Another lockdown… another commute

[OhOh]

This is typical sub-bottom profiler data that I work with.

I've always assumed the pipeline route are straight, from a to b.

It appears they wriggle around to find the way around the "detected" hard spots.

Thank you both.

[mudcat]

re turnips and radishes - Southern Mexico has a specific night (December 23rd) to honor the local member of the Brassicacae family

[katie23]

^wow. Is that La Virgen de Guadalupe made from radishes/ turnips? Very creative!

[dirk diggler]

But to start putting enough energy into the water or ground to penetrate 10,000+ meters into the earth and reflect all the different layers of unknown velocities back to the surface with the resolution and accuracy to put a drill rig on top of some target miles under the ground and expect success?. Get the fuck out of here!

And then there’s the wildcatters, who cheap out on you guys by skipping the process completely, and just go around drilling random holes in an attempt to get lucky.

Mad bastards.

[bsnub]

Is that La Virgen de Guadalupe made from radishes/ turnips?

Yes it is.

[Saint Willy]

Back to Mendy, where’s the gym photos? The walking around the heli deck, the push ups in your cabin??? Huh? Huh?

[armstrong]

Back to Mendy, where’s the gym photos? The walking around the heli deck, the push ups in your cabin??? Huh? Huh?

He's explained both the gym and the helideck.

[CalEden]

Hey Mendy, can you use Hand Grenades to get deep seismics or shallow sub-bottom profiler data?

[Joe 90]

What qualifications did you get to become a Geologist, starting with 0 level, A level, degree etc?
When, why and how did you get into that line of business.

Nosey fooker ain't I?

Only asking coz my eldest is taking A level Maths, Physics and Geography so in theory a career in Geology might be an option?

Cheers

[helge]

Hey Mendy, can you use Hand Grenades to get deep seismics or shallow sub-bottom profiler data?

I'm not sure irish politics is in Mendip's job description.

[Mendip]

I've always assumed the pipeline route are straight, from a to b.

It appears they wriggle around to find the way around the "detected" hard spots.

Thank you both.

OhOh, it's no different to laying a pipeline across land... a straight line is obviously favourable because it uses less pipe and is therefore cheaper, but is rarely possible. Topography will be the first consideration and then soil conditions. You need to avoid obvious hazards such as bedrock outcrop or ship wrecks, but also buried bedrock or boulder clay just below the seabed is best avoided. On the shore approaches in Norway you are limited to using the various fjords that provide a route between rock and many pipelines use the same route corridors.

Hey Mendy, can you use Hand Grenades to get deep seismics or shallow sub-bottom profiler data?

It's not something I have experience of, but I'm pretty sure a hand grenade wouldn't release nearly enough energy for HW's deep seismics but it could maybe be used for my shallow SBP data. Occasionally when we're working a seismic vessel will pass by towing it's kilometres of streamers and even if the boat is a couple of kilometres away you can feel the 'booms' of the airguns rattle through our boat. It can't do the marine life any good.

What qualifications did you get to become a Geologist, starting with 0 level, A level, degree etc?
When, why and how did you get into that line of business.

Nosey fooker ain't I?

Only asking coz my eldest is taking A level Maths, Physics and Geography so in theory a career in Geology might be an option?

Cheers

I would warn your eldest that the food often ain't so good offshore... oh hang on, that shouldn't be a problem!

I had an O level in geology and was just lucky that my comp offered geology and had two very good geology teachers. My A levels were Geology, Geography and Biology. My interest had always been biology and had wanted to be a vet until early on I realised I would never get the grades.

My first attempt at further education was at Leeds Poly where I started a course in Environmental Health, but soon realised that it wasn't for me. I dropped out, returned home and started working at a mushroom farm in the village. I soon got promoted from cutting mushrooms to being the van driver and all was good until my parents started charging me extortionate rent to stay at home and I couldn't make ends meet... they of course only did this to force me away and do something with my life (the best thing they ever did for me with hindsight).

I was never that academic and only decided on a geology degree because I couldn't think of anything else... and scraped a 2-2 in geology at Southampton Uni. I started doing joint geology with biology so I could avoid the geophysics modules as I found the maths so difficult... but converted to straight geology in the final year. Now I spend a lot of time working as a geophysicist (although not a proper one like HW is used to)... it's funny how things work out.

[Mendip]

This has got a bit serious... I thought maybe people would be interested to see a typical geo I work with out here...

Back to Mendy, where’s the gym photos? The walking around the heli deck, the push ups in your cabin??? Huh? Huh?

Once I had been on board for a week I was allowed to walk around the boat with no mask, to use the public toilets and most importantly, to use the gym. Wednesday night was my first session and I completed my second session tonight before shift.

This is our gym.



And from the opposite direction.



This is where my genius of taking a 12-12 night shift comes into play... almost the entire rest of the boat are doing 6-6 shifts and the gym gets very crowded a couple of hours either side of 6am and 6pm. I get it to myself at 10pm... but wonder at times if after spending 7 months sitting alone with my dogs in the garden at home I have now become a complete recluse.

There's a door off the gym leading to the sauna... a nice way to relax after a winter shift and to prepare for sleep.



And the sun room. I can never figure out, with the constant drive for safety, how sun beds are allowed offshore. The majority of Norwegian vessels have them and it's no surprise that Norway is only behind Australia and New Zealand for skin cancer rates.



And if you're interested, there's a shower and toilet as well.



If you're wondering what the sign on the toilet door says...



It seems like someone hasn't been flushing their turds... and yes, it's a boat full of adults.

I'm not one to generalise but after many years experience of working on these boats my suspicion leans towards a Norwegian being the guilty party. I've found that the Norwegians often leave the pan in a terrible state, closely followed by the Scots. I'm not saying we English are perfect, we have our faults but we do tend to keep a clean toilet bowl.

Anyway, this was my view from the treadmill tonight. It was Norwegian commentary and I'd forgotten my glasses and started supporting the red and white team until Harry Kane headed in a goal and I realised England were in blue.




But back to work... we now have typical Norwegian summer weather. We will soon be completing our work scope at Heidrun and then it's off to the Kristin Field.



And here is our work class ROV on the back deck. The survey ROV, which is what this spread is all about, has it's own dedicated hangar. You can see the Heidrun B FSU (Floating Storage Unit) in the background.

[Stumpy]

Nice gym area Mendy. I wish I had access to one. I miss my Home gym system.

[beerlaodrinker]

Another burster of a thread mendip. Enjoying it. Crack on.hope they find the low bastards leaving Floaters in the brasco

[Saint Willy]

Miserable weather…no wonder the Skandis all wanna come to Thailand…

[mudcat]

Spent my last working years as a GIS analyst on a large water supply project that included 50km of 2m diameter pipeline convincing the project engineers that a straight line would not get their project built in California because of property issues, road right of way encroachment issues, and of course, the endangered fairy shrimp who lived in the vernal pools a straight line traversed.

[baldrick]

so in theory a career in

if he is looking for ideas , maybe he can look at studying process engineering and focus on hydrogen production

Hydrogen production - Wikipedia

[bsnub]

Another burster of a thread mendip. Enjoying it.

Agreed. I love these threads showing life aboard the ship. Top-notch stuff, for sure!

[Headworx]

Occasionally when we're working a seismic vessel will pass by towing it's kilometres of streamers and even if the boat is a couple of kilometres away you can feel the 'booms' of the airguns rattle through our boat. It can't do the marine life any good.

There's been no end of independent studies done on this and it'll come as no surprise that the findings are always disputed by people with beards, glasses, and no real job besides eating lentils and soliciting funding. Or fishermen wanting compensation pay from Chevron or BP for the rest of their lives. The gun arrays are powerful but they're warmed up with a very low starting cfm that's not much more than a decent fart, then slowly brought up to full operating cfm over about one hour typically. Any marine life disturbed has ample time to move away if its bothered by the noise and compression waves, and surveys rarely (if ever these days) take place over the top of reefs or other structures where marine life might live their entire lives permanently though I have seen it done in a *what the fuck are we doing here!* area of the Red Sea with no fish floating to the surface or damage done to the pristine reef 50m beneath the guns. We ran ROV's along the survey lines recording video before and after just in case though but again, there was no damage done. We still should not have been there though, to put a jack-up over that reef would have been unthinkable!

I've personally seen Dolphins playing among the airguns, Whales swimming towards the arrays, and was once involved in a study (to the point of my name and credentials being on the published results) where we built a small farm of floating cages off the coast of Brazil and filled them with various species of local fish, lobster, prawns, squid, and turtles, then circled a gunboat around them all firing at full-noise every 6 seconds for 24hrs. This too was an independent study, the results were to determine if Petrobras could explore an area that's now one of the highest producing fields offshore in Sth America, and I fully expected everything in those cages to be deader than disco after 10 minutes! 4 days was given to see if there was any delayed reaction time before all that marine life was released, the only casualties were a few smaller fish that bigger fish had taken a bite out of but didn't finish eating.

Sorry to be a bit lengthy on this but its something that does my head in when reading of protests going on to stop a survey somewhere in the world that's 200 km offshore in 700m of water depth with a sand bottom, but according to the experts there's going to be Tsunami's created and dead Whales washing up on beaches for the next year. Just send more money so they can get out there and harass the ship and crew in their petrol powered Zodiacs, regardless of the Oil Co and contractor having every approval and licence necessary from the governing bodies

[Mendip]

^ That's really interesting HW, thanks.

I must admit I've often wondered about the effects of the seismic sound waves on marine life as I've lain awake in my cabin while the booms go rattling through our vessel. Not that I'm singling out the seismic industry... our ROVs emit all manner of high frequency sound waves from the sub-bottom profiler, side scan sonar, multibeam echosounder, forward looking sonar, etc. Hopefully these also aren't detrimental to marine life.

I also often wonder at the blind hatred the environmentalists seem to have for the oil companies. I would say that the majority of my colleagues care for the environment and by and large I find the oil industry to be a clean industry these days. It is so heavily regulated and the companies are so paranoid about bad publicity that they have to be clean. There is of course the very occasional, well publicised disaster but otherwise it is pretty clean. Even a minuscule oil leak from an ROV has to be reported and acted upon. This is nothing compared to the natural hydrocarbon leakage from the seabed.

To my mind by far the greatest threat to marine life is the fishing industry. Thirty years ago we had to regularly stop ROV pipeline surveys due to huge shoals of cod obscuring the visibility and blocking sonar... today they are all gone. The only place fish are still a problem to our work is within the platform 500 metre zones where trawling is banned and the fish find a refuge and thrive. The pipelines in open water also provide some refuge for the fish... but they are targeted and relentlessly trawled along... and when a trawl net is snagged on some subsea infrastructure the fishermen claim against the oil company.

I can't for the life of me understand why Greenpeace and the likes demand full decommissioning of platforms and pipelines upon the end of a field's life. A far better alternative for the environment would be to leave the platforms in place with an exclusion zone, to provide some refuge for the fish, shellfish and all manner of other benthos. Away from the platform exclusion zones it isn't only the fish that are absent, the seabed is lifeless from the relentless trawling and resembles an underwater desert. Greenpeace just seem hell bent on punishing the oil companies, regardless of the consequence to marine life.

[Shutree]

A far better alternative for the environment would be to leave the platforms in place with an exclusion zone

Did I not read somewhere that this is planned for one or more old rigs?

(It is probably on Google if I want to give up another hour of my life.)

[Headworx]

I also often wonder at the blind hatred the environmentalists seem to have for the oil companies.

Greenpeace just seem hell bent on punishing the oil companies..

It's not possible of course, but wouldn't it be great to see the world try to exist as we know it both now or in any time of the foreseeable future without oil and gas. We'd be back to living in unlit homes with a fire in the backyard to cook whatever animals we could catch, that's the truth of it.

[Shutree]

living in unlit homes with a fire in the backyard to cook whatever animals we could catch

Welcome to Isaan.

[Saint Willy]

Greenpeace just seem hell bent on punishing the oil companies, regardless of the consequence to marine life.

Greenpeace are stupid.

We'd be back to living in unlit homes with a fire in the backyard to cook whatever animals we could catch, that's the truth of it.

And look to the Middle East to see what will happen once all the firewood is burned up...

[malmomike77]

It can't do the marine life any good.

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/oceans/save-the-whales/seismic-sonar-testing/

^ Nice growler