deck swung out over one of the barges and lowered a section of steel as big around as an oil barrel and perhaps twenty feet long. As they got closer Eve could pick out workmen on deck dressed in dark coveralls with white hard hats. She counted at least a dozen, and at various other parts on the rig, above and below the main deck, points of light from cutting torches were bright even in the daylight.
From a quarter mile out the rig looked like nothing more than a pile of rusted-out junk in someone’s backyard pond, nothing like the blueprints, and especially not the photographs InterOil had sent her to study, and her heart sunk a little. Discomfort, indeed.
“She’s a semisubmersible rig, which means when she’s in position her four legs are lowed to a depth of fifty meters and partially filled with ballast water to keep her stable,” Defloria said. “If the sea gets up we can pump out some of the ballast water to raise the level of the main deck above the highest waves.”
“Wouldn’t that make it less stable?” Eve asked.
“If it gets too bad we evacuate the rig,” Defloria conceded “But understand that this isn’t the same as a North Sea platform where it’s always rough. And its primary use was for exploration, not product extraction.”
“What about hurricanes?”
“Every rig — no matter how large — is evacuated. Most survive, tattered but afloat; still we lost two during Katrina. Expensive hardware.”
“Once we get to the other coast how do we keep her in place?”
“For the short term we can use dynamic positioning, a lot like bow and stern thrusters on a ship. For the long term she’ll be anchored to the seabed.”
Don had taken out his video camera and was recording images as the helicopter pilot came in just above the level of the main deck and slowly circled the platform until he flared and touched down on the landing pad at the opposite corner from the crane.
Now that they were actually aboard, and seeing the rig up close, not from a quarter mile out, Eve was even more disappointed in its condition, but excited too. Some rust and trash wouldn’t detract from the real technology that was going to happen from this piece of equipment. And the real science of actually modifying the planet’s weather for the good.
“We’ll make this work,” she said, mostly for her own benefit.
“Is the Ping-Pong table still aboard?” Don asked.
“It’s still here, along with the pool table and a pretty good library — mostly of video games,” Defloria said.
“Princeton cafeteria food is horrible, any chance of hiring your chef?”
“One of our catering staffs will come aboard, and we’ll even stock the pantry. At some point we’ll contract your project manager to find out if any of your people have any special dietary needs.”
Eve was surprised again and it showed.
“This will be a turnkey operation for your people until we get you settled off Hutchinson Island,” Defloria said. “At that point you’ll need to hire an OIM and a half-dozen other platform crew plus your own stewards, and I’m assuming electrical engineers. Once there InterOil will turn the operation over to you.”
“We may need help finding the right people,” Don said.
“In this job climate the word will spread. You’ll have no problem.”
Defloria handed Eve and Don hard hats before the chopper’s hatch was opened and they stepped out onto the deck, and instantly Eve was struck by the sheer volume of noise — whining cutting tools, heavy pieces of metal clanging against each other, other tools that sounded like jackhammers and buzz saws and drills, plus the waves against the four buoyancy control legs, the wind that had gotten up to at least twenty-five knots, and men shouting, and here and there the sounds of music, mostly country and western, blaring from boom boxes.
Another impression that struck her the moment her feet hit the deck was the size of the platform. This was no 225-foot research ship; the platform measured more than 600 feet from the bases of the fully extended legs to the helicopter deck, and during drilling or exploration operations the drilling towers, which had already been partially dismantled and barged to shore, might rise another 200 feet. Bigger than a football field, the platform’s three decks were crammed with living and working structures, stacked like some fantastic building blocks at one end of the platform, while gigantic tanks and hundreds of miles of color-coded piping and electrical cables snaked in and around an incomprehensible maze of individual pedestals, rising sometimes from the main deck and in other places from one of the lower decks, which held pieces of machinery, some that looked like pumps, others that looked like electrical generators and still others whose purpose Eve could only guess.
And everywhere, it seemed, rough-looking men were working at what seemed at first to Eve to be a measured, even indolently slow pace, until she realized that they were simply being careful. This indeed was a dangerous place.
“By the time your people come aboard we’ll be finished with all the heavy lifting,” Defloria said, and he had to shout. He led them down steep metal stairs and through a hatch into a corridor that seemed to run the width of the platform. Suddenly they were out of most of the noise, though the clatter of metal on metal rang out as if they were inside a giant bell.
“Is it always this noisy?” Eve asked.
“Sometimes worse during a drilling operation. But it shouldn’t be as bad when your crew are aboard, though I don’t know what noise level your impellers and gensets will transmit up the cables.”
“There wasn’t much noise aboard the
“Those were small impellers by comparison to the ones you’ll be testing from this platform. You might want to ask GE’s chief project engineer to study the issue. Probably come up with some damping mechanism.”
Eve hadn’t thought of it, and she admitted as much to Defloria, who nodded.
“Engineering and science aren’t always on the same page.”
“We learned that on the
“Yes, I expect you did,” Defloria said.
At the far end of the pipe- and cable-lined corridor, Defloria led them through another hatch and up five flights of stairs to a large space with wraparound windows and consoles and empty racks that had once contained the electronic equipment for oil exploration activities. They were at the highest point on the rig, not counting the drilling derricks, and the view was spectacular. From here they could see just about everything happening on the main deck, and out to sea other platforms on the horizon as well as ship traffic.
“This was the chief geologist’s work space,” Defloria explained. “He and his people directed operations from here, and I think it will suit your purposes.”
“During the research phase,” Eve said, the rig in not as bad a shape in her mind as before. This would work.
“What about the housekeeping infrastructure?” Don asked.
“Everything will be up and running by the time your people come aboard. Right now one of the electrical generators is online, while the second unit is being overhauled. The desalination system, which provides fresh water, is just about on its last legs, but it’ll be as good as new within the week. We’re waiting for some spare parts from the mainland.”
“From the mainland?” Eve asked.
“You live and work on these things long enough you get to think of them as islands, versus the mainland where you get your supplies and take your vacations.”
“What about waste disposal?” Don asked, and Eve was glad he was being the practical thinker just now.
“Normally these rigs have sewage processing plants, but we’ve dismantled the system on this platform, too much wrong with it. For now we’re storing our wastewater in tanks that normally would be used for oil storage. Lot of capacity. Once a week it’s pumped into a small tanker and sent ashore. It’s something you’ll have to consider once you get to Florida, though with only a dozen people aboard you won’t generate very much.”
“How about bunks, linens, towels, stuff like that?”
“Your people will have to bring their personal items, of course, but InterOil will supply everything else — as we do aboard all of our platforms.”
“Where will you go afterwards?” Eve asked, suddenly curious about the man who would be in charge of getting her rig to Florida.
