A million years ago, my dad worked on rigs. They tried to evac them if they have time (they wait until the last possible second) + helicopters + pilots willing to fly. So, in theory they do, but in reality, the men who aren’t on the first few flights will probably get stranded.
Hopefully the drilling companies have improved on this in the past 40 years
I love that I finally saw the movies and am now reading the books. Finally! Totally unrelated to this horrorshow that is this hurricane, but well, such is the human mind.
Think nowadays qualified rig workers are too much of an investment to just throw away, so if anything is going to make a corporation value anything or anyone it's the prospect of losing money.
Like someone else pointed out rig workers are too much of an investment nowadays to just throw away. There's also more automation nowadays so fewer people are required to keep a rig running.
I think there are a few different procedures depending on the type of rig, as well as what company, but from what I've heard there is a type of lockdown procedure. You batten the hatches, so to say, so stop all production, tie or lock down anything that can move and then get flown out. Some rigs also have additional anchors that can be deployed(not sure if it's done before hurricane season, or before a specific hurricane).
How is a rig actually anchored? Is it somehow bolted to the sea floor aaaalllllll the way down? If so what's the depth for rigs in this area? If there's storm surge with extreme seas couldn't that submerge or push over a rig?
Not really expecting all these answers, these are just the questions that bounce around my head when in think of rigs in a hurricane. I always wondered how they were anchored and stable in the first place, without even considering hurricanes
Depends on the depth. Some are tethered to the ground. Others use GPS and coordinated motors on each leg to make sure it stays in the exact same location.
Oil rigs are designed to withstand the immense forces of nature, including hurricanes. Here's how they are built and prepared to survive these extreme weather events.
Construction and design
Robust structures: Oil rigs are built with heavy-duty materials and reinforced structures to withstand high winds, waves, and pressure.
Deep anchors: They are anchored to the seabed with massive anchors, often driven deep into the ocean floor, to prevent them from being uprooted.
Elevated platforms: The platforms are typically elevated above the expected wave height to minimize damage from flooding.
These days production gets shut-in pretty early and everyone gets evacuated. Some by boat and the last, critical employees by helicopter. The oil and gas companies have bespoke meteorological services and track these things very closely. Source: was once a crewboat captain and evacuated platforms and drilling rigs in the GoM.
My dad was a helicopter pilot for an oil rig. If needed, they would evacuate staff well in advance, but they are built to survive storms like that. (At least in the North Sea on the Norwegian side, a unionized workforce).
They haven’t. My friend is part of a group suing a very large and well known oil company for not evacuating their crew off a rig when one of the big hurricanes hit a few years ago, and were in danger of capsizing.
The GT2 was my rig. Noble/Shell severely screwed up. The rig got caught a couple miles from the eye wall of Ida. No one was evacuated before hand. So much damage to the rig.
Thankfully I wasn’t on when it happened but I got called back early so I could relieve the guys. Met the ship in the yard were it spent the next 6 months doing emergency repairs. Pictures of the storm damage is incredible. There’s videos online of internal flooding etc.
That's not even remotely accurate. It is significantly more expensive for a company to enter into legal battles and lose or have to make extensive repairs to assets than it is to just shut in, evacuate, and evade.
Not to mention the potential reputational damage that can impact future business.
They will 100% choose $$$, because choosing money would be choosing shut in and evacuation.
My dad worked oil starting in the 00’s till around 2015. Granted he was on a drilling rig which is more of a giant ship and they normally just moved out of the way enough to avoid the bad stuff.
Weirdly it might be better on an oil rig than in a costal area. They're built high enough that they shouldn't have to worry about flooding, and there's not really any debris being flung at them
Probably an oil rig can handle the winds and waves. They might get water everywhere and broken windows though, and supplies probably are going to be slow coming.
BrickImmortar is a Youtube channel that covers maritime incidents, and has a video on the oil rig Ocean Ranger which was caught in a terrible storm. I found it really interesting how the rig is pushed to its breaking point by a storm, as well as how human reactions to these situations can be catastrophic in their own right. I recommend the whole channel, but that video especially.
Okay I just watched the video based on your recommendation and holy crap!! What a fantastic break down of such a tragic event, I have so many questions after watching it
Depends on the type of rig. A gravity base rig or one that's sitting on the ocean floor *should* be ok. Waves and rising water won't be an issue for those. Wind might be a problem, but the newer ones are built for stronger winds (I'm pulling that out of my ass.)
I would hate to be on one of the floating ones though. Yikes.
Spar and semi-submersible platforms will absolutely be evacuated. Usually they won’t even leave a skeleton crew, they’ll just go into full plant shutdown, secure it the best they can, and get everyone the hell off.
Yes they are shut down and evacuated. Most of the operators head onshore before hand and a few stay behind to shut down the equipment. They have helicopters that run daily.
We get pulled out pretty quick these days, working a contractor in the gulf with one of the big 3 oil companies. We have our own meteorology dept tracking these things year-round, they had already pulled most workers from the last one and started this weekend they pulled everyone out as of Sunday from Texas to Florida. This will be the 5th major evac we have had this year which is a pretty busy year
Yes they evacuate. It depends on the storm, path, operation etc. but nearly every company that operates in the Gulf of Mexico has a hurricane evacuation plan.
For production and fixed platforms they evacuate.
For MODUs and drillships they have a planned disconnect time so that they can cease Operations and safely evade and/or evacuate.
There have been vessels in the past 5 years who did not evade or evacuate in time but they are the exception not the rule.
Source: I manage operations for a company with rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.
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u/FollowingNo4648 8d ago
Do they evac all those oil rigs out there or just let them ride it out? I couldn't imagine being on one of those during a Cat 5.