A work crew in Texas would love your help in finding a little gadget they lost. They need it to find good places to frack, so it’s kinda urgent. Oh, also, don’t go near it because it’s radioactive.
The thing that’s missing. At bottom. At top is a tape measure. (Photo courtesy of Texas Department of State Health Services.)
From Bloomberg:
FBI officials working with the Texas Department of Transportation questioned three employees who were unable to locate the device this week after it went missing on a 130-mile (209-kilometer) route from Pecos to Odessa, according to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission incident report today.
“The FBI would only say that they believed there was no criminal activity involved with the missing” tool, Halliburton told state officials according to the NRC report. A well near Pecos, where the device was last used, has been searched three times, it said. …
Oil-field service companies lower the radioactive units into wells to let workers identify places to break apart rock for a drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which frees oil and natural gas. While the loss of such a probe occurs from time to time, it has been years since a device with americium-241/beryllium, the material in Halliburton’s device, was misplaced in Texas, Van Deusen said.
Oh, did we mention that the crew works for Halliburton? Because of course they do.
The seven-inch stainless-steel cylinder is about an inch in diameter and marked with the radiation-warning symbol, Halliburton said in a statement yesterday. The cylinder is marked “do not handle.”
Halliburton told the state that workers discovered on Sept. 11 that a lock on the container used to transport the device was missing, along with the unit, after driving a truck to a well south of Odessa from from a site near Pecos, according to the NRC report. The company is offering a reward and is working with local law enforcement, the highway patrol and health officials in the search, the company said.
“Halliburton is working with authorities to resolve this matter as quickly as possible,” the company said in its statement.
Related: If you are able to hold things in your possession without losing them — particularly radioactive things — please visit Halliburton’s jobs page. The company could use a quality employee like you.
