Button Down the Hatches

I’ve been lagging on this blog business, but my two feet have actually been on solid ground the past week getting my promotion (aka—finally kicking my trainee status to the curb). Conveniently I was off the rig while the storms started to roll through. It’s so odd for a hurricane to be ripping through the gulf close to mid-November. Needless to say, my rig was shut down the better portion of last week due to inclement weather. The plan to evacuate was up in the air, and finally happened on Sunday. After they realized the storm was staying far east, everyone was called back out to the rig on Monday.

All hurricane operations seem to vary from what I have gathered in my time out here. Obviously depends on the category of the storm, where your rig is located, the type of rig, the client, and how much money they currently have downhole.

If it’s a bad storm and you’re in the path of it, they will generally try to pull out of hole and temporarily shut off the well before making a getaway. Weather is obviously closely monitored out here, and when bad weather strikes they know fairly well in advance to perform the proper procedures, get personnel to safe locations, and hopefully be able to move the rig itself.

Proper procedures include getting the drill pipe, tools, and the bit out of hole; followed by the riser (outer pipe that runs from the drill floor on the rig to the well head at the sea floor); and finally shutting off the well head. If they have to make a quick getaway, they will hang off the drillstring (leaving a lot of $$$ downhole) until the storm passes and they can hopefully retrieve it.

Rigs are moved by tug boats else they are self-propelled. Jack-up rigs will jack the legs back up, allowing them to get tugged away, whereas semi-subs will let water out of the pontoons and drive themselves.

Once a storm passes, a rig will be able to come back to its location, re-run the riser back down to the sea floor, send in the Remote Operations Vehicle (ROV – a giant robot that enables us to perform a lot of maintenance and repair issues, equipped with multiple cameras to allow them to see everything underwater) to reconnect and open the wellhead, then the drillstring can be tripped back in and operations can continue.

In this case, they knew my rig’s location was in fairly safe territory as long as Ida didn’t take a sharp turn left. Instead of performing all of the above procedures, they pulled drill pipe out of hole until the Bottom Hole Assembly (our tools, stabilizers, reamers, the motor and bit) were at the well head. From there they “hung off” from the wellhead itself – so the toolstring stayed downhole below the sea floor (7500+ feet); then they tripped out the rest of the drill pipe but left in the riser.

Needless to say, bad weather adds a lot of time, energy and money to operations out here. This minor storm has set us back at least a week. At least it is comforting to know that being part of the service personnel out here – we’re always the first ones off the rig in evacuations!

Flying back out today was pretty neat. You could still see the backlash of some of the storm to the northeast, but the sun slowly starting to peek out from the masses of clouds we were flying into in the south. I wish I could take pictures/videos of it all to share, but unfortunately that’s not possible. We still have some large swells, creating a decent amount of heave; but that’s also just the nature of breaking into the winter months down here. I still have trouble using the word winter when it’s pushing mid-November and we’re still in the upper 60’s at night…haha. If it’s any consolation to all of you back north, it is A LOT chillier here offshore than back on land in Southern Louisiana now. The winds are pretty strong all of the time; constantly making me feel like those people they show on the weather channel trying to walk outside during hurricane level winds and looking absolutely ridiculous. Since I’m out here for the rest of the month into December I made sure to pack my thermals , and I have my trusty strap that attaches to my coveralls to make sure my hardhat doesn’t blow overboard! (I wonder how much money the guy makes that invented those…)