By way of introduction - the platform I am on was brought on line in 2005, a very challenging location, not technically North Sea, but actually North Atlantic, lying about 75km west of the Shetland Islands. It produces around 40,000 barrels of oil a day and can accommodate a maximum of 154 people, though we limit that to 147 for practical reasons and usually operate at nearer the 138 mark, though it varies constantly.
When I left for work on the 9th March, things were pretty normal, most of us travel up to Aberdeen the night before we travel offshore, staying at one of the many large corporately bland hotels that have sprung up around the airport there - the heliport is usually a bustle of noise, chat about what you did in your time off, how the family are, usual things... a bit of news in the background showing scenes in Italy of parts of the country being shut down because of a new virus ... but it feels surreal and a world away and not many people are talking about it. As you might imagine, football occupies a large portion of the conversations, the mild joshing and leg pulling that goes along with that.... giving or receiving depending on how your team is doing!
Once you check in & get weighed (you and your bags) ... it is through to security check, all your bags are searched, a patient bunch of guys & gals who have the unenviable job of raking though peoples items, looking for contraband and items that are banned from being carried in a helicopter ... taking the inevitable "s*%T from an ignorant minority.... you then wait to get called through to departures ....
All checks done, you get into a bus to travel all of 150 yds to the aircraft ... fair play to those bus drivers, that shift must be soul destroying as the route they ply all shift is that 150 yds out and back, for each group of passengers. We travel fixed wing (a Saab 2000 for those with an interest in that area) to Sumburgh, where we are met by some cheery faces of folk we only know by passing acquaintance, but they have got to know the faces of the regular travellers and always give a smile and a "hello again" :)
The waiting here can be variable, sometimes it is straight into survival suits and away if the helicopter is ready ... doing all the buddy checks, making sure suits are done up properly, life jackets and breathing systems working ... then away .... sometimes the wait can be hours, if the helicopter has just left for another platform, could be a couple of hours, if it is weather, it could be many hours, a phenomenon called "triggered lightning" is the enemy at this time of year.... and sometimes, if the sea state is above 6m (significant wave height) ... they just don't lift at alland you either get returned to Aberdeen to do it all again the following day ... or put to bed at the Sumburgh hotel.
There are quite a few platforms or rigs west of Shetland now, the nearest neighbour of mine is Clair Ridge, which came on line at the end of 2018, much bigger than my wee platform, but in our eyes, good things come in small packages :)
After a 30 min flight, the passengers (or PAX as we are known) become POB (Persons on Board) .... and, once we get the all clear to leave the aircraft, we collect our bags and head down into the accommodation - on a busy flight there will be 19 of us so it can get a bit congested in the Heli Admin area, but it is noisy as those who are departing are waiting to greet their back to backs, Geraldene our stressed Heliadmin barking orders to folks who aren't listening ... too busy catching up with people they haven't seen for a few weeks and busy swapping over the life jackets .... but after a short while, her voice starts to catch people's attention and they realise if they want to go home, they had better go!
Then it is a fight to get yourself out of the flight suit and settle down to get a welcome brief from the OIM (Offshore Installation Manager) ... normally that would be me doing it, but the day I travel out is the day I get to take a seat and listen to one of the other team members deliver it! That welcome back brief done, it is a case of checking in, getting your cabin and muster point allocated, taking possesion of your personal H2S detector and then disappear into the bowels of the accommodation ... getting cheery welcome backs as you go
I normally travel out on a Tuesday and we get onboard about 11:30, so just time to drop my bags in my office and head up for some food - food is one of the main pleasures offshore and we are well served by the 10 person strong team of chef's, stewards and the all seeing Camp Boss.... arriving at the servery, I am greeted by "Kiwi" ... no-one knows his real name, but you guessed it, a New Zealander who now lives with his family in Portsoy on the North East coast of Scotland ... a bit of banter ensues and our plates are soon filled with tasty grub. The whole platform comes together in the galley, a functional space with a tv lounge and pool table/dart board off to one side ... you don't go hungry offshore, a great array of hot & cold options, the team do a great job catering for a variety of diets and appetites ... but the puddings and ice creams are always a favourite .... depending on which nightshift baker is onboard, there will be some fresh scones available .... I normally grab one to have later in the day with a cup of tea ....
So there is a hopefully interesting wee piece about how we normally get to and from work.... but things were about to change.......
@Milton Rail (https://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?action=profile;u=4934) what's a H2S detector? Also, do you have the same accommodation room each visit, or does it very like a hotel?
Thanks for going to the effort of writing this.
Quote from: emjaybee on March 25, 2020, 08:27:27 AM
@Milton Rail (https://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?action=profile;u=4934) what's a H2S detector? Also, do you have the same accommodation room each visit, or does it very like a hotel?
Thanks for going to the effort of writing this.
Hydrogen Sulphide @emjaybee (https://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?action=profile;u=5604)
see https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/hydrogensulfide/hazards.html (https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/hydrogensulfide/hazards.html)
As a Bristow Helicopter Engineer, it is good to hear that your interactions with the Bristow team goes well. Not everyone appreciates the effort that goes into getting you guys out and back in safety.
Thanks for your post.
Best
Scott.
A very interesting piece :thankyousign:, looking forward to another slice.
H2S.... yeah, horrible stuff. My meager contact with it was as a science teacher, but a small test tube of the stuff was quite enough for me and the kids!
Wouldn't surprise me if experiments involving that are banned in high schools now. If I was still working a ban certainly wouldn't bother me.
Morning emjaybee, thanks for flagging my thread up and moving it out of the way of the Covid support page - glad you and other see some interest in it :)
H2S is Hydrogen Sulphide, we have it in our oil reservoir and hence the associated gas - we have fixed (as in permanent) detectors all around the platform, but we each get a more sensitive personal detector as an additional protection. The levels are not particularly high, but enough to merit the personal detectors to protect people
For the core crew, they generally get the same room, we all have lockers that we leave our gear behind in when we go home, saves us carrying it all in and out each time, for the assortment of vendors & visitors, they don't get that "luxury" and get put where there is a space, often resulting in 3 to a cabin when we are full - I have the added luxury of a cabin to myself and as much as possible we try and put people with someone on the opposite shift, so they are sharing a cabin, but not in it at the same time. But your analogy to a hotel is not far from the mark!
It's definitely interesting. It's one of those 'world's' where you think "it's a drilling platform, they drill into a pocket of oil and pump it ashore", but I'm guessing there's a lot more to it.
The film Deepwater Horizon kinda showed a lot of stuff, but it, obviously, didn't explain a lot of the workings and you don't know what is fact or fiction.
So yes please, do continue, there'll be a fair few more questions.
Sounds lovely having your own space to jump on the forum think of own loved ones trains, the sea air
Thanks for the interesting read.
Around 1978 to 1982 I worked for Dan Air at gatwick on line maintenance.
Occasionally I would get deployed to Aberdeen to cover for leave or etc.
Dan Air operated HS748 aircraft on rig support from Aberdeen, taking the rig workers to Sumbugh where they would transfer to helicopter to the rig.
We had to be at Aberdeen airport before daybreak to prepare the morning's aircraft. In the winter this included being on a cherry picker spraying de-icing fluid on the aircraft prior to departure.
One deeply embedded memory is of winter mornings heading out to the airport before hotel breakfast time, so with an empty belly and getting frozen to the core by the time the first aircraft departed.
But then the pay-off, back to the Sgian-dubh hotel for a huge fry-up breakfast on a plate so hot the food was sizzling on it. and also (am I beyond the statute of limitations now??) a shot of whisky. As I type I can still feel that warmth radiating from my innards to my frozen extremities. Then back to the airport to meet the returning aircraft for the second wave - but in a much better frame of mind.
In 1982 I moved to SE Asia to escape the cold!!!
Fascinating stuff Andrew.
A glimpse into a world of which I know nothing.
Martin
Quote from: NGS-PO on March 25, 2020, 08:48:14 AM
As a Bristow Helicopter Engineer, it is good to hear that your interactions with the Bristow team goes well. Not everyone appreciates the effort that goes into getting you guys out and back in safety.
Thanks for your post.
Best
Scott.
Thanks Scott, we get a fantastic service from the Bristow team (& Eastern), often in difficult circumstances and people sometimes lose sight of just how much behind the scenes work goes on just to keep these airframes in the air
Cheers Tom, it was a vastly different world then, Piper Alpha triggered a transformation in the North Sea, much as Deepwater Horizon triggered a transformation of BP ... I will keep my own counsel on events depicted in the movie, but while it is a good portrayal of the risks offshore works face, the events depicted have a very Hollywood spin to them and a read of the investigation report is a much more balanced summary of what transpired... but in the end it was still a humble tribute to the 11 people who lost their lives in that event.
Drilling is just as simple as you say... but the challenge is to find the reservoirs in the first place and then know where to put the drill bit! Drilling not my expertise at all, but it relies a lot on the skills of the driller, the team on the drill floor, lot of team work in difficult conditions and never quite knowing what they are drilling into
Is it true that the drill doesn't go straight down? I think I read somewhere that one platform can drill in a wide radius around it.
Quote from: NGS-PO on March 25, 2020, 08:48:14 AM
As a Bristow Helicopter Engineer, it is good to hear that your interactions with the Bristow team goes well. Not everyone appreciates the effort that goes into getting you guys out and back in safety.
Thanks for your post.
Best
Scott.
Ah, so you're the one :D We shared a hanger with the Bristows chaps when I was down the Falkands and flew out to Weddell Island on one of their aircraft. Many years ago I had an interview for the Simulator managers job up at Aberdeen, it was carried out by the current manager, a curious French chap who clearly didn't want to give up his job! I didn't get it, possibly because I asked for accommodation as part of the package which would have meant him giving up his flat ::) >:(
@Milton Rail (https://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?action=profile;u=4934) I had a couple of lads from Halliburton in on Monday, was sorting out a couple of 700 Bar Leo Records for them as they were flying out on Friday, we do a lot of work for the oil & gas industry, above and below water, just wish the ROV pilots went a bit easier with our kit and lord only knows what they do with our subsea housings when they get them aboard ship :doh:
Anyhoo, stay safe Andrew, hopefully when this is all over I'll pop across the river for a visit :thumbsup:
Are you allowed booze on the oil rig ?
No bother Laurence :thumbsup:
No booze offshore these days Joe, we get some 0% beer out for high days and holidays.... there is a bottle of vodka in the medics safe, but that really is for medicinal reasons! We use a lot of methanol offshore as a production chemical, if you ingest it... vodka is the antidote
Hi George, I think a well that goes straight down is the exception rather than the norm these days - with the modern tools available, the directional drillers can drop a drill bit into a target zone with amazing accuracy .... often you get better access to a reservoir if you come in from the side, depending on the geology ... others on the forum much more able to talk to that than I am. You can get wells that go out 4 or 5 km in a horizontal direction
Quote from: Milton Rail on March 25, 2020, 01:18:33 PM
Hi George, I think a well that goes straight down is the exception rather than the norm these days - with the modern tools available, the directional drillers can drop a drill bit into a target zone with amazing accuracy .... often you get better access to a reservoir if you come in from the side, depending on the geology ... others on the forum much more able to talk to that than I am. You can get wells that go out 4 or 5 km in a horizontal direction
Presumably for directional drilling the drilling head itself is powered with electric cables going down the hole, rather than being rotated by a shaft from a motor on the rig? Otherwise, I can't work out how the drive shaft gets around the corners.
There is a nice museum on Stavanger sea front about the oil industry. Is there one in the uk? I was killing time for a few hours before a flight and got a bus into town. I had to go alone, not disimilar to the reaction I get when I ask the domestic overlord about visiting a railway show. Otherwise the closest I get to the oil industry is a plastic bag or a petrol pump.
Hi Chrism - I am pushing the boundaries of my knowledge here but the drill bit is powered by a mud motor .. the rig circulates the mud (a much more specialised & expensive fluid than the name implies!) down the drill string to drive the bit, the modern bits can be controlled really accurately with this method, and often there are tools added that gives real time feedback on position etc. The Drill string is pretty flexible
Hi Gang,
Did a 4 month stint as the HeliTasker in the Falklands last year working incredibly closely with Brintels crew, engineers and Ops staff. To each individual, they put in a mammoth amount of themselves into achieving the job and I was proud to work with them and be accepted as part of their brethren. I have my Bristows and AAR polo shirts ( which are not given lightly) as a souvenir of my time there.
I also tasked them with the welfare runs at weekends taking servicemen/women and any families out on 'penguin bothering' trips...which they did cheerfully, despite the mundane and repetitive nature of the job.
I salute all those involved in the Heli industry and the general public are mostly unaware of the massive infrastructure and processes needed to get the product to their (literal) front door.
I may go back in a bit to do the HeliTasker job again if they need/want me, but for now I will ply my fixed wing trade.
Later,
Stu in LCRA
Fascinating! Thank you.
When I arrived on the rig, a decision has been made to delay a full facility outage until a couple of days after I had arrived, so that I wasn't walking straight into it ... so after a couple of days to get settled in, we started to shut down the platform, this is something that happens periodicaly to allow maintenance of bits of kit that we can't do when it is running - this one was relatively long and was expected to last about 10 days - the main activities were to do repairs on our sea water system. we have 3 large pumps that lift seawater and we filter it and then use it in lots of ways .. including our supply of Potable water .. so a ffew arrangements had to be put in place to give us a temporary supply from the firewater system.
Shutdowns are, by design, high intensity periods, round the clock working and lots of scopes being carried out simultaneously, large & small to minimise the overall duration ... but there is always one, sometimes 2, scopes that are known as "critical path" i.e. the whole duration has been built around these main activities and we need to keep them on track to avoid any over-run. I am pleased to say our shutdown went really well, no-one hurt and we came back up a day early ... normally we would celebrate things like that, but while the shutdown was in progress, the Covid 19 situation took a grip of the UK and it had become the number one talking point on the rig ....
Of primary concern to all onboard was how it was affecting their families and loved ones at home, we also had news coming out that the Shetlands was becoming a bit of an early UK hotspot ... this was a concern for us as we transit through there ... thankfully they seem to have contained it there and the number of confirmed cases has been stuck at 24 for over a week now. Measures were being put in place both onshore and offshore, trying to identify vulnerable adults who were currently offshore, make plans to get them home, prevent those who were due to mobilise from travelling and also implement screening measures onshore.... from the 1st day I arrived, I was maybe spending 2% of my time on Covid 19, as I write this today, it is nearer 70% of my time each day!
As you might imagine, not easy to put physical distancing measures in place offshore, but we are trying, been actively reducing the numbers offshore so that people can be spread out a bit more around the cabins, stopping activity .... strange times indeed
While I was writing down the story of my commute ... I have been reflecting back on the other interesting ways I have had to get to work - I have been lucky and privileged to work in some amazing places, most recently Angola, where initially we used to fly from Luanda up to a small port in the north called Soyo, a small fixed wing affair - from there we would get a helicopter out to the facility, in Angola the facilities are what known as FPSO's, Floating Production & Storage Operations - the one I was on was a converted supertanker .. so we used the old storage and filled the deck above with processing equipment - there was some amazing technology on the front of the vessel, a massive swivel that allowed us to windmill in the sea and wind, but connected us to the seabed some 2,200m below... all the wells there were subsea, which had it's own challenges in such deep water ... the area the wells were spread out over was about the size of Greater London, from memory, think the farthest away well from the boat was 29km
Things changed there when the tragic helicopter crash in Norway occurred and we moved away from helicopters and started crew changing by boat ... now we had started doing that in Azerbaijan when I worked there.... but it was an entirely different prospect here... the Caspian is effectively a large lake! ... where we were in Angola was the Atlantic.... and we were right in the path of the outflow of the Congo river..... there was also the matter of distance, in the Caspian it was about a 3 hour journey ... and while it could get rough, it wasn't too long to survive (though many Azeri's were not good seafarer's!) ... to get to our facility in Angola... it was an 8 hour boat journey...... not so bad going out as you were going with the congo outflow ..... but going back in was a different matter entirely .... and I found out the Angolan's were not great seafarer's either! One of the big debates down there was how long you spent offshore .. for the expats, you did a 4 week trip, the Angolan's tended to do 3 weeks ... on my boat we mainly all did 4 week trips and there was push back on that from the Angolans they wanted to do 3 week trips (this was when we used helicopters for fast tansfers) .... when we moved to boats .... that chat all stopped and I think some of them would have happily done 6 week trips, just to avoid the boat transfers!!
In both cases, when you arrived at the facility, you had to prepare to be "frogged" up and down ... A frog is basically a personnel transfer device, varying from 3 seats up to 10 ... it is self righting, it floats and has a steel frame around you for protection ... but you climb in, buckle up, then get lifted up by the facility crane ... hoping that the crane op is in a good mood and gives you a gentle landing! this is by far the most civilised method of "frogging" ... others include a "Billy Pugh" ... a large net you climb into and hang on for dear life.... or in some cases ... just a swing rope that you use to swing across the gap between boat and rig.... an internet search of Billy Pugh will give you an idea of what I am talking about
when I was working on the 1000 mile pipeline between Azerbaijan & Ceyhan in Turkey, I had some wonderful journeys thorugh rural NE Turkey, one memomorable 8 hour drive from one pump station to another through beautifil snow capped mountain ranges, deep blue skies and frugal roadside diners with humble but amazingly tasty fare. I have also been called out to the Hound Point Terminal in the River Forth, just east of the Rail Bridge in a force 9 gale, on the small passenger ferry we used, to respond to a fire alarm that had activated and needed investigating ....
I am drifting off topic here, but while I worked in Grangemouth, I got a couple of trips in the surveillance chopper that we used to monitor the pipelines that criss-cross Scotland, travelling from Cruden Bay in the north down to Grangemouth, then over to Finnart on Loch Long in the west ... a couple of memorable moments occur to me - One flight was nearing the Erskine Bridge and over the radio I could hear a request from an Royal Navy Sea King pilot, asking for permission from Glasgow Airport tower to underfly the bridge.... the tower refused and my pilot shook his head and said over the headset ... they will still do it... they work on the basis it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission
Another pilot on a second flight lived quite near my house and he said he had left something at home and actually landed in his back garden! Much to the disgust of his next door neighbour who was out in her back garden on a sun lounger!.... needless to say the downdraft made short work of her neatly arranged picnic and bedding ... after we lifted off again, I asked about the Glider center that was in that area and how did they cope with them in the skies.... he said they use the same philosophy as the RAF ..... "if we see you, we will try to avoid you" funny the things that stick with you!
Anyway, enough of my ramblings, I better get some work done :beers:
Absolutely riveting stuff. :thumbsup:
Keep it coming! :beers:
Thanks for the latest episode.
What is your job title and what does your job entail on the platform?
Hi Emjaybee - official title is Offshore Installation Manager, usually known as OIM, or the office where the buck stops! I have responsibility for all the souls onboad, controlling the work they do, how they do it, I run the emergency response should there be an incident, but we also have to do regular drills as well. When I was working in the Labs back in Grangemouth refinery in the early 90's, I remember reading a story in the Sunday Times Magazine (my folks got it religiously every week .... it was as close to religion as they came) about OIM's in the north sea and how at that time they were being head-hunted into the city of London (definitely not the case these days!) ... but what caught my eye was how the situations they had to deal with ranged from emergency landings by helicopters to a shortage of tomato ketchup in the galley and everything in between!!
I had no plan how I would ever get there, as at the time, it was unheard of for someone in the downstream part of the company to get jobs in upstream.... but times have changed and I have been lucky along the way, been in the right place at the right time and in the eye of people who trusted me ... its a challenging job, especially at the moment, but I do enjoy it in the main and it affords me a good balance of time at home, the rota I work is 3 on, 4 off, 3 on & 5 off .... I don't think I could survive a desk job these days!
Many years ago I worked for ADMA-OPCO, the offshore oil company in Abu Dhabi. Whilst I wasn't actually based on the rigs, I have been out to them a couple of times on the choppers. I worked in IT supporting the maintenance management system that was used to manage shutdowns and routing maintenance as described by Milton Rail. The critical path is everything and being remote locations they have to be planned to the nth degree as all the necessary parts down to the last nut and bolt have to be ready to go when needed.
My first experience flying out to a rig was really novel. I was supposed to have done the requisite survival training in order to fly out to the rigs, which involves being strapped into an old helicopter frame and dunked upside down into a massive swimming pool and then making my way back to the surface of the water, but I must have been sick or something when that training was done, as I never attended it! So, I found myself marching out to what looked like a Vietnam-era Huey with 12 other pax at Abu Dhabi airport in the early hours of a Saturday morning. We got into the cabin and strapped on a pouch which was our life vest and fastened our seat belts. The choppers there fly with only a pilot, so they put one of the passengers in comms contact with the pilot via a headset. So there I was, minding my own business when suddenly I found some headphones and a mike being put on me. The pilot was South African I think, and it was fairly obvious I was the only native English speaker on the flight so I was comms! The pilot was there shouting "speak to me! Speak to me! Can you hear me?" I was still futzing around with my life vest and he was shouting "Press the black button to speak to me!" I had no idea what I was doing but eventually figured it out. The pilot must have thought I was a complete idiot.
Anyway, the main job I had was to tell the pilot when the doors were shut, so he knew when he could lift off - time was money. It ended up being like this crazy bus ride. We flew for a couple of hundred kms over the Persan gulf and then a rig would come into sight. Nobody knew which one it was and because of the design you had no idea where the helipad was until you touched down! When it did touch down, the ground crew would open the door and hold up an A3 piece of paper with the rig name on it in huge letters. We'd all look blankly and eventually somebody would twig this was their stop (inevitably it was the guy in the most inconvenient seat who had to clamber over everyone to get out) and they would get out. We ended up at a super complex called Umm Shaif which was my stop. I was there to do a demonstration of SAP to some of the maintenance planners (we were evaluating SAP at the time) and once my day was up, I was back on a chopper home. I did get an insight into life on the rig and it was a real eye-opener. Until that moment, I had kind of regarded the guys offshore as a bit of a pain who disrupted my daily routine when they had a problem, but after seeing the conditions under which they lived and worked, I realised that they really needed as much help as I could possibly give them.
I had another equally interesting adventure going to an offshore island called Das Island used as an oil and gas storage facility, but that is another story...
Geez, another dark horse! ;)
I'm really enjoying these stories. About the closest I can claim is that I have a degree in geophysics (seriously!), but know nothing about this sort of life.
Thanks for sharing, guys! :beers:
That is quite a story...... in Azerbaijan, the condition of our choppers was significantly better than those of the state oil company .... and that was relatively recently
Don't get me wrong here... the chopper was in brilliant condition. It just looked to me that if you took the side doors off, painted it in camouflage paint and put a big machine gun either side it wouldn't have looked out of place in Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket or any other of the Vietnam War movies! The side gunner seats I quickly learnt were the best places to sit. They got two people each side in those but they had better leg room. There were nine passengers in the main cab, four facing forwards and five facing backwards, and you were so close together that your knees were right next to the guy opposite's meat and two veg! We all had to wear ear protectors because of the engine noise. The main rotor was directly behind the two middle forward facing guys.
Quote from: Milton Rail on March 27, 2020, 08:04:15 AM
..
I am drifting off topic here
...
You carry on fella, it's all fascinating reading. :beers:
Okay - the story of my first trip to Das Island...
Das Island (https://www.google.com/maps/place/Das+Island/@25.152275,52.8602729,7471m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x3e5b47d87375c80f:0x367b76c91260c29c!8m2!3d25.1546848!4d52.8768212Das%20Island) is in the middle of the Persian Gulf - it is an oil and gas storage facility used to fill super tankers before the deliver their precious cargo around the world. It is large enough to be serviced by STOL (short take off and landing) fixed wing aircraft. I flew out there on a De Havilland Dash 8 (https://www.planespotters.net/photo/655695/a6-adm-abu-dhabi-aviation-bombardier-dhc-8-402q-dash-8) a twin turbo prop. where the fuselage is below the wings.
The departure from Abu Dhabi is very routine, nothing exceptional at all. The landing is where it starts to get interesting... The runway on Das starts about 20m from the waters edge. When the approach starts, all you can see under you is water. Nothing but water. The plane gets lower... and lower... and lower... still only water. You eventually start thinking "bloody hell, I hope this runway appears soon!" but you get down to less than 50m altitute and still no runway! Suddenly land appears about 10m below you at the waters edge and a second later you are down!
Take-offs are even more fun. At one end of the runway is a massive set of gas and oil tanks. The aircraft cannot take off that directions, which of course is the direction of the prevailing wind... So the planes must take off with the wind and the runway is at the limit of the aircraft's envelope. So, in order to get off the ground, the plane taxis to the very end of the runway, such that the nose wheel is almost in the sand at the end of it. The pilot turns the engines up to full throttle and holds it on the brakes. At this point the plane starts rocking violently - it wants to "go". When the pilot feels he has enough "biff" behind him, it's off the brakes and we are flung skywards!
really enjoying this thread, keep it coming.
Rather you than me, Jon (although it sounds like you secretly enjoyed it) :thumbsup:
Guilty as charged George. It was a great adventure and an eye opener at the time!
Like many I am finding this all very fascinating. Although I never visited a rig, I was a fixed wing driver of the workers from Aberdeen to the forward Helicopter bases of, initially Unst, and then Scatsta. I was a pilot with Brymon Airways (Plymouth based) when we introduced the Dash 7 aircraft onto the British register in 1981. We started with three new aircraft, two on oil contract at Aberdeen and the third on the Heathrow run from the West Country.
Unst, which was intiially to serve RAF Saxa Vord, is the last island, going North, in the Shetlands and had a runway 2001ft long , that is feet not metres, and the remarkable Dash 7 could land at Unst at maximum landing weight provided there was at least 5 knots of wind down the runway - not normally a problem in those parts. This enabled us to land with a full pax load of 50 and have return fuel for Aberdeen on board. Normally after the flight up it was a matter of sitting around for
four hours or so whilst the helicopers flew to the rigs and back.
In 1996 the helicopters were moved from Unst to Scatsta (by the Sullom Voe oil terminal) where the runway was less challenging with over 4400 ft. Brymon switched to Dash 8 aircraft for the contract later on.
It has been mentioned that the rigs were dry and rig crew, as has been mentioned, would often position to Aberdeen the night before where the bar was the last chance saloon. There were strict rules regarding sobriety which were necessary particularly for the helicopter phase. Sadly, on rare occasions the ground staff would call me to the terminal to assess whether a passenger was fit to fly (no brethalysers then) and a 'no' was probably the loss of a job. Not a nice position to be in.
Another topic, but Brymon Airways was instrumental in the creation and first operation of London City Airport in 1987, which when it first oopened had a very steep approach that only the remarkable Dash 7 could achieve.
I am due to head home today, we are flying direct at the moment, to avoid Shetlands, but as of yesterday all the highland & island airports are closing at 3:30pm, so that has caused a few complications with our flights as we use those locations as alternates in the flight plan, as wel as refuelling points ... we can refuel the choppers offshore, but last night was told we hadn't sufficient fuel for today's flight (our crane was out of service for inspection and only became available last night and the fuel needs 24 hours to settle when a new tank is put in place) ... so our flight today will come via Wick.
While I have been writing these excerpts, I have been getting reminded of events along the way ... I started out as a lab technician back in 1988 and along the way, my company put me through a Chemical Engineering degree - that opened up a lot of new doors for me and really was a good decision personally. I studied as a distant learning student, so it was hard going at times, but worth it. The course I was on had been set up by ICI (remember them?) and was mainly lads from Runcorn, the Rock Savage plant in particular .. there were some characters on that course for sure!
After I graduated, I started to get involved in what are known in the industry as HAZOP's (Hazard & Operability Studies) ... usually for new plants, at the design stage, you go through every line on the piping diagrams and assess the hazards and how it will be operated, aimed at designing in Safety from the outset ... you use key words like, more, less, none, reverse etc. then apply those to flow, pressure, temperatures .... that sort of thing ... it can be laborious, but you do flush out problems and it has a big impact on what the final design looks like ... in those sessions though, you always get taught that you don't consider double jeopardy, i.e. things happening at the same time .. and you are always ruling out cases that are not credible ....
Which brings me onto the story I have.... I only started working offshore in 2008, the opportunity arose while I was in Azerbaijan, there had been a massive upscale in the offshore platforms there, grand plans to build 7 identical platforms, all built to the same design, interchangeable parts etc.... at the time I got the opportunity to go offshore as the Offshore Operations Engineer (OOE), there were only 3 new ones ... the first one, "Central Azeri" was what is known as a double jacket platform, effectively 2 platforms, linked with a bridge ... it acted as a hub, collecting oil & gas from satellite platforms and sending it ashore in one large pipeline rather than each platform having it's own line to shore...
At the time I was there, there were two satellites West & East .. these were single jacket platforms and were still indepenant in terms of power, but they were also connected to "Central Azeri" (or the mother ship as it liked to be known) for power, and they had sufficient generation to supply the 2 satellites too. The 3 platforms were all interlinked with camera's too, all the main offices, control rooms etc. were streaming and the main offices had a multi-pane tv screen showing the various offices. It was meant to promote a sense of team, and saved you wasting time trying to get hold of someone, as you could look on screen and see if they were at their desks or not. Sounded good in theory, but in practice, a lot of the office incumbents didn't like the intrusion ... and either directed the camera's away or covered them over with make-shift flaps .... while I write that I am reminded of another anecdote of an OIM (Offshore Installation Manager) on one platform .... on those rigs, unlike most, the OIM's cabin was adjacent to their office, down in amongst the offices, the medic was the same, the clinic was opposite the OIM office & the medics cabin was separate, but next door.... the OIM's cabin literally was "ensuite" to the office ..... this particular OIM got a call in the early hours of the moring to their office phone ..... stumbled out of bed to answer it ...... well I won't say anymore, but safe to say they never went to bed after that without covering over the camera!
I was put onto "West Azeri" as OOE - was a steep learning curve, having never been offshore before, but was a great time, lot of camaraderie ... before I started there, an incident had occured on our main generator, a big fault occured on the alternator and burned it out .... pretty much the same priciple as you car ... but imagine if you will, instead of your 1.4l Astra engine, we have a Rolls Royce RB211 jet engine (the other place you will find them is on a commercial aircraft wing) and you can scale up the size of the alternator accordingly! Fortunately, the mother ship had sufficent numbers of these, to supply themselves and the satellite platforms, think they had 5 from memory. So when I started there, summer of 2008, we were happily being supplied power while we worked out how to repair our own one.... as you might imagine, these were not off the shelf items and were large bits of kit to get in and out
My first trip went ok, shadowing the person I was taking over from .... my first trip solo was when it started to get interesting ..... as mentioned, all the control rooms were linked ... we had a call with town (or the beach as you will hear it called) 3 times a week and all 3 platforms dialled in as they were managed by the same onshore manager.... during one particular call, the GPA (General Platform Alarm) went off on Central Azeri and they duly left the call and went to muster .... I didn't think anything of it for a while, it happens fairly regularly offshore, spurious alarms etc. (though usually at 3am in the morning!) until about an hour later I was in our control room and could see the control room on Central Azeri with them all still at muster, but wearing lifejackets.... it quickly became apparent that they were preparing to abandon ... there had been a large gas release on the seabed and we later heard that the gas alarms and warning lights were lit up like a christmas tree.... a short time later, the lifeboats were in the water and all the people got off safely, but as I watched from afar (about 5km) it gave me a new respect for what we were dealing with when I saw those tiny boats, with about 75 people in each, bobbing about trying to get to safety
Everyone was recovered safely, a lot of horror stories from folk about the amount of seasickness that occured (remember these are fully encapsulated boats, not the open top affairs you might remember from Titanic .... ) It was a nightmare for the onshore team when they finally made it back as virtually no-one had any papers on them, passports etc. as they had all been held at muster and straight to lifeboats ....
..... for us on West Azeri, once we knew our colleagues were safe ... we had a more pressing concern ... we had lost our power supply ... as part of the response to the gas release on the seabed, the platfrom had shutdown automatically (that would have been designed in at the HAZOP) .... on loss of main power, our emergency generator kicked in, which will give us enough power to keep our life support systems going, but it meant that our production plant tripped too .... well we got ourselves sorted out, but it was a challenging time, we had to partially downman too ... and as events got moving, we were a staging post for the restart of Central Azeri ... initially it was a company called "Boots & Coutts" who came out (founded by Red Adair who you might remember from the news when they were trying to cap the burning oil wells in Iraq) and by all accounts, the accommodation was awful, when the GPA went off, the galley had been getting ready for lunch service, so all the food had been left out, (this was about 2 weeks later) .... the freezers had been off.... everyones' personal belongings were strewn around their cabins ......
Once the initial mess was cleared up, the ops team started to go back to assess restart options and the routine became ... helicopter out to us, picked up pack lunches, helicopter over to Central .. did a shift of prep work then came back to us and then back to shore ... if we were crew changing, our guys would come out on that chopper too, wait until the shift was done on Central, then the offgoing shift would go back with the Central team ......
So 2 weeks after the initial event on Central, and on the last day of my 1st solo trip as OOE .... my back to back arrived, the Central team went off to do a shift on the stricken platform and we were doing a leisurely handover when ........ everything went dark and the battery powered emergency lights flickered on ..... a quick realisation sank in that our Emergency Generator must have failed :'( turned out to be the coupling ... not a quick fix .... and we had no back up .... not emergency generators are not fancy engines like the RB211's ... they are basically big agricultural diesel engines, CAT or similar ... that will pull a train .... but they are not designed to be ran constantly .... so we then found ourselves having to downman too, leaving only a handful of people onboard to try and restore power .....
So that was my introduction to offshore life ... the reason for the story? Like so many things about my times in Azerbaijan & Angola ..... you often found yourself thinking "If I wrote this down, no-one would believe you"! If I had raised the following situation with the HAZOP team back in london .... that we would have an emergency generator coupling fail, coincident with a platform abandonment on Central Azeri, while we had an exploded Alternator .... it would have been laughed out of the room as preposterous and not only double jeoapardy, but triple!
But as I have found out many times in this industry, you just can't predict the things that will happen, the way that they will happen, or the inventive ways the humans that work in this industry will find to hurt themselves! but it is a small world and 10 years later, I find myself working back to back, west of Shetland with the OOE who was onboard Central Azeri that day and was one of the people who was in one of those small lifeboats that i watched & worried for in the waters of the Caspian. They were difficult times and we look back now and saw how well we all responded and got through it... and it is that which gives me hope about how we will all cope with the current crisis gripping the world.
Stay safe everyone ... my helicopter is on its way !!
Very interesting. It is quite surprising at times, just how much we do not know about this world of ours. :beers:
Safe trip @Milton Rail (https://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?action=profile;u=4934)
Enjoying the yarns, keep it up.
That's quite an amazing set of tales there?
I've no knowledge of working on the rigs, although I've seen a lot of the H&S videos that came about following the Alpha Papa disaster.
I am now employed in helicopter training, but not with civil or rig support. I've also been employed as a Medical Equipment Engineer, and worked on Infra-Red equipment in heavy industry (Steel and Cement) worldwide, before returning to aviation, but my professional life doesn't come anywhere near your one for stories?
Thanks for taking the time to recount just what happens in your industry....
Very interesting :thankyousign:
Stay safe Andrew :thumbsup:
I take it you are home now Andrew? Just a guess as all the cloud cover seems to have moved down to my end of the Tay and it seems much brighter in the West ;)
Hello again from the relative calm of the North Atlantic, hope you are all well & keeping safe
After an eerie (but have to say blissful) 3.5 weeks at home where I managed to tidy up the garden, woods and outbuildings, planted a mini forest (~500 trees) and reorganised a large old compost heap that we inherited with the house (reckon I must have shovelled & sorted around 6 tons of compost & still only 1/3 done), it was time to return offshore
Gone were the old days of driving up to Aberdeen the Monday night before a Tuesday crew change, now we were called up to Aberdeen by 9am on the Saturday morning, I also had the added complication of having an issue with my car that made me reluctant to drive it, but no garage open to repair it ... but the company has gone above and beyond in ensuring safe passage for everyone going offshore, be it hire car provision or taxi door to door. Thus I found myself in a shiny smart Mercedes E-class with a chatty Londoner at the wheel called Mark. Lets just say we had an eclectic chat that covered many topics!
Arrival at the hotel saw a one way system to check in, markings on the floor at 2m and a screened off reception, pots for clean & used pens as you signed in and a small welcome pack including hand sanitiser provided. Straight to room and belongings dropped, it was back down to a makeshift testing suite in the ballroom. What followed next I had been forewarned of .... but that didn't prepare me! A swab right to the back of the throat (gag reflexes well and truly tested) .... and then a swab thrust to the upper extremities of each nasal canal..... that brought tears to my eyes.....
After that, we had to remove ourselves to our rooms and self isolate until the following Tuesday .. we were allowed a 1Hr walk each day, but physical distancing was to be practiced at all times so as not to undo the efforts made so far. I had been warned about the relatively sparse menu options, so had an extra bag of nibbles, beer & wine! In the end the food was pretty good, you phoned down your choice and it got delivered in takeaway boxes to the door for you to eat in isolation - lots of curry options mind.
It is the first time I have really had to rely on daytime tv for amusement .... and I found my days became .... 4 episodes of "Come Dine with Me", followed by 5 episodes of "4 in a Bed" followed by another series of 4 episodes of "Come Dine with Me" .... by which time we were into Tipping Point and The Chase! There were also a few episodes of Colombo, Lovejoy & Auf Wedersehen Pet thrown in for good measure.
After all that quality me time.... I was happy to hear on the Monday morning that I had tested negative and fit to fly on Tuesday ... after a final temperature check, we were all allowed onto the bus that shuttled us around to the heliport and from there, we went through the relatively familiar process of check in & security searches ... albeit a bit slower as we spaced ourselves out. The security folks were also taking a few more precautions as well, but still showing the same professionalism.
With the high incident rates in Shetlands, we had already started to avoid the island, so after donning the survival suit, the pressurised assisted breathing life jacket & an anti-viral snood (impossible to practice physical distancing in a helicopter, so the snood is to cut down the risk of transmission) it was time to settle into the uncomfortable chopper seat for the 1hr 50 min flight .... despite making a schoolboy error and forgetting to keep a book to hand, I ended up sleeping 95% of the journey!
So here I am, back in the wilds of the Atlantic, ready for another 3 weeks of surprises, banter and battles - I'll wrack some brain cells and think of some other bits to share
Cheers for now
At least they appear to be doing their best to take care of you Andrew, will you get a couple of days in quarantine on your return or be allowed straight home?
Stay safe fella :thumbsup:
Look forward to more interesting stories .maybe sketches on your dream layout to pass time off
Take it easy, Andrew, and thanks for posting this fascinating stuff. It is a truly educational experience for me. :thumbsup: