Bored Maui oil-rig crews yearn for fine weather

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34146, 6 May 1976, Page 19

Bored Maui oil-rig crews yearn for fine weather

Out on the Maui construction barges, getting knocked about by storm-tossed seas, and shooting endless games of crap to while away the hours, the oilmen dream of the North Sea. and calm weather.

They have been breaking gas records down at New Ply-'but mouth constructing the Maui I too

platform and pipeline, records that no-one is proud of! It looks as!

though the project may I create a world record fori weather delays. When you have been sitting around for weeks on• end waiting for the weather: to improve, anything is better than doing nothing —I ■even 100 ft frozen seas and Ideep dives into the North

Sea — for, at least; the ■North Sea is occasionally, [calm, they say. On the Maui project the i ,seas do not come so big but! :they are there most of the' time, and boredom is the! killer. | The project is already I many months behind sched-l

ule because of the shocking summer, and the general manager of Shell BP Todd, Mr H. R. Williams, said it had become necessary to rephase the whole project, to'try to reach the produc-| tion deadline. I Sail saga It has been a saga of only: a few days’ work each j month, weighing anchor and; running for cover at short' notice, lost and fouled an-i chors, and mostly just sit- [ ting around on board the big! construction barges forl weeks on end with nothing to do. Now they are talking of; closing down for winter, if [ things do not improve soon. I Only three days’ work has [ been done during the last! four weeks, and most of the! oilmen would prefer to go j anywhere, just to find something to do. Some welders even wanted i to work through a meal; break, during a brief spell of! good Weather, just because! it was nice to be doing [ something for a change. More than 400 construction workers play the waiting game on board the three big construction barges: The most frustrated are the crew of the big crane-barge Atlas. Huge pile* This huge 600-ton barge has been used for driving great pin piles through the Maui tower’s six- legs. These piles need to be within the Maui tower’s nollow-legs, and driven 240 feet below the sea-bed to secure the tower.

This job should have been, finished months ago. I The oilmen hope the barge; crew will be able to com- ! plete this task before winter, ■ as the pin piles are the onlv I means of securing the 6300-1 tonne production platform. I A much larger crane ship,l due to relieve the Atlas and j speed up work, is not due to I arrive until next summer, so] the tower may have to weather some bad winter' storms before it is properly anchored. The tension on board the Atlas is razor-like. On shore, people just can-' not believe the weather is that bad, but they do not have to work close to a 400-1 ft high crane jib dancing! around the sky with a steam! hammer on its end. The barge boss, V. P. I Rickerson is not too sure * that the much larger crane; ship will fare any better' when.it arrives. The 17,000-ton Blue Whale| could encounter similar problems handling the cross! swells, he believes. The major problem is not! merely the swell height but; the convergence of two! swells which create confused! crane barge has to lie' partly beam-on to one of them. This difficulty is not experienced so frequently in the North Sea or elsewhere,; where the swells generally come from one direction at a time. About 12 miles of pipeline has been laid by the barge Kokan Pioneer, which is not so susceptible to weather delays, even though she, too, has had her problems. Eight huge anchors secured to the end of large t w o-and-a-half-inch wire warps keep her secured while pipelaying is in progress, but the Maui crews have welded just about everything they- could — even the galley sink — to the anchors in a bid to increase their weight to prevent dragging during storms. Zero sight The first seven miles of 24-inch pipe was laid through boulder-fouled shoals, with divers working in zero visibility endeavouring to survey the track ahead. Anchors became fouled and dragged, and the barge and tug crews found it a nightmare task checking the position of the Kokan Pioneer and at the same time retrieving jammed anchors from the sea bed. To overcome the anchor problems, the oil men have beefed up their weight from 20.000 pounds an anchor to the pipe barge is crucial. The right tension has to be 40,000 pounds, by welding on more steel. The correct positioning of kept on the pipeline during

[laying, or it will split for [miles like a pea pod. Closed-circuit television is used to keep an eye on the eight mooring winches, and a Decca navigation system checks the barge’s position. Two or three tugs work; with each barge, shifting; their moorings when neces-i sary. Like a non-self-propelled dredger the pipe barge: moves slowly on her own: moorings, with a .huge, selftensioning winch maintaining the light tension on the: pipeline. On one occasion the swells were so bad during pipe laying that teams of welders on board had to move up and down the deck about 6ft to keep level with the pipe joints, which are' welded as the pipe is laid. Pipeline engineer, Mr D.[ W. Barry's worst headache!

was the night when SI million worth of floating equipment went adrift in a storm. The stinger. a semisubmerged pontoon which is used for pipe laying and is hitched to the stern of the Kokan Pioneer, broke adrift on tow from New Plymouth. "It was blowing about 30 knots, and we had all available boats out looking for it,’’ he said. The stinger's highest part is only about 2ft above the Waterline and its abovesurface portion is only about 50ft long; needless to say the oilmen were very happy to retrieve it after a sixhour search. Without it the project could have been delayed for weeks, until another was shipped in. Saturation diving techniques are being used by the 30 or so divers engaged on the project. The men are required to work down to depths of 350 ft. and extensive use of diving bells and recompression chambers is necessary. The divers are split into

I three teams, a team being [on each of the three barges, [and many are North Sea [veterans. Ihe smallest barge. Barge 265. supports a saturation diving team whose job it is I to inspect the pipe once it is i laid. The 54 divers work on the: most risky job, but so far: there have been no underI water accidents. The men now playing the i waiting game bring worldwide experience with them. Risky task There are Spanish welders. Arab riggers, American oil men, a Dutch oceanographer and a few British North Sea 'oilmen. Roughly half of the barge' crews are locals as are most of the tug crews. i Life afloat can mean three [weeks of hard 24-hours-: a-day slogging when the' weather is good, or three! [weeks of almost total bore-1 [dom when it is bad. “Most of them are herej for the three M s — money,

meals and mail.” says the platform installation engineer. Mr W. P M. van der Watering. Even so. a number have not been able to stand the strain Boredom has taken its toll one way or another, and a [few have left voluntarily Others have been given ; their marching orders by the company, according to various New Plymouth people, [after slight altercations among themselves. There is neither grog nor female compan' afloat, so .the single men sometimes I try to cram three weeks' socialising into a week when they get ashore. .project closes down for the winter will pr ibably be made within a few weeks. Ihe idle-time payments, the cost of running about .half a dozen helicopter ' flights a day and keeping tugs and supplies on the go for no return are clocking up massive extra costs. j Just how much these are ■the general manger. Mr Wil-

hams, cannot say at the m 1 ment hu( it will no doubt be reckoned in millions. Even with a wintvi close down, he believe* to completion date can Inachieved. given fair weaihci next year Much of the work which was to have been done . n the Maui platform will now be done ashore, because th, crane ship Blue Whale has < grea ,-t lifting capacity amt more prefabrication work can be carried out. L<»n«*l> sigil Once the pin pile- ate driven through the Maui legs. 24 sKi-t piles will be driven into the sea bed parallel with th« six legs through large securing cleats. At present, no one live* on board the platform and it, stands as a lonely sentinel, in remarkable isolation 22 miles from the shore, supporting only two small portable welding plants while everyone wait* for thweal tier to improve.

(By ROY VAUGH AX. shipping reporter of the "New Zealand Herald" )