I was reminded of how little I myself am actually able to do in terms of safety, ironically when I watched the required orientation safety videos upon arriving at this rig. One of the short videos was about the Ocean Ranger accident. The Ocean Ranger was a semi-submersible rig--like the one I'm on now--which sank in Canadian waters in 1982. After the arrival of a bad storm, a large wave caused a broken porthole and water entered the ballast control room. Because of poor training on the part of the crew--and design defects--the ballast control panel malfunctioned and water flooded the forward corner support columns. This caused the rig to tilt about 12-14 degrees and eventually capsize. At least one lifeboats was destroyed upon being lowered, and another lifeboat with 20 men eventually capsized in the water while trying to reach safety. 87 people died and there were no survivors.
The video's purpose was to teach oncoming crew members the importance of ballast room procedure and how to prevent such an accident. My only thought was..."What's a ballast?"
This rig, like many deepwater rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, strongly encourages all crew members to submit at least 2-3 STOP cards every week. Most oil companies have a safety intervention system with acronyms such as STOP, SMART or START that involve filling out a card with an observation of some unsafe activity or condition on the rig. Mine are never good. "Crew member observed not holding onto hand rail" or "Cable lying across walkway creates tripping hazard"--headlines to a very boring newsletter. These observation cards are actually taken very seriously on some rigs I have been on, and hazardous conditions they bring attention to are discussed at meetings. I want to contribute more and help make the rig a safer place but with only a little over a year of experience, I'm of almost no help. For example this picture is from a presentation I had to read as part of my rig orientation titled, "Dropped Objects: Still Harming, Still Killing."
This is basically what every inch of an oil rig looks like, outside of living quarters. I don't know what this is a picture of, let alone what's wrong with it or what it's supposed to look like. All I know is what my equipment looks like and how it works. Therefore, all I learn from these orientation presentations is how many things can go wrong and how out of my control it is. From the 65 slides in the dropped objects presentation, I only came away with the lesson that I should try to look up as much as possible, because something really heavy can fall onto my head and kill me.
I wish I could conclude this blog entry with something enlightening or poignant. There are a few small things I can do to help with rig safety, such as closing the watertight doors if I see one open, and letting the proper people know if I see a borehole pressure increase on my computer (indication of a "kick"). And of course I can protect myself by wearing safety goggles and a helmet, holding onto the siderails, and looking up for falling objects. But in terms of actual catastrophic dangers, there isn't much I can do other than pray that the people around me know what they are doing. I hope they know what to do in the ballast control room, because I don't and it's not my job to. Sometimes it's hard to trust the crew to do what's right and not cut corners--oilfield accidents happen more often than they should due often in part to human errors. Bad cement* jobs, which was partly to blame in the Deepwater Horizon explosion, happen all the time**. In fact, the reason I have the time to write this blog entry is because drilling is delayed due to consequences of a bad cement job. Of course a bad cement job doesn't have catastrophic consequences 99% of the time, but it does serve as a reminder that even after the many decades of drilling for oil offshore, mistakes happen all the time. It scares me sometimes, but as I said before, what can I do about it? In the event of an emergency, all I can do is know where my immersion suit is, and that I'm assigned to lifeboat #1.
*The purpose of cement in drilling is to cement the casing in place. Casing is a large pipe that is inserted into a hole after it has been drilled, in order to prevent cave-ins and fluid loss among other things. Cement is pumped through the inside of the pipe, and then pushed down until it is forced to seep up the outside of the casing pipe, between the metal casing and the rock formation. A bad cement job, for example, could be due to some parts of casing that do not have cement behind it, or if the cement doesn't stop gas from leaking into the well.
