Three months of my job..Not Dial Up friendly

[DJR-351]

Just thought i would put up some pics of what i have being doing from early Aug until last week.

I earn a crust as a Ships Officer on AHTS,s or Anchor Handling tug Supply Vessels, for those that dont know what they are click on http://www.google.com.au/search?sour...&q=ahts+vessel

The company i work for was originaly contracted to assist, along with a number of vessels, with the laying of a Oil/Gas pipeline from the Montara Production platform in the Timor Sea.

The Jack Up Rig West Atlas (WA) was employed to re-drill the well and assist with the tie in of the pipeline.

As you will of heard in the media things kinda went pear shaped from the beginning, it ended up with another rig and upto 10 vessels being used to get things back under control.

Enjoy...

Maneuvering the West Atlas into position alongside the Montara Platform..

Alongside the Montara Platform..

All jacked up, drill tower moved above platform..

Pipe laying barge Java Constructor being moved into place..

Happily drilling away then whoosh!! "thar she blows", that dont look right at all!!

Oil, Gas and condensate blowing out, this is what can happen when you dont have a Blow out Preventer (BOP) in place..

You can just see the lines hanging down from the rig, these are what the life boats used when the crew evacuated. I dont have any pics of the evac as we where to busy dragging the pipe layer to safety..

Spill Boom connected for oil recovery..

Vessel on the other end..

This is what light crude looks like, it burns the skin and the fumes certainly make the eyes water..



Sunset behind the rig, not exactly romantic but a good shot i thought..


Part 2..

The drill rig West Triton (WT) was brought in to drill an intercepting hole in the well and plug it, the WT was placed 1.5nm to the SE of WA for obvious safety reasons.
It took five goes to hit the well, no matter what the media say, that is not bad considering the sea floor was 90m below WT, then they had to drill down 2.4km through the earth to hit a well hole under 10in in diameter!!
The vessel i was on was connected up to the West Triton with a couple of hoses, when WT hit the well we started to pump the various liquids/mud to her so she could pump these down into the well thus plugging it, all went well at first but after ten mins of the well been plugged things turned bad quickly...

Leak almost plugged, a couple of mins after this shot the leak stopped..

And 10mins after that the thing just erupted WHUMPH!!...The general consensus is the pressure built up until the plug could not hold it and let go, picking something up on the way which created a spark...

Disconneted hoses then moved away from WT..

One of the support vessels moving in to try and kill the blaze...

Vessel moves away to safety claiming the drill tower was moving, he was about 80m from the rig before moving...

Yep!! he was right, the base of the tower basicly melted, luckily it fell into the rig..

Having another go, eventually they gave up this approach, ever tried peeing on a house fire?..

Into the night..


West Triton in the foreground..

Eventually (after 2 days of brain storming) they reverted to plan A and we re-connected our hoses and resumed pumping into the hole to plug/kill it amazingly it worked first time, as you can see by the smouldering wreck in the distance..

And here..

The value of the rig alone was put at $250m US, scrap value anyone??, the amazing thing is the last fiberglass lifeboat hanging on the side is still there, everything else around it just melted and collapsed..

They are still counting the cost of the clean up and fire, and it will only keep climbing, as the wreck still needs to be removed...

Hope i did'nt bore to many of you with this, i just thought some of you might be interested to see what some of us go through to put gas in your Barbie and Fuel in your tanks..

Cheers...