Meg's Offshore Adventures

The world has finally stopped moving, thank goodness. After spending 6 days, 120 km off the coast of New Zealand it took 2 full days for solid ground to feel solid again.

As you may know, my new job involves offshore crude production. OMV owns a Well Head Platform (WHP), and manages a Floating Production, Storage and Offtake facility (FPSO) [every good engineering blog needs a few acronyms]. The WHP has 7 crude oil wells that have been drilled into the ocean floor. From there the crude is sent to the FPSO, which is an old oil tanker that has been converted into a processing facility, that separates the crude oil from the water and gas that come up from the well with the crude. The hull of the tanker is the original hull and the production facility was built on the ships deck. The tanker has been moored to it's current location by a buoy that is held in the ships hull and is attached to the ocean floor. This buoy is not fixed in the ships hull so the ship can spin around it and ideally settle facing the swells, at least most of the time.

The photo shows both the FPSO with the WHP and drilling rig behind in the distance. The grey portion is the drilling rig and it was removed once drilling was completed, only the yellow part remains. The picture below shows another photo of the FPSO.

So, I arrived offshore on the FPSO, after flying for more then 30 minutes over the ocean in a helicopter. I am currently the only female of the 42 people on board and I get my own room, which is great. The room itself is a pretty good size, for being on a boat. There is a bunk bed, couch, cupboard, big TV (I think it is actually a 48" flat screen, we don't even have a tv that nice at home), a window that looks out over the ocean (very small but still there), and an en-suite bathroom with shower.

Life on board the ship is really not too bad. We get up just before 6 so we can have breakfast and be at the morning meeting by 6:30. Then we work, and there is a snack at 9, lunch at 12, a snack at 3, dinner at 6, and a snack at 9; and no dishes to do, plus the food is actually really good. Most of the guys here work shift work, there is both a day and a night crew who each work 12 hours (6:30 to 6:30). Once they are done there is a large lounge room with big TVs (bigger than the one in my room) and gaming systems. There is also a decent gym on the bottom floor as well as every room has an internet connection and a phone. If you have laundry you put it outside your room at night and it is at your door in the morning, clean and ready to go. This all sounds great except that is all you get for three weeks if you are a shift worker out here and there is really no where else to go except the cafeteria, lounge, gym or your room.

The first day I arrived the waves decided to go one way with the wind in another direction, making the boat sway in a very unpleasant way. I did manage to keep down all of my food but spent most of the day thinking about letting it out. That night the swells got worse. My bed is parallel to the length of the boat and the swell was causing us to rock sideways rather than for and aft (marine jargon for forward and backward) which meant that all night I rocked back and forth in my bed, enough so that I had to brace myself to keep from sliding back and forth. Needless to say, I didn't sleep much.

I spent four nights on the boat and then headed to the WHP. The WHP was very different from the boat. When I first arrived on the ship I think I felt like it was pretty cramped and close and not much freedom, that was nothing compared to the WHP. The original plan was that the WHP would not normally have people on it, the operation would be run from the boat and only the occasional maintenance person would be there. They are currently at maximum capacity. There are 30 beds and normally have 30 people, when I was there the head count was 29. I had to share a room with the guy who was in charge of all the work going on, I didn't see him at all though so it really didn't matter.

The rooms there still have an en-suite bathroom but you have to share it. The cafeteria doesn't have enough seats for everyone so we had to eat in shifts. The only phones are communal and in the middle of the lounge area (the lounge area consists of a couch beside the cafeteria). Once outside the accommodation the total area is maybe 75 ft by 75 ft, at most. I cannot imagine spending three weeks at a time out there.

When you walk down to bottom deck, you are standing on metal grating that you can see through, and there is nothing below you but ocean, ~ 60ft down, crazy. I liked just standing there and looking down, it was pretty impressive. We had some pretty good wind while I was there so I spent a bit of time just watching the waves crashing against the structure. Those same waves were making the whole platform move, not in a regular back and forth motion, more of a circular motion but inconsistent.

After spending 24 hours on the WHP I headed back to the FPSO for one more night before heading home. As I mentioned at the beginning, once I got home it took almost 2 full days before I felt normal on solid ground.

I had some difficulty putting photos in with the post so I decided to stick them in a separate post. Anyone with tips on adding pictures to the post let me know.

I hope everyone is doing well. Keep watching for some pictures from Ted's helicopter field work on Mt Doom.