old days, that's how we would spin the pipe up with a chain. You would take this long piece of chain and be able to throw it just right, just kind of like you'd dally around a horn on a saddle if you were roping a calf. You s throw it on the drill pipe so it spins around a couple of times, and the driller engages the clutch and spins a chain, and it spins a pipe, makes it all up kind of tight, and then you have to put tongs on it to tighten it up real tight. A big ridge is does it. Because what is it? Steel? It's steel. So so that's what throwing a spinning chain is about. It's about just screwing two pipe joints of drill pipe together. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

And there's a technique, like there's a flick of the wrist.

SPEAKER_05 7:11

Oh yeah. It has to be you have to get about six or seven loops on the drill pipe to be able to spin it all the way up. And then when he's pulling the chain, you have to hold the chain and let it slide off the drill pipe without losing your fingers, which happens most of the time, but lots of Most of the time.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

So a lot of the a lot of people that do this.

SPEAKER_05 7:37

A lot of men lose their fingers, yeah. You just get uh if you're working at the night in the night and late at night and been up for two or three days, you get careless. And when you're throw a spinning chain and you're trying to guide it off the drill pipe, it's easy to get your finger caught up underneath it and gone.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Aaron Ross Powell And it's normal to be working long hours into the night.

SPEAKER_05 8:00

Aaron Ross Powell On a drilling rig, uh the shifts are usually eight to twelve hours each.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Aaron Ross Powell Eight to twelve hours. And and there's one person dedicated, for example, to just throwing chain the whole time? Or does do you kind of rotate with some sort of rotate off different jobs?

SPEAKER_05 8:14

Off and on doing that. You pull the pull the two pull the drill pipe out up through the derrick, and then you have to set slips and then you have to break it out and spin it, and then all the drill pipe is stood back in the derrick, so you have to s push it over there and stack it.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

What's the derrick? That's where it's stacked?

SPEAKER_05 8:36

The derrick is a tall tower where all the And so uh for a rough deck, when you eventually move off the drilling rig floor, throwing a spinning chain and using tongs, you go up in the derrick.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

And the derrick is where you would pull a long piece of pipe up, throw the chain around, spin it, it screws to another one that's waiting down in the hole, and then that one goes down and another one comes up in the hole. That's right. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 9:05

And there has to be somebody up in the derrick to unlatch the pipe. Aaron Ross Powell And stand it back in what we call a monkey board or a racking board. And then uh then the block comes down and you grab another piece of drill pipe and pull it up the derrick, and the d the derrican up there uh up on top unlatches it and stands it back.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

So anybody ever not latched it correctly and a pipe came crashing down?

SPEAKER_05 9:33

Oh, yeah.

unknown 9:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

And then they get their ass handed to them.

SPEAKER_05 9:36

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. Bad things happen. But d uh dairy cans usually have it pretty easy. Uh they don't work as hard as floor hands, but you're gonna get some pushback, I'm sure, in the comments on that.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Dairycans Derrycans and chain throwers are gonna be competing against each other, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_05 9:54

Aaron Ross Powell I was a derry can for a long time, a a very young dairy can, and I missed some latches, sure. I missed a few. And uh the thing that I remember most about being a dairy can is how cold it was in the winter. Uh I worked uh out in West Texas and in Wyoming on drilling rigs, and if you're working during the winter and you're up there 90 feet above the floor.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

It's cold.

SPEAKER_05 10:21

It's very cold. The wind is blowing 50 miles an hour and it's minus 15. Yeah. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Eight hours, twelve hours. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 10:28

You can't you take some water up with you in your lunch, and uh you better be warm enough because you're not gonna you can't call a timeout and say, I'm cold, I want to come down.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

You're right. Yeah, you're gonna get your ass handed you for that, too.

SPEAKER_05 10:42

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

So everybody that kind of works on the drilling rig, they they know how to do they might be specialized in one task. There might be one guy who's the best at throwing chain, but he also knows how to be up in the derrick. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_05 10:53

He does. It's it's uh a uh an advancement to move up into derrick. A Derrick hand will usually get paid a dollar more an hour than a floor hand. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

And he's paid his dues having been on the floor.

SPEAKER_05 11:05

Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. That's right. He's he's earned his his uh status, his right of passage as a derrick hand.

unknown 11:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 11:13

And then the next step out of the derrick is to actually move back down to the floor as a driller, where you're where you're running the whole rig yourself, uh operating all the everything.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Trevor Burrus So that's more of a management position.

SPEAKER_05 11:28

Yes. And and when you become a driller, then it's sort of your duty to watch over everything, make sure everything's working safely, nobody's doing something really stupid that's going to get them hurt.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

Aaron Ross Powell So when you think about your time drilling and being on these 1,500 horsepower rigs, is there a particular story that comes to mind, first thing that comes in your memory that that you've experienced being that like obviously being a Derek, you remember having dropped the pipe a couple times. What story is the first one that comes to mind to you or is the most memorable?

SPEAKER_05 12:04

I think it it working on a drilling rig can become so routine and mundane that um basically are doing the same things over and over again, 24 hours a day, seven days a week until the well is finished. I think the most memorable memorable things I remember about drilling operation were people that got hurt and uh lost a finger or smashed a finger or lost a hand or fell or had something fall on them. Those were uh those weren't good memories, but they were memories number nevertheless. It's uh it's all very dangerous that you're talking about a a lot of really heavy iron and everything's moving, there's lots of moving parts, and uh it's easy to have a brain fart and make a mistake, so to speak. So um those are the and I don't want to go into that because some of them can be very gruesome, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, I understand. It must be tough because like you said, when you're doing eight hours, twelve hours a day for weeks on end, you do start to feel like you get into a rhythm and then you get comfortable, and that's when the mistakes are made when you're not alert, right?

SPEAKER_05 13:26

Aaron Ross Powell That's exactly right. Um I mean um one of the first drilling rigs I worked on um as a young man, the the stairs walking up the to the floor where we had to start working, there was a big sign above the uh stairs. It said, engage brain.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Wow. And so kind of funny with the I mean a good reminder, like yeah. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_05 13:51

But you had to, you were entering the the danger zone, so to speak, and you really had to be thinking about what you were doing all the time. It's one thing to do all the right things yourself, but then you all you have to keep an eye on the guy next to you and make sure that he doesn't hurt you.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 14:10

And that's the most common problem. That um somebody next to you will do something stupid and hurt you.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

So Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 14:19

Um that's what I remember most about drilling rigs and and the long hours and having to to uh be away from home a lot and stay in dumpy hotels, motels, and uh it's uh very hard very hard work.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Aaron Ross Powell Well, thank you. Because it's the work that runs our entire world, really.

SPEAKER_05 14:45

Aaron Ross Powell Well, it's different these days. Um I mean, than back when I did it fifty years ago. Things are safer. Uh things are more automated today than they were fifty years ago. Aaron Powell Sure. Takes a lot of the danger out of it. But back in the day it was pretty uh pretty dangerous work. You had to be pretty tough to it's called roughneck for a reason.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Aaron Ross Powell That's right.

SPEAKER_05 15:10

That's exactly right. We were we thought we were pretty rough.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Well, you were.

SPEAKER_05 15:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Let me ask you this. So transitioning from that, you eventually became a hellfighter, which for those that don't know, that is an oil well firefighter. And from what I understand, that's considered special ops of the oil industry. It's nearly impossible to get invited to do it, and you can die doing it. So how did you get into that?

SPEAKER_02 15:36

How did you get that call?

SPEAKER_03 15:40

It it w um it was a calling.

SPEAKER_05 15:44

Um I th I think that um my f my having grown up in the oil field, I was around pressure quite a bit. And my father had a number of blowouts on his rigs. And um he d insisted that I be involved in that even at a very young age. And so uh pressure never scared me for some reason. It can be terrifying and scares a lot of people to death. But for some reason I was always drawn to it and kind of amazed by it. And so um I was I it never scared me very much.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

So calm in the storm.

SPEAKER_05 16:35

Yeah, I was able to The thing about a blowing well that's out of control, uh it's sort of unique. It's isolated to the well. It's not gonna generally speaking, it's not going to get worse. Some often they do get worse, but it's not, for instance, it's like uh being an urban building firefighter where you go into a building and you've got things. Yeah, spread and falling in on top of you. Uh the the pressure that you had to be concerned about was right there from the well. And so if you once you got over that and and was were able to tell yourself that it's probably not going to get a whole lot worse than this and it's isolated to this one little area, then um it doesn't scare you as much as it does a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

So um So you knew you could handle the pressure. Did you reach out to oil well firefighting companies, or how did you get that invitation?

SPEAKER_05 17:39

Aaron Ross Powell Well, what I when I ran away from home, so to speak, and started working on drilling rigs for other people, other people other than my father, uh I was a driller. I was a very young driller and and uh managing the rig operations and the safety of all the other men that were on the floor and in the Derrick. And uh we had a number of blowouts. We lost control of a well, not infrequently. I mean I mean it's just uh it happens. You take all the precautions that you need to to make sure that it doesn't happen, but it happens. And so when the rigs that I worked on would we would lose surface control or they would catch fire or something like that. Um we would always hire call back in the day, mostly Red Adair. He was the well-control expert of choice. And uh Red Adair had two men working for him at the time, a man named Boots Hansen and another man named Coots Matthews. And Red and Boots and Coots stayed together as the Red Adair company for twenty years. And they were the world's premier well-controlled team. So almost anybody that had a problem would call Red. And often uh these three men would come to a blowout all by themselves. Really?

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Just the three of them.

SPEAKER_05 19:20

Just to assess it and just by themselves, just single m men, just boots, for instance, would come and because Coots and and Red were on other jobs somewhere. And then the well the the blowout control man, whoever that was, would have to solicit help from all the roughnecks. He he couldn't do it all himself, so he would need help. And uh I always volunteered because it interested me. I wasn't I wasn't afraid of it. Um the the nastier it was, uh the more frightening it was, uh more fun I thought it was, actually. I got to work with Red Adair once. Um and and then I worked with Coots Matthews twice as a young man in my early twenties on big blowouts. And um uh Coots actually remembered me from years later. He and I got to be pretty good friends.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Um He remembered you from when he came to a blowout that you were working on.

SPEAKER_05 20:36

Yeah, and um as it happened about twenty years after I first worked with Red, with Coots, I'm sorry, I had my own blowout. And uh it was a job for Conico, Conco Phillips, and Coneko wanted Red Adair and Boots and Coots to come out, so I called Coots and asked him to come out on this job for me, for Conico. And uh he remembered my name, which was something, and that would later pay off uh because eventually Koots hired me years later to work for Boots and Coots Incorporated as a part-time well control hand. And uh well, I think I think um I think one of the reasons that Coots and I hit it off one time, I remember this job very well. We were under this big rig floor, and the well was p hissin' and uh there was a lot of pressure on it, and Coots and I were up under the floor trying to tighten some bolts to stop the leak. And uh it was just he and I up under there with a hammer and a hammer wrench and trying to. Trying to tighten these boats, bolts. And while we were down under the floor, the rotary hose on the jill drill pipe broke.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Oh no.

SPEAKER_05 22:09

It had like 4,000 psi on a on the hose. And when it broke, it ruptured and just boom, made the a loud, horribly loud noise, and the hose started blowing up, blowing up and down the derrick and blowing gas everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Oh my goodness, that's terrible.

SPEAKER_05 22:28

And it filled the bottom of the rig floor with gas. And uh probably under normal circumstances, I would have hauled ass out of there when that happened, but I I didn't. I stood I stayed. And when the gas all cleared away, I looked across the stack and Coots was standing there and he was smiling at me.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Aaron Ross Powell You were the two that stayed. Everybody else ran.

SPEAKER_05 22:53

Yeah. So he thought, okay, this guy's got balls and I think maybe that's what he I hope that's what he thought. Well, sure. Because uh I'll never forget that grin that he gave me.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Like, it was like Okay, we I see you. Yeah. We're in this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 23:10

We're in this together. Aaron Ross Powell So when that when that job was over, there were a lot of people helping us with that job, but when the job was over, uh I got all the Red Adair stuff. Uh because they would always carry the in the back of their cars, they would carry caps and jackets and stickers, hard head hard hat stickers and patches and uh and then when the job was over, they'd hand all this out to. But when this job was over, well, Coots and I talked for a while, and he's said, Come over to the car, I've got to give you some stuff. And there were some other guys hanging around, and they said, Well, I want some too, Coots. And Koots said, No. Mike's the only one getting too much. Oh, y'all ran.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Michael had the the courage to stay. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_05 24:00

So I got all the goodies from that. But the rest is history.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

So you you became a hell fighter and he invited you to join and I stayed in touch with him.

SPEAKER_05 24:12

He was he was my hero. Coots was my hero.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

He was uh so in in that world, Boots and Coots, Red Adair's world, what's the culture like amongst those people?

SPEAKER_05 24:28

Well it's very unique. And uh I would say that all of those that red and boots and particularly coots, they were all very, very colorful uh to use that word loosely, very tough individuals that um emitted this sort of uh confidence in themselves and and the work that they chose to do. And uh you were you were drawn to that. And um they uh boy, could they have fun when the job was over. They were uh I think uh they could drink and carry on like nobody's business, and I was kind of drawn to that as well. And so um it's a very spe very special industry, the wealth control industry. I think at any given time, there's probably no more than forty people in the whole world that do that sort of work. Uh there may be fifty max, and they'll be divided between three or four companies. Three companies will be based in Houston, and there might be another company in Singapore or something like that. But not very many people know how to do that work. And uh not very many people want to do that kind of work because it's pretty scary. And and uh so to to have been invited to work for a prestigious company like Boots and Coots Incorporated was was one of the greatest honors in my life. I mean, uh I still consider it a great honor.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

Yeah. I mean, it's the like I mentioned before, I think the analogy is like it's the special ops of the oil industry. And I imagine there's a lot of camaraderie in that because it is so few people that can do it, and because you are putting your life at risk. And with that putting your life at risk for for people who've never thought about it, what actually happens when an oil catches fire? What are you walking into? What does it feel like when you're that close to a spewing well with natural gas and oil and everything coming out?

SPEAKER_03 27:01

It can be scary.

SPEAKER_05 27:03

Um There are no two wells are the same. Uh when you get called on a blowout, you the company that's calling you there um they give you a little heads up on what to expect, but once you get to the well, it's never like they say it is. It's always something different. It's either a lot easier than you thought it was gonna be, or it's gonna be a lot it's a lot harder. And so um the thing the thing that's different, uh when a when the a drilling rig is on a well that blows out, usually the drilling rig will burn down or or collapse in the heat.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Like two, three thousand degrees Fahrenheit, right? And that's enough to melt the metal that is.

SPEAKER_05 28:00

Oh yeah. Um gas fires can be g oil fires are much harder hotter than gas fires. Gas fires can in their core can be two thousand degrees Fahrenheit, but an oil well fire uh can be up to four thousand. Oh my god. And so it doesn't take very long for it to just destroy the the substructure that the that makes up the rig and the substructure that the derrick sits on top of. Uh I mean, I've seen oil fire so hot that um the derrick will stay stood up for eight hours, and then I've seen wells that the derrick will fall in two hours.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Oh my god. It just completely melts at that temperature. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_05 28:46

It'll start to it's standing tall and proud, and then it starts to kind of wilt and then it'll get a little kinky and and then it'll there'll be a big groan, it'll just kind of go, oh, and then fall.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

You just you it can't, I mean, ha at that temperature. So if if that kind of infrastructure is melting between two hours, eight hours, how does a human survive in front of that?

SPEAKER_05 29:16

Lots of water.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Lots of water.

SPEAKER_05 29:19

Water is our friend. We uh we when you work on an oil well fire, you have to stay wet constantly because uh water keeps you cool. It keeps you from burning your skin. Um so we it's not unusual if you're working on a fire to stay constantly deluged or for eight, ten, twelve hours a day, just water sh we have water monitors that are spraying us.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Okay, I've seen some videos with the water coming out. So that's just constant and trucks are just being pulled in with water constantly.

SPEAKER_05 30:00

Well, the the first thing you do when you in a big fire is you have to get a uh gigantic source of water. So um before you even start working on the on the fire, you have to dig big pits and line those pits and fill them full of water because you you don't want to start the job and then run out of water. And so often you can truck the water in and it it might take three or four days just to get ready to start working on a fire because you have to have hundreds of millions of gallons of water to before you even get started.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

So the whole time the gas and the oil is just continuing to go.

SPEAKER_05 30:41

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, I mean there's things that we can do to get ready. We're we're putting our equipment together and but mostly we're waiting on water. We're waiting on water to be pumped. We'll we'll solicit water from nearby ranchers or we're not not opposed to using salt water at all. Just uh we just need lots of water.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Aaron Ross Powell And that just keeps spewing. And how does that work? So y'all just every once in a while you come back, make sure you stay soaked. And does that keep you are you still really hot when you're staying soaked or can be hot.

SPEAKER_05 31:16

One of the besides water, one of the favorite things uh an oil well firefighter uses is just a simple p uh piece of corrugated tin. Aaron Ross Powell Tin, like you'd see on a barn roof.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

Aaron Ross Powell Like aluminum foil. Like aluminum foil.

SPEAKER_05 31:34

Sort of, but it it's corrugated tin. They're the they're the sheets are four feet wide and eight feet tall. And you can uh build a little handle on the back of them so you can put your arm up in the handle.

SPEAKER_01 31:49

And the handle's not it can't be made of tin, that would be out of wood.

SPEAKER_05 31:52

Trevor Burrus, it's out of two by four. Okay. And you can keep this sheet of tin between you and the fire. And if you're getting water poured on you constantly, you can I can get from here to that wall to a 3,000-degree fire. And actually uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

I guess that's why we use aluminum for cooking, right? A whole der whole derrick, a whole drilling rig can totally melt, but the tin will be.

SPEAKER_05 32:22

It reflects the heat.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 32:24

And it's a remarkable simple tool that um was used back in the early 1900s, even before then, around oil fires, and we st still use it today. It's uh one of the first things that shows up on a job site is tin, because you have to wrap you you have to wrap everything in tin to keep it from melting. If you have water pumps and water monitors, you have to build stands around your water monitor that will block the heat. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

So it's a shield for everything.

SPEAKER_05 32:58

It's a shield for everything. If you're using a dozer to uh a bulldozer to start dragging away pieces of the rig, we wrap the bulldozer in tin so the uh dozer operator doesn't get nervous and freak out. And so he can back into the fire and stay fairly protected with the tin. So tin and water are are two best friends.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

So you're trying to stay wet the whole time to stay cool. What what's some of the gear that you wear? What's that made of?

SPEAKER_05 33:33

It's just a cotton coveralls. Aaron Ross Powell Just cotton coveralls. It's a big misnomer that people think that we wear asbestos suits or the big bulky jackets that you'd see the New York fire department wear. Don't do that because then you c you can't stay wet. You you want you want to be as wet as possible because that's how you stay cool. So we would we would wear simple uh a pair of cotton coveralls with long sleeves and we'd wear long underwear underneath the because you would don't want any skin exposed.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

Okay, so you guys are trying to cover everything. Hands, face, everything.

SPEAKER_05 34:17

You wear gloves. You don't want any skin exposed. So you cover your face with masks and bandanas and you put goggles on, and uh you wear uh tin hard hats.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

Oh, so so oh that's right, because most hard hats are plastic. Can't wear plastic melt under your head.

SPEAKER_05 34:37

Melt on your head and cook your brain. So a a tin hard hat uh is really your best protection because you can always keep your head down and keep the tin working in your behalf to protect yourself.

SPEAKER_00 34:54

Shield your face, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:55

And then you you can kind of pick your head up and look and see what needs to be done and put it down again and pick it up again. And but the tin hard hat is very important. So uh it's very simple. Is the the key is just staying cool, staying wet, using tin as much as possible.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

Uh what are the goggles made of?

SPEAKER_05 35:21

Just glass. Lots of guys just wear sunglasses. Uh but you have to protect your eyes because it's easy to get your eyes burned.

SPEAKER_01 35:31

Aaron Ross Powell It's probably easier than skin even to burn, I would think.

SPEAKER_05 35:34

Yeah. And then um no one of the things I always read, Adair was a very fair complex fair-comple man. He was he was his hair was red.

SPEAKER_00 35:47

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 35:50

And he was always very careful about being the first to get five. But but over the years, uh the last time I saw him a few few years before he died, his his face was so badly burned you could hardly recognize it. Uh and that was doing what he could to protect it. But he w he was fair-skinned.

SPEAKER_01 36:14

So Imagine after so many blowouts, no matter how much you protect, there's going to be some damage.

SPEAKER_05 36:22

And uh his skin was badly burned. Uh but Boots and Coots took better care of themselves, I think, over the years, and they were weren't as fair-complexed as as red.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

But um, they probably learned from him.

SPEAKER_05 36:36

It's easy to it's easy to get burned if you uh I have a burn on my hand from expanded metal. You see the scars?

SPEAKER_01 36:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 36:46

Just stupid. It's ex expanded metal.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

Oh, wow. That I'd put my hand down on a rig floor that was hot and I burned through through my glove, which it was just everything is two, three, four thousand degrees.

SPEAKER_05 37:08

And you can't see often. Often the location is covered in water from us spraying ourselves with water. Often it's the location is covered in oil and drilling mud. And um I I think w one one of the closest times I've ever ever came to making a really big mistake was uh in West Texas. I was on a job one time and the fire was all spread out. It was blowing in four different directions. It was making oil, the whole location was full of oil. And we were in really close, trying to get ready to do something, and I almost stepped in a hole.

SPEAKER_03 37:55

Oh.

SPEAKER_05 37:56

And the hole was probably ten feet deep. It was cut out from all the gas, and it was full of oil, and I forgot. And I went to take a step, and I probably would have gone in the hole, but my buddy behind me grabbed me by the nap of the neck and and pulled me back and went.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

Wow. Because you can't hear each other. It's it's so loud out there.

SPEAKER_05 38:22

Like, no, you can't hear either. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 38:24

and the flames and everything, right?

SPEAKER_05 38:26

It's he ate my ass out later in the day.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

But so he just did this. I think you had told me before it's like uh what is it like multiple jet engines?

SPEAKER_05 38:36

You just can hear it from Well, you can't you can't hear you can't you can't hear yourself talk a hundred yards from a big blowing well. So um when you're in close and you're working if there's two or three of you working on the well, there's no talking to each other. You you sort of have to learn sign language and understand what's happening and look at the man's the man's expression, and he'll he'll tell you what's gonna happen and what you need to do by proper san sign language, and and but there's no talking to each other about that. So So uh this man, Joe Carpenter, who who um is a was a great man, he uh he I'd have boiled in that hot oil.

SPEAKER_01 39:29

He's the one that pulled you by the nape of the neck.

SPEAKER_05 39:32

And he j all he did was this and he pointed down in the hole, and I went, oh shit, like that. And that was the end of it for the day. But boy, uh like I said, when we got back to the hotel, I got it.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Let me ask you this. I've seen footage of hellfires, uh hell fighters throwing flames at a spewing well. To most people that looks insane. Why are you throwing fire at something so flammable?

SPEAKER_02 39:56

What what's actually happening? What's the purpose of that?

SPEAKER_05 40:02

Well, if these well if these blowouts aren't burning, the uh uh an oil well fire takes three things to burn. It takes fuel, it takes air, and it takes an ignition source. So if the well is not on fire, usually the the fuel source is still blowing. And it's it's either gas or oil or oil and gas or oil and water and gas, it's all still blowing real high in the sky and it's making a mess. And uh if you're days away from being able to move the rig away completely and cap the well properly, you either leave this mess occurring or you set the well on fire and burn the fuel source up. And so a lot of times uh the that's one of the things that I'm most proud of about my pref career as a well control expert is the is the care we had for the environment. Is uh when you when you're you you get hard to cap a well as fast as you can because nobody wants to money spewing.

SPEAKER_01 41:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 41:24

They're spending a lot of money to have us out there to do this work. They're losing money and product and fuel. But it's also it makes a horrendous mess. And so we we're there to try to mitigate this mess as fast as we can. Uh particularly if it's near water or over water, offshore, going into the sea. We want to cap that well as fast as we can to keep from harming wildlife. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 42:00

And so the flame helps with that?

SPEAKER_05 42:02

Yeah. So you so if you if you if you're a uh days away from being able to cap the well, uh a lot of times the best way to eliminate all that mess that's being made and protect the environment is just go in there and set the well on fire. So uh probably some of the videos you've seen, you'll see some hands that will either they'll shoot a flare gun into a blowing well or they'll they'll w wet some rags in a in a um in a five-gallon can of diesel and set it on fire and try to throw it out there and get it. So that's what they're doing is they're uh they're really trying to lessen the environmental harm the best they can. And then when the time comes to put the fire out, they we can usually do that with water. So if if uh one morning we need to get in real close and do some work, we can actually put the w fire out and and not be as hot. And then that evening when we're going back to the hotel to to rest for the next day, we'll put it on fire and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_04 43:12

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 43:13

And then a lot of wells also uh make a very toxic gas.

SPEAKER_01 43:20

That you can't see. I mean, gases.

SPEAKER_05 43:22

You can't see the gas. Well, you can see it blowing out of the well, but you can't you can't know that it's toxic in what its uh H2S content is. H2S stands for hydrogen sulfide gas. And it's at certain parts per million, it's deadly.

SPEAKER_04 43:39

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_05 43:40

It'll uh it'll kill a well-controlled hand uh instantly and has many times. Oh my goodness. So uh a well that's uh not on fire and blowing to H2S is a very dangerous situation for everybody working near the well. That live in homes miles downwind, they can smell this H2S and they're in harm's way.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

So by lighting it on fire, you're dissipating that that toxic gas. That's right.

SPEAKER_05 44:10

And it's not near as toxic. It's not harmful. Good chance nobody's going to get poisoned by H2S. So when you see people set wells on fire, that's usually what they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 44:24

Trevor Burrus Well, it looks real badass, but there's a method to the madness.

SPEAKER_05 44:33

But uh if you shoot a if you or stand in too close and you shoot a flare gun or throw a rag up there and it catches fire, you bet you better. Better be ready with the tin. You better be turning your back and set to run away for sure. Yeah.

unknown 44:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:49

So you've you've worked fires across the globe, some of the biggest blowouts in history. What do you remember about those jobs?

SPEAKER_03 45:00

Oh. I think some of the the the places I got to go to.

SPEAKER_05 45:06

Um I I've been almost everywhere in the world there's an oil well I've I've been, not everywhere, but I've never gotten to go to Russia. I always wanted to go to Russia, but I've I've been all over South America and Canada and uh Australia and uh a little bit to the Middle East. And so the the I remember the places most most of all. Uh I got to see parts of the world that I would have never seen before. Uh and we always tried to enjoy that when the when the job was over, when we finally capped the well and uh were released and headed back to Houston.

SPEAKER_01 45:56

We it would always take a couple of days and let's get shit-faced in this foreign place.

SPEAKER_05 46:05

And then go see some part of the country that uh that uh that no that you wouldn't otherwise get to see. Uh I'm I'm I have a a photograph that uh in my office that's very dear to me of my best friend and Coots. They were on a job in uh Egypt, and when the job was over, they went and rode camels.

SPEAKER_00 46:30

Oh, how fun.

SPEAKER_05 46:30

And they dressed up in all the garb and uh they had all the they looked like Bedouins and they were riding the camels.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

They went from coveralls to the different kind of cotton people.

SPEAKER_05 46:41

Trevor Burrus, Jr. They got their pictures taken on camels and uh it w is quite extraordinary, and I loved both those photographs.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

So now you've seen I mean, having seen some of the biggest blowouts in history, I believe Kuwait was the biggest blowout. That was over 700 wells. When you arrived there, what was that site like?

SPEAKER_05 47:00

Well, they were production wells.

SPEAKER_01 47:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 47:03

And it's important to separate and recognize that a production well doesn't have a rig on it.

SPEAKER_00 47:12

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_05 47:12

So what the Iraqis did uh before they fled Kuwait is they they went around to all these well heads and they would wrap the wellheads with C4 explosives. Oh my goodness. And then they would back off and they would set up detonate them, yeah. And it would blow the wellhead off and set the well on fire. So uh Kuwait was magnificent to look at and see because there were so many wells on fire. It was uh the country was virtually the first three months, uh the c the country was covered in black. Just the sky was black. Uh even working during the day, it was like working at night. But in reality, uh because uh Kuwait was production wells, they were pretty easy to cap. And so uh some most of them were, some were more difficult. Had the Iraqis put the C4 explosives in the right place, uh we'd probably it would have taken us three or four years to put all those wells out.

SPEAKER_00 48:29

Three or four years.

SPEAKER_05 48:30

Yeah. Instead they wrapped the C4 in the the best place they could for well-controlled experts to cap to. And so um those six hundred and forty-two wells were all capped in just seven months. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 48:49

Seven still those seven months. I mean, how long does a single well job typically take? It depends on the size of it, right? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_05 48:55

On a production well like that, it would um some really good crews, some really good teams like with Red Adair and Boots and Coots and uh Wall Well Control, they could cap two or three wells a a day.

SPEAKER_01 49:10

Aaron Ross Powell Oh, wow. So with that many of the things that they just got really good at it.

SPEAKER_05 49:16

But now a drilling rig is a whole different story. When a a drilling rig is melted around the well head and they they can take weeks and weeks and weeks to get ready to cap. And uh so it's a different beast, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 49:32

Aaron Ross Powell So you go on uh different jobs, I imagine, with different teams, but sometimes it's the same guys overlapping, and so you start to build a relationship. Tell me about the the guys that you worked alongside with.

SPEAKER_05 49:48

Well when I was when I was with Boots and Coots Incorporated, which is a a different country a different company than it is today. Today, Boots and Coots is owned by Halliburton and as a m big multi-international company with thousands of employees and uh but when I was with Boots and Coots, there was only eight of us.

SPEAKER_01 50:15

Oh, okay. So it was a small team.

SPEAKER_05 50:17

And uh it was a very small group. There were and that eight included our dear secretary Sharon, who was like our mother. She always took care she took care of all of us. She got our plane tickets and uh so there were eight of us, including Sharon, and we were all very close. Um we would go on jobs with each other. A lot of times we would go on jobs. We would get used to being together and a lead-off wealth control expert would choose his team, and he would either he would choose somebody in the office to go with him, and then he would call me and say, I would like for you to come and be with So we were very close. We we uh We had parties together and we we shared this common bond with each other that um we knew we could count on each other in a in a bad situation, and that's very important. You have to uh the man you're working to with, you don't when something bad happens, you don't want to see him running away. You want to see him there ready to pull you out and help you the best you can. And so there was a a bond, a a trust.

SPEAKER_01 51:46

Um were there any situations you remember where that happened, where you relied on each other and and you were able to save each other's lives. You mentioned being pulled by the nape of your neck so that you didn't fall into a 10-foot hole.

SPEAKER_05 52:02

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, I I remember doing some dumb things sometimes that's like I would make a mistake like falling in a hole or I would uh put something where it shouldn't be, and it would get caught up in the blowout and go blow into the stratosphere. And I was learning. I would and so I would always get we ha we would always have a post-day meeting, we would go to the bar and get drunk, and the older guys that that were helping me become a better well-controlled hand, they would always help me and lecture me and like I said, sometimes eat my ass out about it. But um Yeah, you know, all the guys that I worked with were younger than I was, and they were always bigger than I was. Um my two best friends, David Thompson and Wayne Lansford, were um David was 6'3 and weighed 230, and Wayne Lansford was 6'4 and weighed 240 or 50, and uh I always worried about them going down and if I was gonna be strong enough to pull them out of harm's way. And um I would lay awake at night sometimes worried about that. I would never worry about getting hurt myself. I was always worried about doing the right thing for my teammates. But I got through all that and fortunately nothing ever happened where I had to do that.

SPEAKER_01 53:42

But um, were there any funny memories, right? You guys obviously get to the bar that night and there's lessons learned. Were there any where you just give each other shit?

SPEAKER_05 53:51

Oh, Becky Trevor Burrus, Jr. We don't have we don't have the time to talk about. We we always had a good time. I mean, it was very dangerous, and I think that's the thing about wealth control is um at the end of the day, uh I remember all often coming back to the motel room at the end of the day and taking a shower and just collapsing on the bed and and saying to myself, Jesus Christ, how did I how did I survive that? Holy shit. I shouldn't have done this, I'm glad I did that. Wow, I'm lucky to be alive. Okay, let's go get drunk. And drinking was part of it. It was um it was part of the camaraderie. It was uh part of the r relaxation mode. It was kind of a celebration to be able to go to the bar and have uh a couple of drinks with the buddies you risked your life with all day and uh kid around and joke and uh it was Made it through. Made it through. And then the next morning we'd get up and go do it again. So yeah, I have many, many hilarious stories that uh I've tried to write them all down and keep them for for history's sake.

SPEAKER_01 55:24

Well, on that note, if the viewers are curious about those stories and would like to learn more about the oil industry and some of Michael's adventures, visit oilystuff.com. So Thank you, Becky. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 55:36

I write a lot of stories about you do, and they're great. I've read them. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 55:40

Um so you you've collected through that experience and thereafter, you may have the largest collection of oil well firefighter footage in the world. Some of it has been shot in eight millimeter dating back to even the 1920s. How did that collection start? Yes.

SPEAKER_05 55:56

Well, I I was so proud to uh be a well-control hand that um and such a student of the history of the well control profession, that I started writing the history. I I researched a lot of the old oil well firefighters before Red, and uh got to be friends with their family. One particular family in Houston, um, the father of Oilwell firefighting, the kind of the man that started all of it, was a man named Myron Kinley. And uh I got to be friends with his family after he passed away, and they had boxes and boxes of old eight-millimeter film that was shot on old reels, and uh they uh let me copy all of it, and I copied all of it and put it put it in digital format, and uh these were jobs that Myron Kinley went around all over the world in Iran, Iraq. Uh it's amazing footage. I I have footage of Myron Kinley uh working on a mule in the early twenties. Uh I have some footage of him getting hurt badly, and he finished the job on a mule. He rode the mule and pointed at people and told him what to do.

SPEAKER_01 57:32

And uh not even a vehicle.

SPEAKER_05 57:35

No, no, no, no. It was before. Uh so uh I uh I'm very f protective of that. I have all that stashed away some s and when I'm gone someday, I'll give that to a museum because it's um it's quite extraordinary. And uh and and also I got a lot of my friends in Kuwait took a lot of really good photographs of of Kuwait that I collected over the years, and I gathered those photos up and printed them and framed them and put a exhibit together called the the uh fires of Kuwait. And I would load all these photographs in the back of my suburban and drive to Jackson, Mississippi, or Houston, Texas, or New Mexico, and I would set this exhibit up for a week and I'd show these photographs to people that had signage about what each will so I I enjoyed doing that because it was sharing uh an experience. And I eventually donated that exhibit to the George H. Bush Presidential Library in College Station.

SPEAKER_04 59:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 59:01

I gave him all my photographs and all the signage, and um uh that was a a big thing to me. And uh I never met him, but this is the truth that he when I gave him the donation, it was such a big deal to him. Uh he called my office.

SPEAKER_00 59:21

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_05 59:22

The president, the ex-president of the United States. And my old secretary that's been with me for 45 years.

SPEAKER_00 59:29

Debbie.

SPEAKER_05 59:30

Debbie answered the phone and and he said, This is President George Bush's mic there. I would like to speak to him. And Debbie said, Oh, yeah, right. Said, Come on, David, quit doing this. You know, I know who you are. And and she thought it was your best friend, David. Yeah. And the president said, No, this is really So I did get to speak to him. You did? Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_01 59:53

So she said, okay, and put it in.

SPEAKER_05 59:55

Yes, and he it it was real. And there is an exhibit in his library in college station that I actually curated about Kuwait that has my name on it, and I'm very proud of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:10

It's been there. It's beautiful.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:11

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: I'm very, very proud of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:13

As you should be.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:14

So um I I write a lot of history about the well control profession, and I have a lot of old film, and uh I print a lot of that on my blog.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:25

I was gonna say you still actively contribute a lot of that knowledge and some of those photos and videos there on Boily stuff.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:32

Trevor Burrus, Jr. A few days ago, no a few weeks ago, I had a couple of guys, young guys that work for well control. I introduced myself and they both said, Yeah, I know who you are. I read your stuff all the time. That's really cool. Actually, everything you write, I learned something from about the way the old guys used to do it. So anyway.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:51

Yeah. As you continue to write oily stuff, what do you feel like is the message that you're sharing that hasn't been put on record yet about the oil industry?

SPEAKER_05 1:01:00

Aaron Ross Powell Well, the well control industry is dying. Back in the good old days when Mother Earth still had some pressure, uh she's all pooped out now pretty much.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:14

We've pooped her out, I think. We've done a lot of that.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:17

Aaron Ross Powell She's all pooped out. But uh back in the old days, we would go on a hundred jobs a year, maybe. And nowadays uh most of the companies that are still in the well control business uh they're if they go on 10 fires a year, it's really something. So I'm trying to uh keep the history alive, perpetuate the history, because it's so incredibly unique to me.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:49

The men that were in it are so colorful, and they were all quite famous. Uh Red Adair was John Wayne played him in a movie, right? Yes. Yes. It w uh it was a great movie and it's called Hellfighters.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:06

Hellfighter, yes. Yeah, Hellfighter.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:07

I hope you'll see that because it it's kind of hokey. It was done in 1963, but it's very much along the lines of Red Adair's life, and John Wayne played Red Adair, and my two bosses, Boots and Coots, helped stage all the fires. And they were very involved in in the production of it. And uh Red and Boots and Coots and John Wayne got to be good friends, and w they were always drinking together and days they couldn't film, and it was uh there's a lot of really funny stories about all that, but um it's good.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:42

So you've you've recently uh retired, and I would say retired, but you're still very consultative with oily stuff and with other requests that come in. But you've spent more than 60 years in the industry and you've recently sold those companies. What did it feel like to finally maybe exhale a little bit and get to take a step back?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:05

It's been hard.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:09

I essentially worked almost every day of my life since I was 13 years old, honestly. Uh well, I took a lot of time off and did some fun things, but um it's been very hard for me to be retired. And I'm still kind of adjusting to it. And um there are parts of the oil business that I don't miss at all. I don't miss having to stay up all night in the freezing rain or getting up when the phone rings and having to drive. I don't miss any of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:46

Aaron Ross Powell, you paid your dues there, though.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:48

I think so. Yeah. You know, I I was thinking last night that I was probably fifty-five, sixty years old before I got a learned how to sleep.

unknown 1:04:02

Aaron Ross Powell?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:03

Yeah, because I was it just so routine to be up.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:06

I was always getting up in the middle of the night, either drilling a well myself or going on a blowout or worried about something and couldn't sleep. And so finally I'm learning how to sleep. But um uh yeah, I'm still drawn to it and pulled to it. I feel like I have a lot of knowledge that I still need to pass on. And um the young man that bought all my production, um I'm set to take care of him the best I can.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:39

I want to And what was it that made you pass that production on to him and not to a Chevron or a Conaco or a, you know. Because you had the opportunity to sell it to a big box oil company, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:04:55

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, because he he reminded me of me. He's one of the finest young men I've ever known. And he he's probably 35 or 36. He works harder than anybody. He works almost as hard as I did.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:11

Aaron Ross Powell Not quite as much, but almost.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:13

He's dedicated, he's honest. He's kind of the son that I never had. So um I had a chance to sell all my oil and gas production to for a lot more money than I did. But I remember asking him one time if what he wanted to do with his life when he knew I was getting ready to retire, and he said, I want to do exactly what you did. And that was it for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:42

So I ended up How many years had he worked for you?

SPEAKER_05 1:05:44

Aaron Ross Powell He had worked for me for twelve years. He started when he was in his early twenties.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:50

Aaron Ross Powell Michael, that's saying a lot because a lot of people in your position would have tried to take the extra dollar, but you sold with integrity.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:57

Thank you for that. I he's the finest young man you'll ever meet. And um he has a beautiful family. He's gonna be immensely successful, more so than I am. Um what's better than that? People gave me a chance. So I wanted to give him a chance.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:20

Aaron Ross Powell And I love that. That's rare these days.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:23

So I financed it. And he he pays me every month, and I didn't want to give it to him. I wanted him to earn it. But he has problems and he calls me and he needs help and I'm always there for him. And we're like family now. He is my family.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:43

So well I would say be careful what you wish for, because you know you said retirement's been a little bit tough, but you're still very consultative because you do have a lot of expertise and knowledge to share. And if coming out of this anyone is interested to contact Michael for some of that knowledge. Again, oilystuff.com.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:59

Thank you. But sure, thank you for saying that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:07

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: What do you want people to understand about the oil field, about the people who work it that they probably don't?

SPEAKER_05 1:07:15

You know, I think you said it perfectly in the very beginning. I I um and I really compliment you for that, is that um we we need it. It's nasty stuff, but the world needs it. We're we're headed in the right direction. We're moving towards wind and solar and um EVs, all of that is very important because we're running out of oil and gas. But until until until we get perfectly transitioned to electric vehicles, uh w we're gonna need transportation fuel, we're gonna need oil and gas badly. And people that protest and say they we don't need oil, we don't need fossil fuels, I think they need to kind of rethink that. And so um my advice would be to be patient with us. My industry, we're getting better, we're getting cleaner, we're getting safer, but you still need us. And uh we're gonna be there for you. We're gonna try to go as long as we can make it last as long as we can and keep it as clean as possible.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:42

So what a blessing you are.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:45

No, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:46

Thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:48

Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:49

My final question for you is you are highly recommended. You are someone highly recommended. So with that, what is one recommendation you would pass on? What is one thing that you could share from your life as a recommendation that you would want those watching to know?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:05

Never quit. Never give up. Work hard.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:11

Um man, I've I've got more broken bones and I've survived cancer twice. I've I I've just put your head down and work hard. And if you do and you treat people honorably, pay your bills, treat people the way you want to be treated, you're gonna do great. You're gonna have a good life. Because it it's um not so much what you end up with, it's kind of how you came by it that really matters.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:51

How you came by it is probably contributing to who you end up with, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:09:55

That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:57

Thank you, Michael.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:58

Thank you, Becky.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:59

I'm so glad you came in. Thank you for your life story.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:02

I'm just thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:03

Honored by the No, thank you for the support. Genuinely, your life story is incredible.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:07

I'll wish you the best of success in whatever you do. You're uh very special to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:13

So, how do I know Mike Shellman? He's been my stepfather for most of my life. I've heard pieces of this story over the years at dinner tables, over a shuffleboard with a beer, in the quiet way he sometimes mentions something and then doesn't. But I'd never asked him to tell it whole. Thank you for listening to it with me. If this conversation meant something to you, share it, and then go start one of your own. Talk to someone unexpected, ask a question you normally wouldn't. You have no idea what story is sitting right next to you. I'm Becky Perry. This is the Highly Recommended.