|
Apart from being a
navigational hazard, oil rigs are also a good source of income for people, like
me, who enjoy sailing and don’t have an independent supply of money and
haven't been lucky enough to win the lottery.
On the rig from which I’m writing this, there are three people with
yachts and several more with powerboats and other water craft.
Leisure sailors are not uncommon in this industry, as one of the
advantages to working on the rigs is a decent amount of time off. The usual
rotation is one month on the rig, one month off.
So we all need something to do during our time off and messing around on
the water is a popular pastime.
My intention is to give
you a small insight into what we do on the oil rigs (apart from drill for oil!)
and what it’s like living and working on one.
Firstly though, in case
you are wondering 'What is oil?' Although it’s a commodity that
we all use every day of our lives, the obvious petrol in the car and oil used
for lubrication or heating; the less obvious plastics; the waxes and so on, (the
list is endless), these are the final products of a process that started
millions of years ago.
Very simply, all
carbon based (organic) organisms and vegetation will, over a period of time,
decompose, or rot down, leaving deposits of the base elements that once formed
part of their living tissue, in a dense and semi-liquid form. These deposits
build up as layers, and are compacted down by their own weight.
One of the easiest ways to picture what happens is to imagine a river
running into the sea. The river carries, suspended in the water, particles of
vegetation and rock. When this gets
to the sea it 'fans out' and, as the force of the river is left behind, the
particles start drifting downwards, falling to the ocean floor.
Imagine this process taking place constantly, over millions of years, and
you have seen the perfect setting for the formation of oil.
It’s not just in the
sea that you find oil, but anywhere in the world where there is this process of
decomposition and compaction. The
process of compaction usually traps the oil, in layers, under impermeable
formations such as salt domes or faults in the earths' crust.
When it isn't trapped, the oil comes to the surface and forms tar pits
which are found in several places around the world. You may remember
television's 'Clampit family' and their ‘up from the ground came a-bubblin'
crude’?
So, the oil is there, now
all we need to do is find it. People
have used everything from divining rods to multi-million-dollar seismic
equipment to locate these pockets of oil. The
modern way is to employ seismic data, using shock waves transmitted through the
ground to map the formations. This
process does not actually show oil deposits, but does pinpoint areas where there
is a likelihood that oil will be found.
This is where the oil
rigs first get involved. At last! I hear you say.
There are three basic types of well drilled from a rig: exploration,
production and injector.
Exploration wells are used to validate data from seismic research, to see if
there actually is any oil, or gas, down there.
Once it has been found, production wells are drilled down there to bring
the oill, or gas, to the surface. If the substance is proving reluctant to come
out, injector wells are drilled. These sweep the oil to the production holes and
push it to the surface.
What kind of rigs are
used? There are several different
kinds, all performing the same task in different environments. There are land rigs; swamp barges (for use in very shallow
water i.e. swamps!); jack-up’s, which stand on three legs, are limited
to about 300' of water and are moved around an oilfield by towing or taken
longer distances on the backs of special ships.
Then there are semi-submersible rigs which can drill in waters up to
about 1000' deep and drill ships which can operate in waters with a depth in
excess of 3000'. Finally there is the fixed platform which is located
permanently in the middle of an oilfield.
The life on board and the
people to be found on rigs are fairly similar from one rig to the next, so I
won’t describe each type of rig, but just give you a general picture of what
it’s like.
Most rigs are
self-contained, in terms of energy, generating their own electricity, via large
diesel generators. There are people living on the rigs all year round and,
unless there is some major problem, the rigs work 24 hours a day, 365 days of
the year. Older rigs may be
relatively cheap to run, but you're still looking at thirty to forty thousand
dollars a day. The newer large and deep water rigs may run into several
hundred thousand dollars a day, depending on what kind of expert contractors you
are hiring to help drill the well.
I know of several companies that charge US$50,000+ a day for the use of
their down-hole tools, and this is not a particularly high figure for some of
the specialised equipment in use.
We quite often have nearly US$1,000,000 worth of tools in the drill
string, logging the formations as we drill along, allowing us to find the oil
and to know in which direction we are going.
The biggest pressure is on time, as it is an expensive business getting oil out
from the ground and, in order for it to be economically viable, the production
costs have to be kept as low as possible. This
is especially true when the price of oil is very low. When the market price
stands at US$15 a barrel, it is not worthwhile to spend money on expensive
exploration wells. It’s only when the price rises above 20-25$ a barrel that
the economics start to work out. An
often-quoted figure is US$14 a barrel to produce oil from the North Sea.
Obviously this is a very harsh environment and the cost will be much
higher than in some other locations. Where I am at the moment,
production costs are running at US$5 a barrel (you just put a hole in the
ground, almost anywhere, and find oil around here!).
So, the first thing you
learn in this business is that your job is only secure if the price of oil stays
up. Thousands of people are 'laid
off' (out of work) every time the price of oil slumps. That doesn’t stop me
complaining about the price of petrol when I'm back in the UK though!
On any oil rig, you find yourself working alongside a group of people who
are used to change and have, usually, worked in different countries, surrounded
by countless different nationalities and cultures.
Perhaps this is one of the nicest things about the rigs - the
diverse number of people you meet, all with a similar outlook on life, but
different because of their backgrounds. It’s very similar to a typical gathering of cruisers - people from different
places all brought together by their love of the sea and the way of life.
At present, the
population aboard this rig includes people from America, Australia, Brazil,
Brunei, China, England , Holland, India, Indonesia, Malaya, Nigeria,
Pakistan, the Philippines, Scotland, a few from Thailand and one from Zimbabwe.
This diversity is not unusual and makes for an interesting time,
especially when it comes to communications!
The one thing I have noticed, apart from a little friendly banter and the
odd joke, there is no sign of hostility between people of different nations or
religions on the rigs. All that seems to get left behind and everyone aboard
just concentrates on the job in hand.
Most of the people on
board work a four week on/four week off schedule, although many of the outside
contractors, like me, can be on the rig for anything from a few days to several
months at a time. To get to the
rig, being offshore at present, we occasionally come out in a boat, which is
fairly rare, but mostly travel by helicopter. The
novelty soon wears off, helicopters are fairly uncomfortable and very noisy, but
they do make getting out to the rig fairly easy.
Once you have arrived on
the rig, there is a safety briefing, during which you are shown your muster
stations in case of fire or gas escapes,
and told which lifeboats or rafts you will be expected to use in the event of
the rig having to be abandoned. All
personnel attend comprehensive safety courses as part of working on rigs.
Courses include fire fighting, sea survival, first aid, helicopter escape
techniques and lifeboat handling, amongst others .
The first course I completed for work in the North Sea was two weeks long and
quite tough. Out here, in the Far East, where the water is a bit warmer, the
courses are not quite so stringent, although they don’t tell us how to deal
with the 3metre+ sharks that cruise around the rig if we ever have to swim for
it!
There are about eighty
(80) people on the rig, at the moment, which is about average for an offshore
situation and yes, there are women out here too. They do most of the jobs that
the men can do. There are usually
two people to a position, so you work 12 hours on and 12 hours off.
Contractors sometimes get called upon to work much longer shifts if they
are on the rig by themselves, but this is usually discouraged as a dangerous
practice. Tired people make
mistakes, and it is too easy to mess up and injure someone.
While you live on the
rig, you are provided with three meals a day. The quality varies considerably.
Your laundry is done for you and, at the end of your shift, you are free to do
whatever you want to for the next 12 hours – which is, usually, not a lot!
Most people end up watching television or videos, walking round the Heli-deck
or reading. You can guarantee that
anyone coming off a rig has all the latest news and gossip, thanks to CNN! Then
it’s off to bed, usually two or four people to a room, and try and get some
sleep before the alarm clock goes off and it’s time to start again.
If everything is going to
plan, you soon get into a routine, which can become boring after a while.
In my experience, though, things rarely go smoothly for very long and one
can spend a lot of ones' time troubleshooting or explaining why what the client
wants cannot be achieved.
Most people working on
the rigs see their work as a necessary evil.
The oil business is a quick way of earning decent money but at the
expense of any kind of social life. You
need to have a very understanding partner, back at home, and to be prepared to
move anywhere in the world, often at short notice.
It’s not unusual to be working 80-100 hours per week and that soon
takes it out of you, rather like working at two 'normal' jobs.
Still, we all carry on. Most of us wouldn’t know what to do with a '9 to5'
job, working in an office with all the petty politics involved
and other constraints. It’s nice being able to work outside,
although the oilfields are often in places that have hostile environments.
I’ve been in Arctic waters, where the temperature was below minus 30oC and, a few weeks later, in
Oman, where the temperature was above 60oC. This means that you get
to see plenty of different countries and cultures, which is a big plus.
The only problem is that you usually fly in and go straight out to the
rig and, when it’s time to leave, you're too tired to want to stay and
explore. You just want to go home and relax or spend time with your loved ones.
Preferably both!
There are pro’s and
con’s to working on the rigs and, I guess, for some of the time the pro’s
win, but when they don’t, then it’s time to pack it in and go sailing!
Heartfelt thanks to Chris Baily for that
fascinating glimpse of life in another world! You may like to read about some of
Chris's sailing adventures - in 'Remember
To Breathe In And Out Slowly', for example, in The Big Ditch, part of our
Sailors section.
|
