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- What are the other names for the rig boss?
- What does everybody have to wear while visiting a drilling rig
or working on it?
- What is a rig floor?
- What is a drawworks?
- What does the loud screech coming from friction brake mean?

Introduction

If you are interested in oilwell drilling, a good way to learn
about it is to visit a drilling rig. A first-time visit can be educational as
well as confusing. Most drilling rigs are large and noisy and, at times,
the people who work on them perform actions that don’t make much
sense to an uninitiated observer. A drilling rig has many pieces of
equipment and most of it is huge. But a rig has only one purpose: to
drill a hole in the ground. Although the rig itself is big, the hole it
drills is usually not very big — usually less than a foot (30
centimeters) in diameter by the time it reaches final depth. The skinny
hole it drills, however, can be deep: often thousands of feet or
hundreds of meters. The hole’s purpose is to tap an oil and gas
reservoir, which more often than not lies buried deeply in the earth.
Although rigs operate both on land and sea – "offshore" is the
oilfield term – a land rig is best for a first visit. In most cases, land rigs
are easier to get to because you can drive to them. Getting to offshore
rigs is more complicated, because they often work many miles
(kilometres) from land and you need a boat or a helicopter to reach
them.
When driving to a land rig, you'll probably see part of it long
before you actually arrive at the site, especially if the terrain is not too
hilly or wooded. One of the most distinctive parts of a drilling rig is its
tall, strong structural tower called a "mast" or a "derrick". Masts and
derricks are tall and strong. They are strong because they have to

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