Hello,

I have been in Tengiz Kazakhstan for about 2-1/2 weeks, have 17 days to go (traveling home on August 4th). I took an internal transfer with Chevron because 1) was bored with my previous job in the Refinery, 2) could not get promoted staying in the Richmond Refinery, and 3) Karen and I decided that since I work ~ 60 hours week I might as well work a few more hours, and then get a break from work. This position is what is called a 28 / 28 rotation where you work for 28 days straight and then are off for the same amount. You have to travel on your off time – essentially will be off 25 days straight with no work responsibility.

Attached are copies of emails I sent my family over the last two weeks. I have added a few photos to the last document – these are NOT vacation pictures. I am still adjusting to both Kazakhstan and a rotation type job (work 7 days a week, 12 hours a day except Sunday where we work 6). The prize is getting to spend the time at home for 3+ weeks at a time (six times per year) without any work responsibilities. This first rotation (or hitch) required me to spend 5 weeks in Kazakhstan – in the future each rotation is 4 weeks. I will be home in Orinda for most of August, heading back here on August 30th (takes two days to get here).

I am unable to Skype but have spoken with Karen and the kids every day by phone, usually twice a day. Tengiz time is 12 hours different from West Coast daylight savings time. So when I am eating dinner I check in with them while they are getting out of bed; and before I go to work I try to catch them while they are sitting down to dinner.

If you want to see where I am physically located try google maps – enter TCOV (Tengizchevroil Village Kazakhstan). TCOV is where people working here used to live and work – we now live in Shanyrak Village (SV) which is just north of TCOV. If you look north of TCOV you will see SV, round silver buildings with red spokes. The red spokes are the living quarters – the silver domes are the common areas. Our offices are still in TCOV – I have a “corner” office with a view of train tracks. The actual oil processing facilities (where all the money is made) are about 20 kilometers south of SV (follow the yellow road south).

This just in – Karen broke her foot Friday night – if anyone would like to check in on her and the family it would be greatly appreciated. When I spoke to her this Sunday morning (her Saturday evening) she was in good spirits – I believe it was the pain medicine kicking in.

Drop me a note – would love to hear from you.

Marc

Attached to this email were three documents: these documents were copy/pasted to create the next three postings.

Hello Nieces, Nephews, Brother-in-Law and Father-in-Law,

All my love to you and your children. I have heard how Carson has some medical issues – I am wishing mightly that it all works out.

Sorry that I have not included you on my emails to my immediate family, have copied Robin and Joanie. Zack, Grant, Andrew and Claudia seem to be handling my absence well – it helps that it is summer and they have various activities / camps as well as some downtime to hang out. May be different when they are all in school – we will find out soon enough.

I will be home from August 4th (should land at around noon tiime but expect to be pretty tired as I leave Kazakhstan at 6 am that day (meaning 6 pm August 3rd your time)). I believe Lauren, Jamie and Rose are coming down that weekend and the following week – please let us know so we can plan the August Birthday Bash. Grant returns from a sleep away camp on Friday August 5th afternoon – then leaves the next morning to go to Las Vegas / Sedona with Cooper, Bruce and Dick. I believe Grant returns on Monday August 15th. So if we want to include Grant we need to do it the evening of August 5th – does that work? OK if it does not, maybe the following weekend? Would Tina/Kevin, Lauren/Jamie, and Ali please reply to this message so we can make some plans – Zack is very busy this summer so we need to tie him down too. Really looking forward to seeing you.

Below is a note I sent to a wide group of friends. In some ways this place feels like a well run prison – you badge in and out everywhere, including to get food; you take the bus everywhere you go; not allowed to drive a car; no town nearby to visit. But it is not bad, very safe, people are friendly though not much chance to socialize since we are working all the time. I don’t mind the work, enjoy meeting new people, but really look forward to getting home.

See you soon,

Uncle Marc

Attached to this email were three documents: these docuements were copy/pasted to create the next three postings.

Hi everyone – here are some notes from the last week.

8 July

Differences in Tengiz:

The date starts with the day instead of the month:

•  8 July, 2011 instead of July 8, 2011
•  Tengiz = 8/7/11
•  USA = 7/8/11

• The wall calendars start with Monday instead of Sunday.  The Outlook calendars are set-up the same way.
• It is Coca-Cola Light, not Diet Coke.

Company meetings are different, must be much more patient. Larger meetings have a translator participating. The Kazak nationals speak at a very low volume, in Russian. The translator speaks quietly as well. Combine this with the air conditioners at full blast because it is soo hot – I can hear and understand very little at the meetings (so far).

This assignment is not very social. We work long hours – minimum is 6 am to 6 pm; many people work another hour or so on either end of the day. Thare not many good places to meet socially – a small bar but it you don’t drink …. It is so hot outside no one is out at picnic tables hanging out. There are also few Expats here, probably less than 20% of the total workforce, most seem to keep to themselves. Looks like everyone is counting the days until they go home.

Long trains, about 100 cars, go by my office window several times a day. They honk (sound the train horn) a number of times as there is a road crossing not too far from our building. Kinda of annoying. But it is the sound of money – these are rail cars filled with crude oil taking it to market.

The processing plants are a 30 minute bus ride from the offices we work in. Going to a one hour meeting out at the plant takes ~ 2-1/2 hours because you must walk to the bus stop (about a 7 minute walk); after the meeting you have to walk back to the place that dropped you off. You can schedule a taxi but there are a limited number and you must schedule at least the day before. The advantage of taking a taxi is they wait for you and you can be driven back to the office immediately after the meeting, even if the meeting runs long.

It has been very hot here, almost a week now with temperatures breaking 110 F each day. Right now it is 7 pm and the temperature is 115 F. This morning, at 6 am, it was a balmy 84 F. Two days ago it was 99 F at 6 am. There are also a lot of mosquitoes but they don’t seem so bad the last couple days – maybe they can’t survive the heat. Each room (offices and residential rooms) have an individual air conditioner. They also have large outdoor common AC units for the common areas in buildings. I heard that they overheat at 40 C (~105 F) and shutdown. Well it has easily broken 105 F every day since I arrived. I run the air conditioner full blast in my room whenever I am in there; about 3 am in the morning it gets cool enough for me to get under the blanket (but I don’t turn off the air conditioner).

I have a computer in my office and in my room. I check my yahoo email usually twice a day. Please send me notes telling me what you are doing – I miss you. After dinner I read in my room. I still have a couple magazines that I have not read, plus books on my Kindle. I think I have at least two books left on my kindle after this one.

Working here is very routine driven – get up every morning about 5 am; get out of my room about 5:35 – stop by the canteen to pickup breakfast to go (two eggs made like an omelet without anything in them, yogurt and fruit (options are oranges and apples. I then either walk to the office or take the bus – takes about the same amount of time – in around 5:55 am. People take an hour break somewhere between 11:30 am and 1 pm – some people take the whole hour, some do not. Most people go to a canteen that is in TCOV – same type of food like at SV. Then people work until 6 pm, many people stay until 6:30 or so. Then you go back to SV, get dinner (which I grab) and eat in my room, check email and call home, read for a while, and try to turn in by 9 pm. And then do it all again. In just two weeks I have found that the days run together – need to check the calendar at least twice per day to know what day it is (and figure out how many days until I get to go home).

My office is on the second floor, on the left (in the first picture). My office is bigger than my living quarters – has two windows and two air conditioning units!

10 July

Went swimming today with Jon Drogin – he showed me the ropes. Many things here have very specific steps that must be followed – not sure if it is the USSR influence or the way it has always been. Anyway, you go into the pool building and there is a receptionist. You badge in through an IN card reader and leave your badge on the desk. You then go over to some benches, take off your shoes and socks, and put on your sandals – everyone leaves their shoes under the benches (two rows facing each other. You then go back to the desk and the receptionist gives you a towel and a locker key, connected to a wrist band. You go into the locker room, change and then take a shower before you can go into the pool. After your shower you exit through the corridor to the pool, leave your sandals along a wall, step through a small foot basin, and then exit to the pool. After swimming you take another shower, get dressed and then return your key to the receptionist. You go over to the bench, dry your feet and put your shoes on. Then you drop your towel in a dirty towel bin, pick up your badge from the receptionist (she has it out for you) and then swipe it across the OUT card reader.

I swam 20 pool lengths (I guess that is 10 laps) – Jon says this is a ½ kilometer. The first four I swam up and back, then stopped. After that I had to stop and rest after each length. My heart rate got up there, about 120 when I checked. Jon swam 66 lengths or 1 mile; wonder how many months (if ever) it will take me to make that distance in one visit?

14 July

My department had a safety meeting this afternoon – we have 117 people in the group but only half at one time. Thursdays are a common day for people to leave / arrive for their rotation. At the safety meeting I met 10 people I have never met before. I led a diversity moment where I told my group I wanted to learn about them, and have them learn a little about each other. I shared that diversity is many times thought to be gender, or color of your skin. I said another part of diversity is what type of family you come from, big or small, and what number you are in the birth order. So I asked everyone to stand up – then said if anyone was an only child they should sit down (two people did. Then it continued; if you had one sibling you sat down next, two siblings next, and so on.. Four people in the group had seven siblings – wow. Then we started over – asked everyone to stand up again – if you had no children, you sat down. This continued, one child, sit down, two children, etc. Half the group had children – myself and one other person had four children, everyone else had less. Anyway, it was a good ice breaker. We also had some food brought in and socialized a bit at the end of the meeting. We hold this meeting every two weeks. That is because different positions rotate in and out every week. I believe everyone rotates on a Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday – that way you get four weekends at home.

We have two translators for my group; they can translate to/from Russian. At the safety meeting one person gave a safety talk about “Heat Stress” – very relevant topic as last week it broke 115 F for several days (it has cooled down in the last couple days to the high 80s. The person who gave the presentation spoke Russian, and there were two screens – one showed the presentation in Russian and the other in English. Over 80% of my group speak Russian as their native language – only us Expats speak only English. I was better today about not saying too much, making it easier for the translator.

I swam again today at lunch – plan to swim on both Saturday and Sunday. I got it up to 15 laps – maybe I will get up to 66 laps eventually. The pool is about a 3 minute walk from my office – really can’t beat that. You can tell I’m not from around here as I wear the baggy Hawaiian print shorts – everyone else wears the tight speedo types (some of them should really not be wearing them. It’s not very crowded – maybe a dozen people at most. Water temperature is fine – very good stress reliever.

 Dad

Good Morning (though it is soon to be Good Night here).

It’s now about 8:45 pm here on Sunday July 3^rd – have been in Tengiz 3 days, arriving on Friday July 1^st.  Have had three days of turnover with my back-to-back Labeeb and I’m tired.  I ran into someone and mentioned I was a bit tired and he said “drinking out of a firehose will do that to you” implying that all the talking and reviewing documents as part of the turnover process was like that – I guess I agree.

My initial impressions of Tengiz are it is big, and I have not even visited the plant yet.  Some work friends I know told me I would do a lot of walking but I did not quite understand – now I do.  Here in Tengiz, we live in Sanyrak Village (SV) and work at TCO (Tengizchevroil) offices.  It takes about 15 – 20 minutes to walk between my room in SV to my office in TCO (my office is at the far end of the TCO complex).  Takes me 5+ minutes to get from my room to the SV gate, another 5 minutes to go from SV to TCO, and another 5+ minutes to get from the TCO gate to my office.  I think I go a little faster in the morning – walking back tonight was slower as the temperature was still over 100 F (At 7:30 pm it is 104 F, believe the high today was 109 F).  The days seem longer here – It was still light at 9 pm yesterday.

SV is a large complex that houses about 3000 people.  I believe everyone who works here in Tengiz is on a rotation schedule and therefore live on-site in SV during their rotation or hitch.  There are five dome complexes – believe dome 1 is slightly smaller than domes 2 through 5.  In each dome complex there is a large central building (the dome) with 15 buildings connected in a spoke pattern (except dome 1 which has 13 spoke buildings).  Each of the spoke buildings has two floors, with about 20 rooms per floor.  Each room has its’ own bathroom, a pair of closets/cabinets, a mini-fridge, a small TV (17”?) that sits on the fridge, a small work desk with chair, a bed, a night stand, and another chair.   Each room also has an individual AC/heating unit.  My guess is the room is about 150 square feet, including the bathroom.

The dome of each complex has a large cafeteria – the one I live in has two buffet lines; one for people who eat in the cafeteria and another for people who want to get their food to go, to eat in their rooms or their offices.  There is also a recreation area with pool tables, ping pong tables, and chairs for hanging out / socializing.  There is a small bar, and a work out room – looked like about 20 people could work out at one time.  I believe each dome is pretty similar but have not checked them all out.

In addition to the five dome complexes there is a big administration building, for the organization that runs the village, a movie theater (I went there for training, it holds about 250 people), a large swimming pool (6 – 8 lanes, guessing 25 meters long), several tennis courts and BBQ areas scattered around.  I’m sure it is at least a one mile perimeter around SV, maybe larger.  They finished building SV in 2009.

Previous to 2009 people lived and worked in the TCO office complex.  We still use the office buildings but all the living quarter buildings have been closed and are no longer in use.  Apparently these living quarter buildings had shared bathrooms and were not in good shape – people complained about the heat and cold during the various seasons.  TCO also has a cafeteria that is well attended at lunch (I do not think it is open for breakfast or dinner).  Not sure yet what the people who work at the plant do for lunch, possibly bring a prepared box lunch.  There is also a swimming pool at TCO office area – have not yet checked it out but it looks smaller.  My guess is < 1000 people work at TCO offices; the others work in the plants (24/7 operation so there are two shifts every day), plus all the maintenance and field contractors we use to run the place.

My group, Designs Engineering, works in building B6.  We have the top floor where about 60 people work.  We also have a group of about 10 – 15 that is involved in a big turnaround next year and they are located in another building – have not yet visited this building.  Designs Engineering currently has 117 people, but only half of them are on-site at any one-time.  Almost everyone has a back-to-back or partner, though a couple back-to-back positions are vacant.  The group is made up of Chevron employees, TCO (Kazak national employees) and contractors.  All the Chevron people are what is called Expats, short for Expatriates, meaning they live in another country, primarily US or England (though we do have one from Vancouver Canada).  All the TCO employees are Kazak citizens, and the contractors are a mix of Kazak citizens, Russians, and Expats.

The jobs here at Tengizchevroil are very good for Kazak citizens; they pay well and are good working conditions.  The Kazak government, which is 25% partner in TCO (Chevron is 50% and ExxonMobil is 25%) requires a high percentage of Kazak citizens to be employed by TCO.  I thought I heard someone say that for all employees 80% are Kazak, with 70% of the supervisors Kazak citizens.  In Designs Engineering we have a goal of increasing the number of TCO or Kazak employees in supervisor positions.   My group has 5 supervisor positions, the Designs Engineering Supervisor (my position) and the four Lead Engineer positions that report to my position.  Each position has two people so there are a total of 10 supervisor employees in the group.  This is currently made up of 9 Expats (8 Chevron and 1 contractor) and 1 TCO.  The goal over the next two years is to change this to 5 Expats (all Chevron) and 5 TCO.

Additionally, we currently have 18 Expats working in the group, which is a combination of Chevron and contractor employees.  We have a goal of reducing the Expat count by 2 each year; we have not yet reduced our count of Expats in 2011.  At 2 per year it will take until 2020 until the entire group is Kazaks (I will definately be home by then).

Last night we had a group BBQ.  The Designs Supervisor typically hosts this get-together once each rotation to thank people for their efforts, recognize people, and give a chance for folks to socialize as a large group.  In addition to food there is some beer but my back-to-back only buys 60 beers because he does not want anyone to get drunk and belligerent, at least not via a company sponsored event.  It seemed to go well – it started around 6:30 pm and I left at 9 pm.  We found out this morning that everyone left by 9:30 pm as the mosquitoes were out with a vengeance.  In the middle of the BBQ my back-to-back Labeeb and I spoke a few words.  Most of the Kazak employees speak Russian so we have a staff translator in Designs Engineering.  It was very interesting to speak with a group and have it translated.  I did OK but I have to make sure I only say two or three sentences at a time or the translator cannot keep up.  I gave them a little background about me, told them I was married with 4 children (shared your names and ages) and closed with I looked forward to working with them.  It is a bit unsettling to look out at this group of ~50 people (not everyone attends) and realize over half of them do not understand what I am saying, need it translated.  I also struggle with their names and accents, so mostly I said Hi, my name is Marc and shook their hands (I didn’t get to all 50 but definitely over half).  With regards to names, our Admin Assistant’s name is Gaukhar Urazbekova – her first name is pronounced GowHar; believe her surname sounds like it is spelled but have been afraid to try it.  Here are some other interesting names of people in my group: Saltanat Umbitallna, Yerbol Bekey, Dossan Adilov, Bakhyt Kurmanov and Sabyrzhan Menlibekov.  I am going to have to get a cheat sheet from Gaukhar (who speaks Russian and English) on how to pronounce everyone’s names.

I am going to close with I miss you all very much; I have 4 days down (including the lost travel day on Tuesday) and 31 to go (though I will spend almost all of the 32^nd day on August 4^th getting home).

Love Dad

Hello everyone,

I arrived in Atyrau, Kazakhstan last night around 8:30 pm – my work friend Jon Drogin, who used to work with me in Richmond, met me at the airport and guided me through the system.  From the airport we walked over the Atyrau Transit Hotel (ATH) which is bascially a group of buildings with a reception area, canteen, and a bunch of rooms – I would give it a 1/2 star.  I stay at the ATH for one night each time I arrive and for one night each time I depart.

I spent the night in a two cot room, with a cabinet, tiny TV and air conditioner.  Because I am overlapping this first trip with my back-to-back I did not have to spend the night with anyone – not sure yet if I will have to spend the night with him next time I get here.  The bathrooms and showers were down the hall – only had to go twice (can you believe it?).  In the future, since I am “upper management” I will get a room in the C block, where each room has it’s own bathroom – because I was new this designation apparently fell through the crack.  It smelled a bit (Mom definitely would have noticed) but it was clean.

There is a canteen, where I picked up a sandwich last night and had breakfast this morning.  I had a hash brown, two pieces of bacon, a bowl of fruit and a bowl of granola.  Their fruit appears to be out of a can except for the apples (remember, apples are from Kazakhstan) and the granola wasn’t particularly crunchy, though it did have some raisens.  They say you either gain weight (because all the food is very fatty / greasy) or lose weight (because you don’t eat) – I hope to achieve the later.

I am exactly 12 hours offset from you now – can visualize everyone at dinner.  I would love to call and visit but can’t call out from the ATH guest room where I am using the computer.  Once I get to Tengiz I should be able to call you – will try to reach you tomorrow morning (which will be your Friday night).

One thing I did not realize is I need an international charging adapter for my electronics (ipad, kindle, and cell phone).  All the outlets here use a round two prong connection.  Not sure how it works in Tengiz but am sure I can get an adapter there – will just need to get one to travel with (had to borrow one in Amsterdam).

The flight from San Francisco to Amsterdam was excellent.  There were 35 seats in first class, all were full.  I was served two meals and several beverages / snacks.  The dinner included a lobster / crab appetizer plus dessert.  In the morning they handed out water, OJ and smoothies.  I think all you kids would really have enjoyed first class – but at $9,000 a ticket it should be good.  Maybe with enough frequent flier miles we can all go somewhere in first class.

The flight to Atyrau wasn’t bad – not nearly as nice as the KLM flight but lots of leg room and no one sitting next to me.  I was able to sleep – they did not wake me for a meal and I woke up and they had put a blanket on me.  I got about 6 hours sleep last night, woke up several times but feel pretty good.  Will see how I am around mid-afternoon.

That’s all I got – miss each and everyone of you.

Dad