Hmmm. I don't generally like human interest stories, and I grew up in a redneck part of the country, and have worked at a variety of gruesome jobs--so while never working as a rough neck, it sounds familiar. As usual, the title doesn't really describe the article, but you can't blame that on the author. At the end there was a little bit of information but beyond that it's just autobiographical narrative.
If anyone is interested, I've written four articles that give an analysis of how the oil industry has damage Alberta (collectively about the same size as the "Walrus" article): https://billhulet.substack.com/p/something-impossible-just-happened https://billhulet.substack.com/p/the-social-cost-of-oil-part-one https://billhulet.substack.com/p/part-two-about-oil-and-canada https://billhulet.substack.com/p/the-resource-curse