I was offshore when I realized the industry was beyond any foreseeable recovery. We were part of a multi-well workover project in Angola, requiring twelve-hour shifts on different production platforms. One slickline crew replaced gas lift valves, while my coworker and I were the wireline crew which logged for hydrocarbon saturation.

The main offshore platform had production facilities to remove solids, separate liquid and gas, flare excess, and prepare the different fluids for their respective pipelines back to shore. It required a village to run this platform, and the village lived and slept, five weeks at a time, on their platform. The main processing platform didn’t have any extra accommodations for workover projects. The company sent all temporary employees and subcontractors to the “alternative living quarters” on a satellite platform. The ALQ consisted of shipping containers with four bunk beds, dirty linens, and rudimentary plumbing. I hated those accommodations, and preferred exercise to the shipping container.

It was mid-December, and instead of waiting for New Year’s resolutions, my coworkers and I constructed a makeshift gym in the storage area. We freed up exercise space by consolidating scaffolding to one side of the storage area, and placing non-perishable foods in the fridge. Part of me considered the waste of refrigerating non-perishable food. Hydrocarbons produced and electricity generated, to be spent on unnecessary cooling. The magnitude of the waste felt insignificant with the crash in commodity prices. Oil and gas were cheaper every day, and I’d rather burn energy than be cooped up in our shipping container rooms.

There is little light pollution off the coast of Angola at night. The flaring from platforms on the horizon quickly dissipated, and left a clear view of the stars. I stared at the sky for a moment, searched for familiarity in the stars. The glittering blackness reminded me of the High Plains. My legs were sore from the evening workout as I took the stairs back down to the ALQ. After I passed through the metal door, my phone connected to the wireless network and automatically downloaded emails.

Top executives in the corporation I worked for exercised their stock options. The email regarded this as good news. I took the contrarian position. The stock plummeted thirty percent in the past week, and would likely continue. There was more oil supply than demand. There were more oilfield service companies than demand. Now was not a good time to buy. Instead of benevolence or prudence, the corporation must have viewed this as a necessary sacrifice to shore up the stock price. Board members contributed their pound of flesh to appease investors. Such sacrifices to drive up prices, replacing fundamentals. This industry was fucked.

During the days of slickline work, the other wireline guy and I would go fishing off the edge of the platform. The regular workers dedicated to production operations on the platform shared their fishing lines and lures, only asking us to donate good catches to the kitchen in return. The ocean contained copious amounts of small blue and yellow fish, a handful of red snappers, and one dark barracuda which swam only near the supply boat’s landing.

Our first attempt at fishing used our lunch scraps as bait. Only the blue-yellow fish would bite at our meal, while the red snappers swam around the line uninterested. I caught a smaller fish first. As I reeled it up the dozen meters from water to the production deck, I considered the best way to kill it. To preserve any meat, I let it gasp for oxygen. The fish’s blue and yellow scales reflected prismatic in the sun as the animal asphyxiated on the deck. The chef on board refused to cook this blue-yellow fish, instead telling us to use the carcass as bait for the red snapper.

An asphyxiated fish does not bleed, which was necessary to attract a red snapper. I pierced a stronger hook, made out of spare slickline, through the smaller fish, and the fish blood ran down my wrist and forearm. I still remember the other wireline guy frowning in disgust as I threw the bait back to the ocean, fish blood splattering on the railing. A red snapper immediately seized upon it. At first, I imagined myself the hero of the day, hauling in red snapper for the cook and other workers to eat. But the line snapped microseconds after the red snapper took the blue-yellow fish. I repeated this process of catching smaller fish to use as bait without help from the other guy. He had no stomach to see fish cannibalize each other.

The platform’s crane operator obsessed over the barracuda at the supply boat’s landing, and referred to the fish (in his broken English) as “the monster”. The crane operator tried the same technique for the barracuda, whispering foreign words to himself while fishing. No amount of smaller fish could ever entice the barracuda. It always remained visible, an arm’s length underneath the water’s surface, darting between steel jackets, casing, and pipelines. If our line couldn’t withstand a snapper, what hope was there in catching the monster?

The company laid me off after the reservoir evaluation project. No other jobs wanted an engineer with petroleum experience on their résumé. I was a flight risk back to a better paying industry as soon as the market recovered. I suppose they were right, in the end. For the next year, my pursuit was higher education.

I emailed two professors at two different schools, explained my undergrad, my recent standardized test scores, and my work experience as an oilfield engineer. Two schools: one lower-rated, safe, probable admission, and the other in the same metro area I lived in, more prestigious, unlikely admission.

The lesser school’s professor replied immediately, saying, “Our ideal candidates are students with double majors or with a history of research funding. We received four times the normal amount of applications this year and only have positions for ten percent. You should focus on other schools, for which your research interests and your background might fit better.”

This lower tier school shocked me. Without doubt, others had the same idea to train up during the downturn. Grad school would be more competitive than I assumed. The professor from the more prestigious engineering program emailed me back, catching me by surprise. Maybe because I already lived in the metro area. The professor said she wanted to meet me for coffee close to campus.

I drove to the coffee shop she mentioned, which was a quiet walk in the shade down the hill from her department. I stepped up to the café’s door, decorated with diversity slogans, rainbow flags, and promises of safety and inclusion. Once inside, I stood by the door for fifteen minutes until I saw the professor walk up. She was short, and dressed more like a high school art teacher than a petroleum engineering professor.

“Dr. Singh?”

“J?”

After exchanging pleasantries, we walked to the counter and ordered our drinks. I insisted on paying, and at that moment she also picked out a snack. We collected our items and sat down to discuss grad school.

“Soo . . .” she began, “What are your research interests?”

I regurgitated what I already provided via email: “Adsorbed state physics. I studied chemical engineering, and worked as a field engineer in formation evaluation. I believe unconventional resources aren’t adequately described by current volumetric models.”

“Yes, I agree. Current industry practices seem to be . . . inadequate. We have a few students researching that subject, one particularly bright woman from China, would you like to meet her?“

She couldn’t recall any free days off the top of her head, yet promised she would email me once she looked at her calendar. After discussing research interests, the conversation turned to my international work experience.

“What was your favorite part about working overseas?”

“On slow days, we would go fishing.” I thought back to the barracuda, the monster almost within reach that we could never catch. I thought about the blue-yellow fish, asphyxiated, pierced, cast from the production deck, sunlight reflecting on scales as it fell several meters before landing in the water. Would this professor understand what I was talking about, or would she turn away from the idea of fish blood running down my hands?

Dr. Singh ignored most of my emails. I wrote to her five different times, and only one of them she acknowledged, saying there would be a more substantive email from her soon.

There was one last attempt at reaching her. I decided to visit Dr. Singh’s office uninvited, catching her by surprise. As I walked along the campus, I searched for familiarity, and thought back to the days spent hunting. The older buildings—tiled roofs and solid stone—were capable of opening windows for rifles. The modern buildings, many sponsored by oil and gas companies, had giant glass panes, but no ability to open windows. I walked up to her office and noticed Dr. Singh had political decorations on her door. An environmental slogan in particular caught my eye. I always knew academia was isolated from the economic hardships of industry, but supporting environmentalists seemed too far detached from reality, bordering on malfeasance. I should have been more suspicious of these institutions of research.

She wasn’t in. I took the hint and spent the downturn as a ski bum instead.