Dad, I Survived: The fine line between life and death while looking for oil

Dad, I Survived is a raw, unvarnished memoir that captures the extraordinary life of a man shaped by one of the world’s most unforgiving industries. Beginning in the freezing North Sea in the mid-1970s, Mike Black charts his rise from roustabout to Drilling Superintendent, working high above rig floors and deep within some of the world’s most dangerous environments. Along the way, he survives catastrophic accidents, a deadly gas leak, and the collapse and sinking of his rig—while many of his colleagues did not.

Spanning four decades and continents, Black’s journey takes readers from Aberdeen to Abu Dhabi, Indonesia, Nigeria, India, and beyond. He exposes the perilous consequences of incompetence, corruption, and brushes with death, while offering darkly humorous anecdotes about workplace scams, cultural misunderstandings, and expat survival.

Written as a tribute to fallen co-workers and an explanation to the family he was often absent from, this memoir is both a personal reckoning and a vivid portrait of the oilfield’s “golden years”—when experience mattered, danger was constant, and survival was never guaranteed.