Potential North Sea Oil Disaster

From the Evening Times, July 26 1977.

"There seems to be a swing towards steel structures in the oil industry because of the incredible financial investment required to build concrete platforms and the lack of detailed knowledge of their performance and lifetime compared with the knowledge available on steel."

From the Glasgow Herald, May 17 1978.

"....the Ninian Central Platform has just been towed out of Loch Kishorn, leaving an embarrassing vacuum at the Howard Doris yard. And Kishorn, of course, is not alone, now that the prospects for concrete platforms are seen to be much poorer than was once expected. Obviously in areas such as these there is a responsibility to minimise the economic as well as the environmental damage. To spend money in repairing the damage done by the oil industry is hardly a squandering of the revenues, and this is one more argument for ensuring that the oil money does not simply disappear without trace when it reaches the Treasury,"

Go to Flickr and search 'Glen Kishorn 1984'. You'll find a photograph of a bridge damaged by traffic from the Howard Doris site where the Ninian Central was built.

Now go onto google maps and find the point half way between Kishorn and Lochcarron where the road crosses the largest stream. Go onto street view and you'll find the bridge is still in the same condition.

Is the oil industry paying for the damage it causes?

Originally posted by michkollmann
yeo, thanks for keeping us informed. DWH was similarly a planned disaster.

mkollmann.newsvine.com...

DWH was in no friggin way a planned disaster! Where the hell did you get that info? Did you take a couple of hits of whatever they were smoking just so you could believe their BS disinformation?

I was in the DWH just 2 weeks before it blew and lost 3 good friends on that rig. If there was even the slightest safety factor that would have pointed to a possible blow out and subsequent explosion the rig super as well as the head Driller would have shut the rig down.

Do you people that think any oil incident is a "planned disaster" think that us guys out there busting our asses to support our family are actually willing to sacrifice our lives to promote some ridiculous agenda by blowing our selves up? What happened on the DWH was most likely a sudden bleed off of methane from a.gas pocket at the well head, not a planned disaster.

I've worked for 10+ years as a deepwater commercial diver on oil rigs and we do not take any chances when it comes to rig safety because we are all well aware of the dangers. If there is a safety issue almost anyone on the rig has the power to stop operations until the issue has been addressed and remedied. I have shut down operations on rigs numerous times.

The DWH was a freak accident that is it period. The DWH was a $500 million dollar rig that cost another $500 million a day to operate when all costs were calculated. BP lost hundreds of millions of dollars a day just die to the lack of production after it blew, not to mention loss of the rig, loss of oil, court settlements, environmental settlements, damage settlements with the gulf fishing industry plus settlements with families of those lost. Now why would BP purposefully want to lose tens of hundreds of millions of dollars by engineering a disaster?

The reason the oil leak went on so long had nothing to do with BP or the oil industry either. It was a direct result of the educated idiots that we have in government that suddenly think they are experts on everything as soon as they take office. Actually not to get too political here but I think that 90% of the blame for the length of the leak can be attributed to the Obama administration. It was a disaster that Obama was not going to let go to waste. As long as that oil kept spewing it was a good argument for his "green energy" agenda.

There were several solutions proposed by BP to stop the leak within days of the disaster hut all were shot down, including setting off a nuke a mile down the well casing that would cauterize the stone in the bedrock and seal it off forever. That fix works good, I have place 2 such charges on north sea spills over the years and they work great with no radiation leaks. I even went to my congressman Cliff Stearns with a design for a eccentric operated pressure cap that would have sealed the well head and was told by him that it wouldn't work. I asked him how many rig dives he had and.he said he wasn't an oil worker or a diver to which I asked him what then made him an expert. He replied that it just wouldn't work.........government at its best!

Furthermore what people don't realize is that more oil than what leaked from the DWH naturally leak from the gulf seabed every year. As I stated I am a deepwater diver, making regular Sat Dives to 1500' and have walked the bottom in the gulf and seen the oil.

It should also be stated that the biggest reason for disasters such as this is the fact that environmental regulations have forced the rigs out to depths where if you have a disaster you are out of reach of sending divers in to fix it. If the DWH would have been in the East Breaks oilfield in a workable depth of up to even 1800' the leak would have been stopped the day it happened. A diver such as myself would have Ben sent down to weld up the casing, problem solved. But at. 3000'+ depth it is beyond a divers reach. Even during my Navy years at the Naval Experimental Dive Unit in Panama City FL my maximum dive depth was only 2650' and that was the extreme end of extremes.

The DWH was nothing more than an accident caused by bad government regulations and when worse government response.

I want to crash a submarine and crash right into that thing... Its asking for it

Originally posted by Nucleardiver


The DWH was a freak accident that is it period. The DWH was a $500 million dollar rig that cost another $500 million a day to operate when all costs were calculated. BP lost hundreds of millions of dollars a day just die to the lack of production after it blew, not to mention loss of the rig, loss of oil, court settlements, environmental settlements, damage settlements with the gulf fishing industry plus settlements with families of those lost. Now why would BP purposefully want to lose tens of hundreds of millions of dollars by engineering a disaster?

The guys at the top of the oil business who never got their hands dirty in their lives make more money for less investment every time the price goes up.

Thanks for your valued input.

reply to post by dayve


Don't risk it you muppet. Everyone knows where you live. Sesame street is not a safe hideout.

Thanks for at least offering some solution. The money mad bigwigs just want to run it till it breaks. With 150 workers on board.

Originally posted by Kester

Originally posted by Nucleardiver


The DWH was a freak accident that is it period. The DWH was a $500 million dollar rig that cost another $500 million a day to operate when all costs were calculated. BP lost hundreds of millions of dollars a day just die to the lack of production after it blew, not to mention loss of the rig, loss of oil, court settlements, environmental settlements, damage settlements with the gulf fishing industry plus settlements with families of those lost. Now why would BP purposefully want to lose tens of hundreds of millions of dollars by engineering a disaster?

The guys at the top of the oil business who never got their hands dirty in their lives make more money for less investment every time the price goes up.

Thanks for your valued input.

Okaaay...so tell me how the "guys at the top that never get their hands dirty" managed to create a planned disaster on a rig that they have never set foot on have no real connections to and know nothing about the operations of.

And while you may think they made more money because the price of oil went up for a couple of months I highly doubt it offset the billions in loses that BP was faced with.

Originally posted by Kester
reply to post by dayve

 

Don't risk it you muppet. Everyone knows where you live. Sesame street is not a safe hideout.

Thanks for at least offering some solution. The money mad bigwigs just want to run it till it breaks. With 150 workers on board.

Do you not understand that these rigs are not floating around free from any safety regulations and inspections?

There is MSHA, International Marine Contractors Association, International Oilworkers Association, Coast Guard, OSHO and numerous other agencies that inspect these rigs as well as there operations every month. They also check for proper certifications of all employees every month and violations are steep, I was once fined 4k for operating without having my proper certifications on me even though they were valid and up to date.

I also once witnessed a Texaco rig getting a 300k fine for improper storage of primer cord.

Seriously, where do you get the idea that rigs operate outside of safety standards or that the individuals that work on the rigs are not concerned with being safe? I was a diver and underwater welder in the Navy and honestly the Navy safety standards were way more lax than any I encountered in the oil industry.

I would also ad that IMCA has the authority to shut down rigs for safety violations and the only time I ever witnessed that was once working off of Thialand due to the LS tech not having the proper filters for the compressors. I refused to dive then anyway until the equipment was right.

I have to agree with nuclear diver his comments are very valid i am currently posting this from a semi just off the Shetlands. We in the oil industry perhaps even more so in the north sea than other areas of oil production and exploration are extremely safety focused it is constantly rammed home that it is our first and foremost quality required for success. And if you think for one minute that 150 guys would happily sit on a rig that potentially is about to go crashing into the sea releasing HC's on a level not seen since Piper you are seriously mistaken.

To the OP have you ever worked in the oil industry? You seem to have latched on to a subject with quite fever perhaps just a thought you have recently experienced a NRB/NRV ?????? Bullet to the head whatever....

Proof of control of HSE issues are available just last year the last one i heard of anyway was a Talisman rig ordered with a improvement notice if the improvement is not carried out in the required time frame the rig operator would incur at the very least heavy financial penalty that would continue to be incurred until the improvements are carried out so if the ninian central had that type of issues and not carried out the required repairs it would be uneconomical to carry on and also if there was any danger of HC's to be released on a scale like that those wells would be well under way to abandoment

Originally posted by Nucleardiver

Okaaay...so tell me how the "guys at the top that never get their hands dirty" managed to create a planned disaster on a rig that they have never set foot on have no real connections to and know nothing about the operations of.

And while you may think they made more money because the price of oil went up for a couple of months I highly doubt it offset the billions in loses that BP was faced with.

First I ask you take a brief look at this video. This man knows there are "..problems with cracks and water getting to where it shouldn't be..." in the Ninian Central.



It would be silly of me to speculate when we have a real problem on our hands with the Ninian Central. That's the best I can offer with the first of your questions here.

BP are not the guys at the top. They're just the worker bees. That's all I can offer secondly.

I value your input here very highly. I don't want to waste any of our time so I'll go on to the next one.

reply to post by Nucleardiver


Please carefully read the first paragraph of the sixth post I made in this thread.

"I had taken my concerns direct to Sandy Stewart of HSE."

My understanding is locating corroded tendons in the Ninian Central is next to impossible. Unless the location is known. That's why I gave Sandy the information I have.

Does anyone disagree with the following statement.

"The horizontal tendon ducts in the Ninian Central were improperly grouted. This is not the fault of the workforce. Insufficient information was available at the time. Grouting was carried out more efficiently on later platforms using knowledge gained during the construction of the Ninian Central."

Originally posted by XxthehoffxX
And if you think for one minute that 150 guys would happily sit on a rig that potentially is about to go crashing into the sea releasing HC's on a level not seen since Piper you are seriously mistaken.

You seem to have latched on to a subject with quite fever...

....if the ninian central had that type of issues and not carried out the required repairs it would be uneconomical to carry on and also if there was any danger of HC's to be released on a scale like that those wells would be well under way to abandoment

They will not sit happily when they have checked the information. Hence the offer of a bullet to the head.

I only know of three people who saw those photographs. One will never talk. One may talk. I am the third.

How many wells? How profitable is the Ninian Pipeline? Hence the once in a lifetime offer.

Originally posted by Kester
I've been warned I'll get a bullet in the head for revealing the existence of these cracks.

The `heart' of the soul was handed over to Osiris who placed it on a great golden scale balanced against the white feather of Ma'at, the feather of truth, of harmony, on the other side. If the soul's heart was lighter than the feather then the soul was freely admitted into the bliss of the Field of Reeds. Should the heart prove heavier, however, it was thrown to the floor of the Hall of Truth where it was devoured by Amenti (a god with the face of a crocodile, front of a leopard and the back of a rhinoceros) and the individual soul then ceased to exist. There was no `hell' for the ancient Egyptians; their `fate worse than death' was non-existence.

Originally posted by Kester
I'm asking my ATS buddies to stand by me. If I go down I want you all to make as much noise about this as possible.

Thanks for sharing and those bullet distributers you speak of hmm, not they know what awaits them for their evol deeds here in 3d. Thanks also for caring about EA*RTH enough to share. I hope this isnt another FAIL in the midst but its hard to tell for now.

NAMASTE*******

I'm fortunate in having a finger in a lot of pies. My demise will kick off storms in varied locations. Storms that will only grow in intensity. Our wonderful intelligence agencies are well aware of that.

Anyone feel like coming to my defence? The kettle's always on.

I'm doing this for those on the Ninian Central.

I'm doing this for the sea.

And I'm doing this because I have walked over that bridge in Kishorn Glen often enough. If you missed the earlier post please go to Flickr and search Glen Kishorn 1984. Perhaps it's been repaired now. Can anyone tell us? On google street view it still looks much as it did in 1984. And that's the way Howard Doris left it.

reply to post by Ophiuchus 13


Thank you so much. You responded as I was typing my plea for support!

Originally posted by Kester

Originally posted by XxthehoffxX
And if you think for one minute that 150 guys would happily sit on a rig that potentially is about to go crashing into the sea releasing HC's on a level not seen since Piper you are seriously mistaken.

You seem to have latched on to a subject with quite fever...

....if the ninian central had that type of issues and not carried out the required repairs it would be uneconomical to carry on and also if there was any danger of HC's to be released on a scale like that those wells would be well under way to abandoment

They will not sit happily when they have checked the information. Hence the offer of a bullet to the head.

I only know of three people who saw those photographs. One will never talk. One may talk. I am the third.

How many wells? How profitable is the Ninian Pipeline? Hence the once in a lifetime offer.

All those wells really wont be very profitable if they are spewing HC's into the north sea now will they i am aware of the issues surrounding the ninians platforms not just the central in fact just had a conversation with a person who for many years had been involved with the survey inspection on them again do you not think that ignoring a problem and hoping for the best is the way that buisness is done off shore from a operators stand point it is possible but what about all the regulatory bodies they are aware and would require independent engineering survey reports as per my conversation earlier with such person work in the fields as does diver what is your experience in the oil industry perhaps you could elaborate a bit and then maybe we can see where you are coming from instead of you tube links

Hey if you have real evidence that a disaster is imminent you would have every offshore workers and their family's support

Originally posted by Kester

Originally posted by Nucleardiver

Okaaay...so tell me how the "guys at the top that never get their hands dirty" managed to create a planned disaster on a rig that they have never set foot on have no real connections to and know nothing about the operations of.

And while you may think they made more money because the price of oil went up for a couple of months I highly doubt it offset the billions in loses that BP was faced with.

First I ask you take a brief look at this video. This man knows there are "..problems with cracks and water getting to where it shouldn't be..." in the Ninian Central.

It would be silly of me to speculate when we have a real problem on our hands with the Ninian Central. That's the best I can offer with the first of your questions here.

BP are not the guys at the top. They're just the worker bees. That's all I can offer secondly.

I value your input here very highly. I don't want to waste any of our time so I'll go on to the next one.

Not BP


No BP are not the guys at the top the guys from above link are

Originally posted by XxthehoffxX

Hey if you have real evidence that a disaster is imminent you would have every offshore workers and their family's support

If I had that evidence I would have made multiple copies and pasted them on every lampost in Aberdeen.


Wikipedia says....

"....sometimes the ducts containing the prestressing tendons are not fully filled, leaving voids in the grout where the steel is not protected from corrosion. The situation is exacerbated if water and chloride (from de-icing salts) from the highway are able to penetrate into these voids.
Notable events are listed below:
The Ynys-y-Gwas bridge in West Glamorgan, Wales – a segmental post-tensioned structure, particularly vulnerable to defects in the post-tensioning system – collapsed without warning in 1984."

The locals knew it was going to go one day. In spite of the heavy traffic it went suddenly without a heavy load.

The Hammersmith Flyover has a similar problem. It hasn't dropped yet. New cables are being installed. Estimated cost 10 million.

"The Fulham & Hammersmith Chronicle claim that they were contacted on the 14th December by a whistleblower who revealed that problems with the structure were far more severe than was being made public."

£10 million is a lot to pay based on some whistleblowers words. It seems the whistleblower was right, the problems were far more severe than was being admitted. They were just going to let it drop and claim it was unexpected.

The Ninian Central Platform may still be there in a hundred years. Who can say. All I can do is tell my story, in chronological order, with two false names. I'll call them James and Suzy.

James was an fisherman, Suzy was an artist. They lived in the Highlands.

One day James heard from his friend who worked at the Kishorn yard that a serious problem had arisen. Huge vertical cracks had developed inside the structure. The management had ordered a cover-up. The cracks were to be disguised as soon as possible.

My memory is a little hazy here, I'm not sure but I think I was told all the workers were ordered out while a small team did the work. If that's the case only a small number of the workers knew what was happening.

James had cojones. He went to the site dressed as a worker and climbed up one of the cranes with his camera. The crane operator was very surprised when James appeared and asked him what the hell he was doing there. James calmly explained the management wanted a photographic record. He took multiple photographs of the cracks.

James hid those photographs. The Ninian Central was completed and the topside was mounted very carefully.

James and Suzy carried on with their lives. In the spring of 1979 I came to the highlands as a teenager. I got to know James and Suzy very well.

One day James decided to show me some of his photographs. I'm an artist, I wasn't interested in oil rigs. James pointed out the cracks. I was mildly interested and I asked "What happened to the rig?" James said "It was just a little rig, it was floated off and sold to some third world country somewhere".

Although I spent many days on Loch Kishorn the site was just background noise to me. For all I knew there'd been half a dozen concrete rigs built there. All these years I thought I'd been told about some industrial naughtiness but I had no way of knowing which rig or where it was.

Then came the Macondo blowout. I started learning a bit about oil rigs and suddenly one day I discovered there'd only been one rig built at Kishorn before 1979 and it was the largest mobile object that had ever been made. Please try to understand how that revelation affected me.

Originally posted by Kester
reply to post by Ophiuchus 13

 

Thank you so much. You responded as I was typing my plea for support!

Anytime my friend and 1 appreciates your care for EA*RTH and its inhabitants.

I spent three days going over every detail. When I was finally sure I started looking into who I should tell. To cut a long story short I realised Sandy was the man who had to know. I rang Lord Cullen House, they gave me Sandy's mobile number. I asked him "Are you responsible for safety on the Ninian Central?" "Yes"
"How much do you know about the construction?" A long pause then "I don't know much about the construction. I know everything about all the improvements and maintenance since I've been responsible but I don't know much about the construction.... Who is this?" I may be misquoting Sandy here. You can ask him yourself. For all I know someone else might be in charge now. I certainly didn't bother getting back to HSE after the second phone call.

Sandy explained it would take weeks to organise an inspection. I said I wouldn't go to the press. His voice sounded slightly cracked as he said thank you.

About three weeks later I phoned him back. If he had any questions I was willing to try to answer them. My perception is that he had been instructed to fob me off.

I went on the warpath on behalf of everyone on that rig, their families and every creature that could be affected by a catastrophic failure of the Ninian Central.

Originally posted by Kester

Originally posted by XxthehoffxX

Hey if you have real evidence that a disaster is imminent you would have every offshore workers and their family's support

If I had that evidence I would have made multiple copies and pasted them on every lampost in Aberdeen.

Wikipedia says....

"....sometimes the ducts containing the prestressing tendons are not fully filled, leaving voids in the grout where the steel is not protected from corrosion. The situation is exacerbated if water and chloride (from de-icing salts) from the highway are able to penetrate into these voids.
Notable events are listed below:
The Ynys-y-Gwas bridge in West Glamorgan, Wales – a segmental post-tensioned structure, particularly vulnerable to defects in the post-tensioning system – collapsed without warning in 1984."

The locals knew it was going to go one day. In spite of the heavy traffic it went suddenly without a heavy load.

The Hammersmith Flyover has a similar problem. It hasn't dropped yet. New cables are being installed. Estimated cost 10 million.

"The Fulham & Hammersmith Chronicle claim that they were contacted on the 14th December by a whistleblower who revealed that problems with the structure were far more severe than was being made public."

£10 million is a lot to pay based on some whistleblowers words. It seems the whistleblower was right, the problems were far more severe than was being admitted. They were just going to let it drop and claim it was unexpected.

The Ninian Central Platform may still be there in a hundred years. Who can say. All I can do is tell my story, in chronological order, with two false names. I'll call them James and Suzy.

James was an fisherman, Suzy was an artist. They lived in the Highlands.

One day James heard from his friend who worked at the Kishorn yard that a serious problem had arisen. Huge vertical cracks had developed inside the structure. The management had ordered a cover-up. The cracks were to be disguised as soon as possible.

My memory is a little hazy here, I'm not sure but I think I was told all the workers were ordered out while a small team did the work. If that's the case only a small number of the workers knew what was happening.

James had cojones. He went to the site dressed as a worker and climbed up one of the cranes with his camera. The crane operator was very surprised when James appeared and asked him what the hell he was doing there. James calmly explained the management wanted a photographic record. He took multiple photographs of the cracks.

James hid those photographs. The Ninian Central was completed and the topside was mounted very carefully.

James and Suzy carried on with their lives. In the spring of 1979 I came to the highlands as a teenager. I got to know James and Suzy very well.

One day James decided to show me some of his photographs. I'm an artist, I wasn't interested in oil rigs. James pointed out the cracks. I was mildly interested and I asked "What happened to the rig?" James said "It was just a little rig, it was floated off and sold to some third world country somewhere".

Although I spent many days on Loch Kishorn the site was just background noise to me. For all I knew there'd been half a dozen concrete rigs built there. All these years I thought I'd been told about some industrial naughtiness but I had no way of knowing which rig or where it was.

Then came the Macondo blowout. I started learning a bit about oil rigs and suddenly one day I discovered there'd only been one rig built at Kishorn before 1979 and it was the largest mobile object that had ever been made. Please try to understand how that revelation affected me.

So i take it that the story above is yours, and could be true i am not disputing that there are cracks we all know that there are my point is that structural engineers marine engineers etc who know a lot more about this type of thing, also who would be brought in by independent organisations who oversee safety and environmental protection will have confirmed that the structure is safe. Now i would think that if there was any disastrous failure of the tendons there would be corporate manslaughter charges all round perhaps someone could tell me the complete cost of the deepwater disaster so we can offset it against this

Ninian field is expected to produce about 20 more years with complete abandonment by the 2030. Ninian is expected to generate $4.45 billion in revenue (undiscounted) during its remaining life (starting January 1, 2010) . so subtract operating costs tax etc from this now tell me would it be worth it???

Also i would really like to hear how you came about being threatened who did you speak to about this??

And how does an artist get embroiled in this type of thing its good to see this getting brought to the table though it is an important subject and does need to be discussed

Have you tried to contact CNR on this matter?