Randy Smith drilled an oil land rig from a house on Wall Street Friday morning. He’s done the same from the Natchez Grand Hotel.

Well — he’s simulated it, anyway.

After five years of coaching basketball for Cathedral High School, Smith is returning to the energy sector — where he spent decades working in the field and as a safety trainer — and launching Smith Mason & Co., a well control training company.

The company primarily operates in Houston, Lafayette and Natchez, though Smith said he’s willing to take it around the world.

It focuses on providing the International Association of Drilling Contractors-required training for those operating drilling rigs in the oil field, with an emphasis on efficiency and human and environmental safety.

“I grew up in Natchez, working on work over rigs, and then I went over to Iran and learned how to be a driller,” Smith said.

“The industry is completely different now. We didn’t have well control training in the 1970s, and my well in the Middle East blew out all the time.”

The emphasis on safety and industry standards have changed even more in the five years since the Deepwater Horizon’s explosion and subsequent oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico’s Mocondo Prospect, Smith said.

“We had local guys, guys from this area, who died in that,” he said. “This training is to recognize that and to prevent that.”

The training includes the multi-day classroom work that emphasizes the mechanical knowledge and mathematical theory all drillers have to know, but it also incorporates hands-on simulations of drilling equipment on multiple screens and with pressure switches. It also includes sound simulations.

The computers are loaded with scenarios for land, water and deep water drilling.

One of the reasons Natchez was chosen as a base — in addition to being Smith’s home — was its proximity to the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale. While production in the shale has slowed nearly to a stop with low oil prices, Smith said there is too much oil and gas in the TMS for it not to resume when prices pass the $70 a barrel mark.

“We want to be there and ready when it all turns around,” he said.

The manual Smith and his partners developed is 1,600 pages long, but course participants are given a flash drive with its contents included and work with tablet computers during the training courses.

“By giving them (the flash drive), an operator is much more likely to carry that around (on the rig) than a 1,600-page manual,” Smith said. “It’s something they can carry in their pocket.”

The course is in line with newer standards for getting certifications, standards that have been in place in Europe for 10 years, Smith said.

“It used to be that anybody would attend a course, saying, ‘I’m here to get my card,’ and for the most part nobody failed — some of might have been a little tougher, but a lot of guys who could barely read and write could get their card,” Smith said.

“Now, the new thing is, after I teach the course, an outside proctor will come in and administer the test on the computer, it will be a randomly-selected test on the computer — controlled by a satellite — so the training schools really have to teach and these guys really have to learn.”

In addition to teaching safety courses, Smith is offering emergency leadership courses.

“Everybody on the rig has a different personality, and when something happens, often all those personalities will change again,” he said. “You need to be able to make decisions in that kind of environment.”

But in addition to teaching emergency leadership classes, Smith said the company will offer a class called “Leadership  through Horsemanship,” which will be led by Adams County Extension Service Director David Carter.

“If Shell Oil is working on Gulf of Mexico and they have a new rig and new people, they would bring in their leaders and the contractor leaders to this course,” he said.

“Guiding a horse is like guiding people. If you are going to get a horse to do what you want him to do, you have to guide them, just like people.”

More information about Smith Mason & Co. can be found online at smithmasonco.com.