Dale Whitcombe

I worked production in southern Alberta for eighteen years before I started writing about it. Most of that was water: separators, skim tanks, injection pumps, and a great deal of time spent either waiting at a disposal facility or arguing with one.

What got me writing was noticing how much of what new operators need to know is not written down anywhere useful. It gets passed on in trucks and at the gate, which works until the person who knows it retires. Meanwhile the written material is either a vendor brochure or a directive, and neither tells a twenty-three-year-old why the facility just turned their load away.

So I write the field half of this site: what happens at receiving, why loads fail, how tank storage goes wrong, what a walk-around should actually look at. Priya writes the regulatory half and edits mine, which is the right way round, because my instinct is to describe what operators do and hers is to check what they are required to do. Those are not always the same thing and the gap is worth naming.

One thing I will keep repeating: segregation. Nearly every expensive waste problem I saw in eighteen years began with two things going into one container. It costs nothing to prevent and a great deal to fix.

I should be clear that I am not a professional engineer. Nothing I write is engineering advice, and where a decision needs a P.Eng., it needs a P.Eng.

Credentials and experience

• Eighteen years in production operations and water handling in southern Alberta
• Worked at and alongside oilfield waste receiving and disposal facilities
• Writes the field-practice and facility-operations guides on this site
• Reviews every guide for whether it matches what actually happens on a lease
• Is not a professional engineer and does not provide engineering advice