Larry "Doug" Young
I started my oilfield career in December 1975 during Christmas vacation while still in High School . I hired on to Noble Drilling rigging up a rig near Pyote, Texas in 10" of snow and wearing my dad's size 13 steel toed boots, a size and a half too big. At the end of 3 weeks I said there is no way I will work in the oilfield the rest of my life. 3 weeks later I got that first paycheck for nearly $400 and I was hooked. After graduating I took a job for a farmer / rancher north of Seminole. One day while deep breaking a field I saw a truck hauling a blue dog house headed west and wondered where it was going. I got a call from a driller later that week and was asked if I was interested in going to work for Noble Drilling near Albuquerque, New Mexico. I did not have a car so he and the rest of the crew picked me up in Seminole, Texas and we headed west in 3 cars. Saved enough money during the 2 wells that I made a down payment on a brand new 1976 Ford pickup. We then moved the rig to Arnett, Oklahoma, where West Texas rigs should not go for the winter. Broke out working derricks on that job and the first trip out of hole it was 13 degrees and wind was blowing snow sideways with a chill factor of 22 below, really hated Oklahoma. After those wells were finished we moved rig to Laredo, Texas and drilled high pressure gas wells with 19 to 21 pound hematite mud. In June of 1977 I had doubled over enough with other crews that I got 4 days off to travel back to Seminole, Get Married and move Gail to an Apartment that I had rented in Laredo. After a year there we moved to Fort Stockton where I got my first drilling job. We bought a trailer house because back then Noble paid to move and set up drillers trailers when rig moved from area to area. We moved from there to Duncan, Oklahoma where I found out that a hard rock driller should slow down on trips in that Oklahoma shale country. Drilled many wells in Central and Western Oklahoma from 3000' to 22,000' using all types of mud and seeing all types of hole conditions. We lived in 3 different towns in Oklahoma over the next 15 years working for Noble Drilling. Was fortunate enough to run one of first land Top Drive System when they came out. The most famous well I was involved in was the Apache Key well outside of Allison Texas where the well blew part of all 3 strings of casing out of hole and they dug a giant hole to install a wellhead. We rigged up on edge of the crater and drilled the relief well using old technologies like wireline steerable not MWD. Noble Drilling moved all operations to offshore and sold all land rigs so I took my retirement and hired on to Helmrich and Payne, worked in the Austin chalk drilling long horizontals under balanced and producing enough oil while drilling to pay out the wells before going into production. Gail and I moved back home to West Texas where our family was. After a few years with H & P, I transferred to their overseas operation and worked in Trinidad for a year and in Venezuela for 2 years drilling 27,000' to 28,000'wells with casing string up to 1.2 million pounds. While on my days off back in the states I went with a friend of mine to a drilling rig outside of Jal, New Mexico, He was going to talk to a guy about hiring out consulting for him, His name was Randy Ford. Randy and I talked and he was interested in me but I told him I had a job but could do some consulting on my days off for him if he liked. For the next 8 months I worked 28 days in Venezuela and would work 20 of my days off for Randy while he was in Midland drumming up business for his consulting firm. After 8 months of that we finally had enough work for me to leave H & P and own part of the consulting firm. It was tough because I had never quit a job and was moving up in H & P but I enjoyed working with Randy and thought this is going to be a good opportunity for me and my family. So in 1997 I went to work full time for R. K. Ford and Associates and stayed there until January of 2014. In December of 2013 Randy passed away and it took all the wind out of our company. So in January we formed a new consulting firm called Hardline Consulting Group, So if you look closely Randell's name is in our new name. We did not lose any of our consulting team or office staff and plan to move forward and become the number one Permian Basin Consulting team.
Company
Hardline Consulting Group is an oilfield consulting company providing the oil and gas industry with experienced, dependable Independent Drilling, Completion, and Workover consultants to choose from, who will supply our clients with excellent drilling management services with particular detail to regulatory, safety, environmental, project cost control and technical issues.
Trust in our company to provide you with the right solutions for your daily operations. Our team is dedicated to give you complete and well-rounded resources that are conducive to a prosperous business.
Hardline Consulting Group is committed to customer satisfaction and maintaining long lasting relationships with our clients and independent consultants. We plan to assure our clients of a successful completion of their project by working together through communication between our management, independent consultants, and our customers. Hardline Consulting Group considers customer satisfaction its highest priority.
Independent Consultants
"EXPERIENCE IS THE DIFFERENCE"
Hardline Consulting Group, LLC is made up of well experienced independent drilling, completion, and workover consultants. Our drilling consultants have a substantial amount of experience in all phases of drilling, including horizontal, directional, underbalanced, air drilling, high angle wells, and H2S environments. In addition, completion consultants are experienced in oil or gas, multi-stage frac execution, rod pumping, other artificial lift and high-pressure gas.
Safety is top priority with Hardline Consulting Group. The Independent consultants' training that enable's them to recognize the many safety and environmental issues that will enable the customer to save time and money. All consultants are trained in Safety Awareness and carry a current Well Control Card.