Comments on: Oil Rig Disasters

Oil Rig Disasters

OmieWise — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 08:12:26 -0800

Oil Rig Disasters--Deadliest, most expensive, blowouts, sinkings. Building a rig. Barrels of rig pictures. NOAA's archive of spill pictures. ROVs, rigs, vessels. All kind of Canadian rig (and related) pictures. More.

By: thirteenkiller

thirteenkiller — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 08:14:01 -0800

Yes! I love oil rigs!

By: crowman

crowman — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 08:20:25 -0800

Let me know when they're all being recycled for scrap.

By: LunaticFringe

LunaticFringe — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 08:22:19 -0800

My dad was involved in the construction of this one.

By: kmennie

kmennie — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 08:45:45 -0800

I want more pictures of the little things. When I'm confronted with space ships, ocean liners, oil rigs, etc, I'm not thinking "What's it look like from a helicopter?" but "What're the toilets like?"

By: thatwhichfalls

thatwhichfalls — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 08:51:39 -0800

You know, since I'm actually typing this from here, I'm not sure I really want to look at the disasters page. The toilets are as bad as you probably expect. If there's enough interest I'll post a picture tonight (I'm working nights so I'll be going to bed soon).

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 09:00:07 -0800

Whoa, that's cool!

By: biffa

biffa — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 09:08:29 -0800

I had a lecture by one of the senior guys on the investigation of what went wrong on Piper Alpha. Scary stuff - apparently pretty much anyone who obeyed the emergency instructions got suffocated/carbonised, only those who ignored them, came out on the other side of the rig and jumped in the sea had any chance of survival. Basically, the emergency plan was far from up to the task of keeping people alive in the particular scenario.

By: The corpse in the library

The corpse in the library — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 09:14:41 -0800

Dishwasher Pete on an oil rig.

By: Western Infidels

Western Infidels — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 09:22:26 -0800

crowman: Let me know when they're all being recycled for scrap.

There's more than one way to recycle an oil rig.

By: Western Infidels

Western Infidels — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 09:29:11 -0800

The corpse in the library: Dishwasher Pete on an oil rig.

Is thislife.org defunct? I can't get there, and Google's cache is a blank page.

By: The corpse in the library

The corpse in the library — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 09:31:00 -0800

Is thislife.org defunct? It works for me. I just found that link for the first time a few minutes ago.

By: hangashore

hangashore — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 10:00:53 -0800

Coincidentally this post appears one day before the 25th anniversary of the Ocean Ranger disaster off the coast of Newfoundland. All 84 aboard were lost, including 56 Newfoundlanders - a devastating loss still felt in my home province. (Numerous contemporaneous news clips available from the CBC's archive.)

By: hangashore

hangashore — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 10:07:15 -0800

Forgot to mention: one of the men lost on the Ocean Ranger was a classmate of mine in kindergarten and elementary school, and a student of my dad's in trades school. For Craig, one of eighty-four. You are all missed.

By: cardamine

cardamine — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 11:28:15 -0800

thatwhichfalls, you are my new hero. i love ships/rigs etc etc and now, by default, you.

By: blahblahblah

blahblahblah — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 18:40:46 -0800

thatwhichfalls -- post pictures!

By: thatwhichfalls

thatwhichfalls — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 00:11:08 -0800

Here's a few shots I took this evening - yes, I know I'm a terrible photographer. I was going to take some on the drill floor (always the most photogenic bit of the rig) but things are a little tense out here right now, so I'm staying away from there.

By: The corpse in the library

The corpse in the library — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 09:25:59 -0800

Thanks, thatwhichfalls. Very interesting. More, more!

By: thatwhichfalls

thatwhichfalls — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 09:31:36 -0800

There's some more uploading now - we have a rather narrow data tube here so it'll take a while.

By: rmd1023

rmd1023 — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 19:36:42 -0800

the very excellent book Inviting Disaster: Lessons From the Edge of Technology" talks about some of the engineering failures that fed into the Ocean Ranger disaster. It's a really good read if you like stories about engineering disasters.